We talk about businesses being teams, but it’s rare that I meet an owner of a CPA business who really trusts every member of his or her “team” to do what they should do, all the time, whether the “boss” is in the office or not.

Sports teams can’t work that way. When the members of any athletic team are focusing on their individual tasks, they have to trust that their teammates will do their jobs, too. If the pitcher is busy supervising the outfielders, he can’t do his job. In order to be able to focus on your job as leadership, then, you need to have staff you trust.

You want staff that you feel confident interacting with your clients if you are going to create a successful CPA practice. So they have to be top notch, both technically and from a customer service standpoint. I will often receive comments from my clients about how wonderful my staff is and in this article, I will impart to you a few of my strategies that have worked well in my CPA practice when it comes to staff recruiting and retaining.

1) The first one is to design an ad that clearly articulates the type of team member that will best fit your organization. In this ad, describe the character and attitude of the person. The important thing to keep in mind is to hire for attitude and train for skills. When I meet with a candidate, I follow a list of questions I’ve created that gives me visibility into their personality and their way of thinking. I talk to a lot of CPAs and I find that they haven’t prepared adequately to do the interview so they are flying by the seats of their pants during the interview. You want to be so prepared that you are not fumbling for questions; instead you are engaging the prospective candidate to understand their attitude.

2) Hire slow, fire fast. I have been guilty of breaking this rule more times than I am proud to admit but its good advice that I came across a number of years back. Most business owners fire slow.

They think it will get better. I read one study that said that the average firings take somewhere between 6 and 18 months after the business owner knew the employee was performing poorly, consistently non-compliant and negatively affecting others. A lot of harm is done in this period of time due to not firing the poor performing employee faster.

Along the lines of my advice to CPA practitioners to fire fast, I encourage them to hire slow. Have a second person interview the candidate. Don’t rush the hiring process. Check references by asking probing questions and LISTEN. CPAs can be poor listeners.

3) The other one is; don’t expect what you don’t inspect. Have weekly meetings to go over work duties and assignments. I have systematized my office where I now work three days per week. On one of the days that I come in, I spend half a day for staff meetings and go over administrative matters. I meet with my CPA and my Senior Manager to make sure the work is being produced within the pre-established standards.

Also, and this is important, keep your eyes and ears open when are there. Listen to the way your staff members talk to clients. I also like “mystery shopping.” What that means is you have someone call the office pretending to be a prospective client. Hear how this person is being handled. I can guarantee you that you will not be happy with the way they are handled. It’s your job to identify what needs to improve and to provide the necessary training.

4) Celebrate small victories. Reward staff for being on your team and helping you to take your practice to the next level. When the staff goes the extra mile, I will publicly praise them….sometimes send them something to their home like a fruit basket. We celebrate birthdays, and we have two parties every year, one after tax season and one during the holiday time. You want to have fun and I see that running a successful CPA practice is a team effort to give the client the “ultimate” experience.

Follow the strategies I have identified in the article and you will see your CPA practice attaining new levels.

Adsense Strategies — Earn Nothing with Adsense unless you have Adsense Strategies

By David Lobel

Adsense strategies are the beginning and the end of making money with Adsense.

Think about this for a minute. You sign up for Adsense. You place some ads on your site, and then you wait. Now the theory is, of course, that as long as you have visitors to your website, you will have click-thrus and make money, right? This is what I call:

Adsense Strategy Fallacy Number 1:

Adsense is not an automatic money machine. Adsense ads are like any other ads — you have to have an Adsense strategy if you want people to look at your ad. Think of it this way — do you look at box ads in newspapers or magazines, or do you gloss over them? I skip over them. Google Adsense ads are no different. That’s why, in order to stop visitors doing this, you need Adsense strategies.

How do you do this? First, make sure that your Adsense ad doesn’t look like an ad. Make sure the background is set to the same as the site’s background. Do not include borders. Make sure the text is the same colour as the site text around it, and make sure the links that you want people to click on are the normal blue color we all expect all links to be. This is an important, important Adsense strategy.

Even if you do this, there is no guarantee of making a lot of money with your Adsense strategies, unless you remember the following — people go to websites for information.

Adsense Strategy Fallacy Number 2:

Adsense strategies that forget that the Internet is the Information Superhighway will never succeed. If your website is not interesting, if people cannot find out a lot about the thing they are interested in, and if the Adsense ads do not reflect the content, then people will not click thru, and you are left with a sub-par moneymaking Adsense strategy.

Make sure your site has content; relevant, interesting, original content. Why? Firstly, because this is the only way of having a chance of being noticed by the search engines. Second, because this increases the chance that other site-owners will link to you — more inbound links equal more traffic, which should help click-thru rates. And finally, content means having keyword density for the keywords your site focuses on (the topics it deals with), increasing the chance that your Adsense ads reflect this. Remember, you are supposed to be offering something of value — if the promise of something valuable being offered to the readers is not reflected in the Adsense ads themselves, they will not click on them.

There are many other strategies that will help you get more traffic, more quality, targeted visitors, and more clickthru on your Adsense ads, as long as you have some good Adsense strategies.

Remember, when it comes to Adsense, the Adsense ads themselves are useless — what you need for success are some sound Adsense strategies.

For more information about Adsense strategies go to:

ADSENSE STRATEGIES: CLICK HERE FOR ADSENSE STRATEGIES

Click on this link above to find more, free, and tremendously helpful ADSENSE STRATEGIES.