Two big perks with professional services: consistent demand (no matter what the economy is doing, people will still catch fevers and want to avoid paying taxes) and relatively low overhead. Little surprise that traditional industries--like manufacturing and retail, which are hard to scale--didn't make the cut. The top of that heap, including medical-equipment makers and wineries, clock 6% pretax margins; jewelry stores, 4.4%.This compares with an impressive 17% margin for CPAs, who sit at the top of the list. The biggest insight from the report is that specialized knowledge pays off the most. As a result, professions like medicine or accounting which require years of study and deliver good value when the customer needs it most, are most likely to do well, irrespective of the current place of the business cycle.
Now, the Forbes analysis dealt with businesses making $10 million or less, which some would argue are not "true" small businesses. Still, how might your organization benefit from this kind of analysis? What kind of expertise or specialized knowledge can you offer to customers, with low overhead or minimal fixed costs, at a key time in their business or financial lives?
