Creating niche services can make your firm more effective and more profitable .
practicemanagement
BY MARK H . FOWLER , CPA ( INACTIVE )
Niche Practice
The Basics of Finding , Building Specialties in my July 2023 article for California CPA magazine titled , “ Taking CAS and Conversation to a Whole New Level ,” we talked about the many situations and challenges businesses face as they grow and expand . Many of these challenges require a one-time fix and others can be more recurring — and sometimes — universal for all clients . In many cases , these additional services are unique to client ’ s needs and essential to their well-being . Thus , they and their needs are essential to us — and create opportunities for all .
As we grow and our clients expand , the more recurring and specialized client assistance grows in both importance and being critical to us and clients . As your consulting or client accounting services ( CAS ) grow , many services will become more repetitive in nature and can be more standardized , allowing you to create a niche in certain areas .
Services like business evaluations , bookkeeping , business management and others can become more unique as a single service as opposed to a more global approach — for instance , helping more of your clients grow .
Creating niche services can make your firm more effective and more profitable . Finding the opportunities and how you can help maximize them will be critical for everyone . Many opportunities and challenges may already exist — and be immediate needs for your clients . Some may already be an existing service for some clients and not others .
What Is a Niche Practice ? From a personnel perspective , a niche is “ a place , employer , status or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted .” For the marketing mindset , a niche market is “ a focused , tangible portion of a market .” From a business perspective , a niche is “ a particular specialty in which a firm has generated a large market share .”
What is interesting is that many of these
definitions can and will apply to your niche ( s ). It depends on how you develop and present your niche-like services . For example , you would want to accentuate :
• Value-add services you provide your clients .
• Level of effectiveness of your complementary services .
• Ability to identify and fulfill client needs .
• Marketing strategies to make them crisper and more modern .
• A specialty that you may have in a particular marketplace .
Where Are the Opportunities ? Among the top service niches you ’ ll find in accounting include :
• Information technology
• Human resources
• Business valuations
• Investment services
• Litigation support
• Estates and trusts
Creating niche services can make your firm more effective and more profitable .
Common market niches are nonprofits , real estate , manufacturing , professional services , construction , retail clothing , law firms and medical providers , to name a few .
Other niches common for the profession include :
• Forensic accounting
• Bankruptcy
• Family business
• Benchmarking
• Crisis management
• Strategic planning
• Ethics audits
Benefits of Niche Practices To help you view the niche as a viable benefit for your firm , let ’ s look at some of the major reasons that firms seek to create niches :
• Fulfill client needs more effectively .
• Differentiate the firm in the marketplace .
• Be more competitive .
• Create additional revenue streams to enhance firm viability .
• Increase the firm ’ s overall value to be more attractive to staff , future partners and possibly an outside buyer .
• Create alternative career paths for younger professionals that will help in recruiting and retaining new team members .
• Craft unique career positions for retired / retiring partners to maximize their talent , expertise and networks more effectively .
• Balance workload to help smooth out the peaks and valleys so common to the CPA firm of today .
Developing a Niche There are several essential action items to take to set yourself up for success in the niche process . The first , and probably the most important , is creating more than one niche .
20 CALIFORNIA CPA DECEMBER 2023 www . calcpa . org