Speaker and Lecturer

Ms. Crosley is a speaker at partner retreats, CPA association meetings, AICPA events, and state society conferences.

According to DFK International Executive Director Jay Hauck, "The managing partners of our association of CPA firms are a demanding audience. Gale fit the bill perfectly - a dynamic speaker who challenged our members to develop strategies for growing their practices and gave them the tools to do it."

Speaking Topics

Who Moved My Market? – Modernizing Growth – New in 2011

Time honored growth approaches have served the profession for decades. But buyer behavior and entire markets are changing at lightening speed, causing disappointing results with traditional approaches. Crosley shares insights on the shifts needed to successfully grow your firm in rapidly changing times. We’ll explore specialization, innovation, value and competitive pricing, social media, team play, and other elements of cutting-edge growth.

Growth Leadership in Turbulent Times – New in 2011

Before the economic downturn, most firms experienced order taking years. Although it’s hard to admit, the most popular growth strategy was reliance on market conditions. Today extreme competitive pricing is encouraging loyal clients to consider a change. Annual revenue shrinkage in most firms has doubled. Competitors’ pricing is often 50% lower. Combine these dynamics with the impact of social media, technology, and changing standards and regulations, and managing partners are challenged like never before. This session explores how to organize your team for growth, and get leaders committed to new approaches in their changing markets.

Finding Your International Market – New in 2011

With the start-stop nature of IFRS adoption, deciding the firm’s international strategy can be complicated and at times frustrating. However, proactive firms are starting to discover non-traditional early markets, especially where they are doing international tax work. These firms stand the best chance of achieving the enviable first-to-market position similar to firms who leveraged SOX 404. Traditional early adopters such as US subsidiaries of foreign parents are only one of several buyer groups. This topic explores how to find early buyer groups, develop first-to-market offerings, discover powerful channels of distribution, and be strategically positioned to become the go-to firm for international services.

At the Crossroads – Efficient and Effective Growth

Today, growth is not necessarily about more, but about being efficient and effective – utilizing scarce resources wisely, and ending up with a preferred client base. Focusing the firm on growing for tomorrow can challenge the leadership. Strategic, cultural and political issues present obstacles to implementing initiatives.  At the Crossroads covers the Practice Growth Model from Crosley’s newest book. It represents a smorgasbord of the best concepts, strategies, tactics and implementation approaches to lead your firm out of a “book of business” model, to one that is positioned to take advantage of opportunities in today’s market.

Hiring a Business Developer and Making it Work

Today more firms are considering hiring a business developer.  Several firms have tried it and few succeeded.  The landscape is littered with the wounded bodies of business development people who took the risk of entering the CPA firm environment, only to end up out the door after it didn’t work out.  In addition, when they leave, the partners often believe they took the risk, spent money, and received little in return.  This topic discusses the reasons for the failures and how to achieve success with hiring business developers.

Integrating the Sales and Marketing Functions

As more firms hire business developers, the roles, responsibilities and seamless interfaces between the sales and marketing functions are critical to the success of each. But all too often, sales and marketing are on different pages and don’t work together. This session covers the responsibilities and handoffs, navigating pitfalls, managing the functions, metrics, priorities and compensation plans.

Innovating for Competitive Advantage

Many of our core offerings in the CPA profession have been described as “commodity” items. When services are mature, competition is intense, and pricing is scrutinized, innovation becomes critical to differentiating and winning business. This topic explores how you and your firm can continue to infuse innovation into mature offerings and turn prospects into lucrative revenue growth.

Taking Your Niche National

In an increasingly competitive environment, CPAs are concluding that niche specialization is the optimal approach to building revenue. However, some of the local “fishing ponds” are not large enough to sustain a sufficient pool of buyers. This offering delves into strategies and tactics to increase your geographical focus, prospect pool and national presence.

New Services – New Markets: Getting Them Successfully Off the Ground

Launching new services challenges most CPA firms.  Identifying early adopters, and following a time tested and proven recipe for driving success, will save you countless wasted dollars and headaches. Learn the secrets of successful niche-builders, and avoid those common mistakes which lead to distraction, de-railing and disappointing results.

Keeping Your Niche Out of the Ditch

Launching service and industry niches and developing existing niches into boutiques, have never been more important to CPAs than in today’s rapidly changing environment. However, the challenges often cause firms to question the viability and profitability of providing new services in niche environments. How do you insure that more mature services and industry niches continue to contribute maximum margin?  How do you get new services and niches off the ground?  This offering delves into the traditional discipline of product management, draws on the applicability to professional services, and centers on the process of bringing new offerings to market, as well as managing your entire portfolio.

Landing the Big Fish

Today more opportunities are surfacing than ever before– from clients considering a move from a Big Four, to clients of firms no longer servicing a market niche. These opportunities are unlike any others because they are often larger, more competitive, and more difficult to win. This session highlights the challenges in landing larger pieces of business, and demonstrates specific concepts and techniques to turn larger opportunities into sources of revenue and growth.

Building Value

CPAs today are facing a constant challenge defending their pricing in a crowded, competitive, commoditized market. At the same time, standards and regulations are increasing and require more time invested in engagements than years past. The result is often frustrating - low realization and profitability, especially in some of our core services. This topic is designed to help participants understand how to identify, build, articulate and defend the value of engagements and relationships to clients and prospects.

From Accountant to Consultant

Why is there more focus than ever on serving our current clients? In the recent past, business conditions were so good we could barely keep up with the demand, let alone focus on clients’ additional needs. But with softened demand, and clients calling us for advice beyond our standard offerings, client service has taken a front and center position. And with this comes new potential for consulting services. What is the difference in delivering accounting versus consulting? How does one become the best trusted advisor? What about the consulting services? How do you scope them? Price them? Deliver them? The differences between accounting and consulting can be significant. This topic explores how to morph beyond accountant into a world-class consultant.

Client Opportunity Planning - Keeping and Developing Clients During Lean Times

One of the best ways to protect and grow revenue during lean times is to stay close to your clients. However, most of what passes for opportunity planning today is backward-glancing activity that focuses strictly on service delivery and fails to identify future opportunities.  This session discusses the Client Opportunity Planning Process, an internal planning process designed to identify opportunities within your largest, strategic and “at risk” clients, in order to protect current business and drive potential revenue.  Patterned after IBM’s successful account planning process, the session discusses the key elements for success in optimizing revenue and client satisfaction across the client base.

Download Speaker Sheet (PDF format, 99Kb)

Recent and Planned Public Speaking Engagements

• November, 2011 – IPA Prime Symposium, Indianapolis, IN
• November, 2011 – CCH Connections: User Conference 2011, San Antonia, TX
• October, 2011 – Upstream Academy Fall Meeting, Chicago, IL
• October, 2011 – Accounting Today’s Growth & Profitability Summit, Las Vegas, NV
• September, 2011 – Winning Clients is Everything, Las Vegas, NV
• September, 2011 – INPACT Americas Montreal Conference, Montreal, Canada
• September, 2011 – JHI Leadership Forum, Atlanta, GA
• September, 2011 – Kreston International World Conference, Budapest, Hungary
• August, 2011 – CPA Associates Workshop – Houston, TX
• January, 2011 – Winning is Everything, Las Vegas, NV
• November, 2010 – CPA Associates Workshop – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• November, 2010 – CCH User’s Conference – Orlando, FL
• October, 2010 – PKF International Fall Symposium – Boston, MA
• October, 2010 – Leading Edge Alliance Global Conference – Prague, Czech Republic
• September, 2010 – CPAmerica Leading Partner’s Retreat – Scottsdale, AZ
• September, 2010 – JHI International Practice Management Exchange – Atlanta, GA
• August, 2010 – CPA Leadership Institute Webinar
• July, 2010 – PKF North America National Partners Conference – Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
• June 2010 – PKF Niche Conference – Chicago, IL
• June 2010 – Association for Accounting Marketing Summit – Washington, D.C.
• June, 2010 – PKF Latin America – Miami, FL
• June, 2010 – CPA Leadership Institute Webinar
• May, 2010 – HLB USA Managing Partners Conference – Atlantis, Bahamas
• May, 2010 – Alabama Society of CPAs – Birmingham, AL
• February, 2010 – NYC Large/Medium Firm Group – NYC, NY
• November, 2009 – PKF North America Managing Partners Meeting – Atlanta, GA
• October, 2009 through February, 2010 – 2020 Canada Webinar Growth Series
• October, 2009 – MSI Global Alliance Annual Conference – Toronto, Canada
• October, 2009 – CCH Users Conference – Washington, DC
• October, 2009 – CPA Leadership Institute – Webinar
• October 2009 – Polaris Managing Partner Meeting – Los Angeles, CA
• September, 2009 – DFK International Managing Partners Meeting – Phoenix, AZ
• August, 2009 – CPA Leadership Institute – Webinar
• August, 2009 – Forum for Women in Accounting – Las Vegas, NV
• July 2009 – Financial Planning Summit – Chicago, IL
• July, 2009 – Morison International Annual Conference – Philadelphia, PA
• June, 2009 – Leading Edge Alliance Managing Partners Meeting – Chicago, IL
• June, 2009 – Association for Accounting Marketing – Austin, TX
• June, 2009 – CPA Leadership Institute – Webinar
• May, 2009 – Indiana Society of CPAs Solutions Summit – Indianapolis, IN
• May, 2009 – AGN Managing Partner Meeting – Denver, CO
• April, 2009 – CPA Leadership Institute – Webinar
• January, 2009 – Management Summit – Las Vegas, NV