Is your client advisory services (CAS) practice your firm's best-kept secret? It shouldn't be. Whether you describe your CAS offerings as outsourced accounting services, CFO services or finance as a service, this practice area is one of the most powerful opportunities to deepen client relationships and expand the services you provide. And when done well, they serve as a powerful engine for firm growth.
So why don't more clients and firm professionals embrace CAS offerings? In most cases, the answer is simple: They just don't understand CAS. They don't know how it works, what it can deliver, how it aligns with (and differs from) other services your firm offers, or what it requires from them. As a result, they're unlikely to seek out CAS solutions — at least not until they understand them better.
The most successful CAS practices know that effective marketing starts from within. They align their strategies, their technology, and their internal teams around a shared goal: making sure the right conversations happen with the right clients at the right time. These five principles will help you do exactly that.
Cultivate internal "influencers"
In a marketing context, it can be easy to overlook one of the most effective channels for your marketing message: direct conversations between your staff and clients, whether in person or over video. One good CAS conversation with the right client at the right time can be worth more than hundreds of digital ad impressions. But too often, these conversations aren't happening, because people working in other parts of the firm don't have a good grasp on what CAS is or how to sell it.
Think of the professionals most likely to surface CAS opportunities: tax practitioners who see clients' disorganized financials every season, audit teams who observe operational gaps, and client-facing staff who hear about staffing changes or growth plans before anyone else. These are your internal influencers.
"If you can get a handful of partners to understand CAS and buy in, the message starts spreading," says Terri Mayfield, Director at Forvis Mazars LLP in Springfield, MO. "From there, you get a few quick wins, people start talking about it more, and their eyes are opened."
This type of internal influencer education can happen formally and informally. At Forvis Mazars, the firm hosts a regular call open to the entire firm. The meetings typically include special breakout sessions focused on CAS — what the CAS practice does, how it engages with other service lines, and more.
"At minimum, our professionals learn what to listen for in client conversations," says Mayfield. "Even if they're not ready to direct the CAS conversation with clients on their own, they know somebody in the firm who can and will reach out to us."
Go deep on the right industries
"In the early days of our CAS practice, we spread ourselves too thin," says Eleanor Litwack, partner, Outsourced Accounting & Advisory Services at Washington, DC-based GRF. "We took on too many industries, and that meant juggling too many different software solutions."
As a result, any new client engagement could require learning a new system in addition to learning the client's unique industry dynamics. Meanwhile, effective CAS practices rely heavily on a handful of technologies that contribute to an economy of scale: What works for one CAS client should be easily translated to another client. That's much more difficult when the practice is engaging with many different industries across an equally diverse set of solutions.
"Say we work with a clothing company; that's not really in our wheelhouse," says Litwack. "That engagement is frustrating both for us and the client. So we decided to rein it in, focus on the verticals where we have real strength and expertise, and achieve scale that way."
Incentivize your team
Want to ensure that your firm's professionals are actively seeking to initiate client conversations about CAS? Incentivize the behavior you want to see.
"People like bonuses," says Litwack. "At GRF, we have a bonus program to encourage cross-servicing — there's an established percentage non-partners receive for bringing in a new client or selling additional services to an existing client. Partner compensation works differently — for them, it goes toward their overall business development goals."
Depending on your firm's current incentive plan, this may require adjusting compensation models for partners and non-partners.
Identify the triggers
In a client meeting, a partner hears that the client has lost a key member of the accounting team.
During tax season, a client delivers a particularly messy, complicated stack of reporting documents that will require significant rework by the firm.
These are the types of seemingly minor, routine events that should trigger CAS conversations. Your firm's CAS practitioners can probably recognize them immediately. But even the internal influencers you've cultivated — the tax, audit and client-facing professionals who are already sold on CAS — need a practical framework for knowing when to make the handoff. Understanding what CAS is and knowing when to surface it are two different skills.
The solution starts with building awareness across the firm. The answer could be as simple as generating a comprehensive list of "classic" CAS triggers, then sharing and discussing the list with other professionals.
Illustrate your technology in action
CAS practices run on highly advanced, sophisticated technologies that also have the benefit of being highly visual and user-friendly. When clients (and firm professionals) see these tools in action, they can make a convincing case on their own. For example, GRF leaders like to show the Sage Intacct dashboard.
"You can see scorecards, current headcount, fundraising totals — and then you can dig deeper into the underlying data in the dashboard," says Litwack. "I can't tell you how many people sign on with us after seeing that. They love the dashboard. It gives them a real-world picture of how they can succeed, and it's not just about our firm, our tools, and our people — it's about them."
Dive into CPA.com's CAS resources for marketing and much more
Ready to put these insights to work and enhance your CAS marketing efforts? CPA.com and AAM's free CAS Marketing Toolkit can help you put these insights to work and jumpstart your practice's marketing efforts. It's just one of many resources available through our CAS Resource Library. And if you need more help, we're here for you - just reach out to our team.
About the author
Kate is a seasoned accounting professional with over 15 years of experience spanning public accounting and financial technology. She brings together her deep profession expertise and passion for innovation in her role as CPA.com’s Director of CAS Professional Services.
