Learning Labs

Program Description

Transform your firm's HubSpot account from a generic CRM into a powerful, industry-specific automation engine that actually works for accounting firms. This hands-on workshop solves three critical challenges—HubSpot doesn't work for accounting firms out-of-the-box, teams struggle to maximize HubSpot with limited paid licenses, and firms need automated workflows that fit their industry-specific processes—by guiding participants through real-time implementation of customized solutions they can take directly back to their firms.

Learning Outcomes:

• Activate automated workflows linking pipelines to trigger-based communications.
• Efficiently manage contacts and leads with processes designed for limited paid license scenarios.
• Utilize custom record views, objects, and user permissions.
• Leverage AI features to enhance effectiveness.

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Program Description

What if every staff member at your firm thought like a marketer? For most marketers, that’s the dream. But the reality is that business development often feels out of reach for accountants. Kernutt Stokes bridged this gap with the KS Marketing Academy, a firmwide program that equips professionals at every level with the skills, confidence, and accountability to actively engage in marketing and business development.

In just three years, the KS Marketing Academy has evolved into a proven system with classes on networking, LinkedIn, client experience, personal branding, and more, all backed by a scoring matrix that ties activities directly to staff evaluations. The results are compelling: more than 75% of staff engaged in at least one activity in 2025/26, logging over 500 activities that advanced both their careers and the firm’s growth.

This hands-on workshop goes beyond “here’s what we did” to deliver step-by-step guidance you can apply immediately, including:

• How to structure a marketing & BD training program staff will actually use.
• How to integrate AI to streamline content creation and execution.
• How to measure, monitor, and reward participation so efforts stick.

When the session is over, you’ll have a practical roadmap for turning marketing and sales into a shared responsibility and a measurable growth driver across your firm. Class participants will also receive copies of three full class presentations from the 2025 KS Marketing Academy classes.

Target audience: Intermediate: Hands-on and Practical Application. Beneficial to attendees who do both marketing and business development.

Good for firms of all sizes.

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Program Description

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to use Microsoft Copilot Studio to build AI-powered marketing agents that support content creation, lead generation, campaign planning, and client engagement. Rather than focusing on theory, participants will design, build, test, and improve a working marketing agent to solve a real-world challenge faced by accounting-firm marketers.

Whether you're new to Copilot Studio or already experimenting with AI tools, you'll leave with practical skills, a functioning agent prototype, and a framework for identifying future automation opportunities within your marketing processes.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Identify marketing activities that are good candidates for AI agents and automation.
2. Design and build a functional marketing agent using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
3. Connect knowledge sources, prompts, and workflows to support marketing and business development activities.
4. Test, evaluate, and improve agent performance using real-world marketing scenarios.
5. Develop a plan for implementing AI agents within their firm's marketing operations.

Required

You must have licenses and permissions for the following tools to participate in this course.

1. Microsoft 365 account.
2. Access to Microsoft Copilot Studio.
3. Permission to create agents.
4. Access to a Power Platform environment.
5. Access to Power Automate.
6. Access to OneDrive or SharePoint for uploading documents.

Three Key Takeaways

1. Build a Digital Marketing Team Member: Learn how to create an AI-powered agent that can support content development, campaign planning, lead qualification, and other marketing activities.
2. Turn Knowledge into Action: Discover how to use service pages, buyer personas, industry expertise, and firm resources to create agents that provide relevant, consistent responses.
3. Leave with a Working Prototype: Walk away with a functional marketing agent and a roadmap for applying Copilot Studio to your firm's marketing strategy.

Pre-Workshop

1. Complete the Agent Idea Worksheet.
2. Download the sample documents provided post-registration.
3. Watch this 10-minute Overview to familiarize yourself with the interface. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/fundamentals-what-is-copilot-studio
4. Please confirm you can:

• Log in to Microsoft 365.
• Access Copilot Studio.
• Create a new agent.
• Access Power Automate.
• Upload a document.
• Access a Power Platform environment.

Included Documents

The instructor will provide the following documents prior to the course. Please download them and have them available during the class.

Sample Buyer Persona

• Construction Owner.
• Managing Partner.
• Solo CPA.

Sample Service Page

• Advisory Services.
• CAS Services.
• Tax Planning.

Sample Content Brief: Used for the content assistant activity.
Agent Planning Worksheet: Participants complete during the design phase.

Post Session Resources

1. "25 Marketing Agents for Accounting Firms" idea book.
2. Prompt library.
3. 30-day implementation challenge.
4. ROI calculator worksheet.
5. Agent governance checklist.
6. Marketing workflow templates.
7. Training Video Resources (YouTube and Microsoft)

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Program Description

Account development may be the most critical business development discipline for growth, yet it’s often the discipline that – in true practice – gets relegated to a secondary or lower priority. The absence of visible urgency and the lack of clear objectives, plans, tools often lead firms to exchange nurturing and maintenance for true strategic development. Regrettably, many don’t even recognize that a golden opportunity for growth and differentiation has been lost.

In this session we’ll review how account development fits into the full process of growth, and will provide recommendations and tools to help you to begin to embed disciplined, strategic account development within your firm – a discipline which is essential to both the expansion of existing clients and to the acquisition of new client from among your strategic prospect accounts

What you will gain:

1. A clear path for gaining, building, and evolving client relationships through the process of growth, including how account development fits within the core flow of activities.
2. A simple process you can adopt to begin to embed disciplined strategic account development within your business development and client expansion efforts.
3. A review of four tools that you can incorporate into your strategic account development efforts. Many insights from these tools can also support your other growth efforts.
4. Recommendations for starting the process of building the discipline of strategic account development within your firm. (Note: This process will take some time.)

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Program Description

This hands-on session shows marketing pros how to build branded, reliable, AI-powered helpers (bots) that function as digital coworkers. By the end, participants understand what custom bots can do, how to create them, which traps to avoid, and how to work with IT to roll them out firmwide. The capstone: building four practical bots that support daily marketing tasks.

Objectives:

1. Learn how custom bots, agents, and GPTs support brand consistency, content creation, SEO, and storytelling.
2. Gain practical guidance on tools, inputs, and IT collaboration.
3. Complete two bot-building demonstrations and hands-on steps.

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Program Description

Most marketing and BD professionals at CPA firms are handed a growth goal without a real plan for hitting it. The work ends up reactive: chasing whatever comes up, responding to partner requests, and hoping the pipeline fills itself.

This session gives you a better way. Neil Barrow and John Atkinson will walk through a practical, repeatable framework for building a business development plan that fits a small or mid-sized accounting firm. You will learn how to get clear on your role and your firm's growth priorities, sharpen the way you talk about what your firm does, figure out who you should actually be spending time with, and turn all of it into a plan you can run week after week.

This is built for the people who do the work, not for theory. You will leave with a structure you can put to use right away and the accountability tools to keep it going.

Learning Objectives

After this session, attendees will be able to:

1. Clarify their BD role and focus, including where to spend time across new client acquisition, cross-serving, and brand building.
2. Build messaging that connects with real client problems and makes their firm's differentiators clear.
3. Define an Ideal Client Profile and use it to prioritize targets, referral partners, and the right events and networks.
4. Create a repeatable BD plan that covers setting meetings, running pursuits, following through, and qualifying needs.
5. Use simple accountability tools like a Good Week Scorecard and a meeting rhythm to stay consistent and track what is working.

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