A Client Specialty with Bite

From the July 2010 Issue

Many professional accounting practices have developed client specialties, especially in common vertical markets such as construction, agriculture, hospitality, retail, technology and medical practices. Becoming familiar and an expert with the specific accounting and regulatory needs of a particular type of client adds great value to the practice, because it offers a powerful edge when seeking out new business clients. The specialized practitioner can speak the language the client speaks, and may even know more about what the potential client needs, in terms of financial and business management tools, than the business owner does.

With the diversity of business and industry in the United States, even during economic slowdowns, there is abundant opportunity for this art of specialization. For Indiana CPA Adam Decker, the specialty he helped his practice evolve is serving dental professionals.

“Accountants often have service-based businesses as clients, but there are a lot of differences between the businesses in that category,” Adam is a business consulting partner with the Indianapolis accounting and business consultancy of Veros Partners (www.verospartners.com), having joined the firm in 2001 after working for a Big 4 firm in Indianapolis. He also holds the Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) credential.

His mission was to identify the ideal type of business client — one with good stability even in bad economies, and with management that was actively engaged — but being a professional in another field, was willing to partner with a financial professional. “I looked at the clients we had, and dental practices fit that mold perfectly.”

Professional Snapshot   Adam Decker, CPA, CVA Business Consulting Partner Veros Partners, Inc. www.VerosPartners.com Indianapolis, Indiana Productivity Score: 377   Social Media: LinkedIn: /ARDecker

Building expertise and respect in a vertical market such as dental practices isn’t as simple as deciding to do so, of course. After seeing the potential for the market, Adam says he spent a lot of time looking at the specifics of dental practice management, particularly the financial needs, such as cash flow issues, capital reinvestment and eventual practice transition, for which his expertise in business valuation is certainly valuable.
Armed with that knowledge, he found that dental practitioners were eager to pay for such expertise (including implementation of business management technologies) and that the relationship would be long-lasting. Adding to the potential, Adam also found that, since dental professionals are fairly reliant upon various technologies themselves, most didn’t see the geographic location of the accounting firm as important. This meant that Adam and his firm had tapped into a potentially national vertical.

While the dental practice specialty is significant to Vero Partners’ business model and plans for growth, Adam and his fellow partners recognize that a practice also can’t overspecialize. The firm has more than 200 business clients, of which only about a dozen are dental practices, with most of the rest being service-based businesses. However, with the firm’s location in Indianapolis, the racing business sector is emerging as a new practice specialty, led by one of Veros’ other partners, Gene Cottingham, CPA. Gene was previously the CFO of the Champ Car World Series, previously called the CART series. Adam notes that it should be a strong market, since there are more than 1,600 auto racing-related businesses in the state.
In addition to the approximately 200 business clients, the practice provides extensive wealth management and other financial services to more than 500 individuals. Other core offerings of the practice include technology implementation, strategic business consulting, and acquisition and sales planning.