Nick & his great story

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The other week I was attended a conference. One of the key note speakers was the famous Australian sportsman Nick Farr-Jones. People living in Australia will know Nick as a sporting legend – he was the captain of the Australian Rugby Team when they won the Rugby World Cup in 1991. Since most of the readership of this blog comes from the USA here is an example to put it in some kind of context. Nick is our equivalent of say your Troy Aikman – the Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer.

Since leaving Rugby almost 20 years ago Nick has, alongside his professional work as a lawyer & dinvestment banker, contributes to many charities both in Australia & beyond. He is an all-round good guy.

Like you, I go along to many workshops, seminars & conference in the areas of business, accounting & technology. The above event I attended to hear Nick speak was different. Nick was speaking at a Men’s Conference at the church that I attend. Although I’ve never heard Nick speak before live, I was impressed by his humility, sincerity & openness. He relayed a story to the audience that day that was both insightful & instructive. In fact, it is one of those stories that you hear every now and then that help you think and see the world in a different way.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to preach at you :) Although I’m a committed Christian and would love the opportunity to discuss such matters with you – this blog is not the right place to do that. The story that Nick shared that day, wasn’t about God but it was about the power & energy that comes from focus.

The story involves a mountain & a man named Edmund. Nick had the privilege to have a question answered by this great man first hand.

Tune into the next post to read the story.

Keep smiling & bye for now,

James E

 

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One great way to win a new client

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A while ago I was in a meeting with the CEO of a well-known architectural firm in Sydney. This particular CEO really knows his stuff – he is on the ball, has a good head for the big picture & detail and when he needs the right advice from external professionals he seeks out only the very best he can afford. He is one of those client-types who take people on face value, but at the same time will check and validate an advisers skill set, experience and reputation within his own network which usually consists of friends, colleagues, other business owners and sometimes clients of the adviser he is wanting to bring on.

Most CEOs, CFOs and business owners are not like the CEO I met above either because they’re time poor or have other reasons for not doing what they need to do.  A lot of them take the default position and think we can’t go wrong if we hire a “Big Four firm” when they need external accounting help. However, that might not be the right fit for the need at hand.

All accountants from both the big end of end and the small end need to make it simple and straightforward for their clients and prospective clients to “check them out” How does one do this? Simple. Invite your prospective client and a current client to a conveniently located cafe, introduce them to each other, buy them each a coffee & cake and then leave. If you are a half decent accountant that has done the right thing by their client(s) the words your client shares with your prospect will be far more valuable and authentic than anything you can possibly say! They will take care of the sale for you :)

Keep well and see you next post.

James E

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Please … give it to me straight

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We have all heard the old saying – “give it to me straight.”

Usually in the movies someone is sitting in a doctors office on a chair on one side of the desk with the doctor sitting on the other side.  The doctor looks worried, is fidgety and is searching for the right words to use. The patient (usually a man) calmly asks the doctor to “give it to me straight.”

The doctor replies, “Marshall … I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?”

Marshall says, “Give me the good news Doc”

Doctor replies, “You have one week to live”

“What? One week to live! That’s the good news? What on earth is the bad news?, Marshall shouts out.

The Doctor sheepishly admits, “The bad news is … I meant to tell you the good news last week”

Funny story, but unfortunately many clients of accountants, are victims of not being told the bad news early enough.

A good friend of mine is a management consultant.  He is highly skilled and experienced and earns a very good living. Being self-employed he has to fulfill the usual compliance requirements for operating a small business. As you know, in Australia one of these requirements is to lodge a quarterly business activity statement (BAS). Along with lodging the documentation there is usually an amount of tax payable.

For some strange reason my friend hadn’t lodged his BAS’s for 12 consecutive quarters. For some strange reason his accountant didn’t remind or raise the issue with my friend not until one day four years later he had a difficult chat with his client. Needless to sy it was not a nice discussion – the outcome of which was a bunch of fines, interest on what was owing, and the balance of the tax payable – a truckload of money and a blemished record with the Tax Office.

A question for you … “Who is at fault … the client or the accountant? Legally its the client. Morally it maybe the accountant.

What do you think?

See you next post.

James E.

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Generating ideas for your clients

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A while ago I was having lunch with a client of mine who had recently joined a 2nd-tier accounting firm having left one of the Big 4 for greener pastures. During the lunch my client told me about an exercise his old firm would perform on behalf of clients. It blew my socks off!

From time to time this Big 4 firm would hold a sandwich lunch for all their staff & partners in each of their offices around the country in a given week. The Brisbane office would hold their lunch on Monday, Melbourne on Tuesday, Sydney on Wednesday and so on.

The purpose of the lunch was to get as many people together – partners, directors, managers, graduates, support staff and others sitting around a table to talk and think about a particular problem or two and how they would solve it. Each table had a facilitator to help guide the conversation. The problems were real world issues that clients of the firm were facing. The purpose of the lunches is give the clients ideas they can use to solve their current business challenges.

The Big 4 firm would make an offer to their clients or even a prospect they are trying to win along the lines of, “How would you like a thousand of our staff who are amongst the best and the brightest in the market work on your problem(s)? By the way … there is no charge. It is our way of adding value to you and showing that we are here to help.”

What business or organisation would say no to such a fantastic offer? Having a thousand men and women of varying experience working on ways to solve the problems you have in your operations, marketing, recruitment and strategy is an incredibly powerful and compelling offer. The cost to the Big 4 firm  to facilitate the “ideas week” of staff lunches? Well it was simply the price of providing sandwiches and orange juice to their staff which of course would be a few thousand dollars. But think of the tremendous impact such an exercise can have on the clients and prospective clients of the firm.

Now … I know what you’re thinking. That is fine for a Big 4 firm – they have truckloads of resources and big budgets to do such things. However, since the lunch I’ve been thinking about ways in which smaller accounting firms can provide similar value for their clients irrespective of their size.

Tune into the next post to find our how!

All my best,

James E

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I don’t know what I don’t know

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A while ago received a message via Facebook from the son of a friend of mine who had seen me driving back home and noticed that one of the brake lights were “out” on my car. What a nice young man!

So being the responsible & mature husband, father and professional (yes you guessed right – my wife doesn’t read my blogs :) ) I called my local mechanic (I’ve known Mike for years) first thing this morning and asked if he could replace the broken brake light bulb sometime today. Being the trooper that he is Mike told me to bring the car down any time that suited me and he would do it right away. What wonderful customer service!

I dropped off the car at Mike’s workshop and told him I’d be back in a couple of hours – he offered to do it there and then but I didn’t think that was fair. A couple of hours later I walked into his office and paid the bill and asked him how business was going. Mike has been in business for more than 20 years and made a most telling statement to me about his accountant in reply to a something I had learned the other day about how the Australian Tax Office treats business credit card purchases which he found useful & interesting.

This is what Mike said:

I really hate that. Why did I have to learn from a customer about how the ATO treats those things and not be told by my own accountant? You know what he’ll say if I raise it with him? Mike – you didn’t ask me about it. How can I ask him about it? I don’t know what I don’t know!

What a most intriguing statement – “I don’t know what I don’t know”

Is it fair for accountants to read the mind of their clients and tell them everything about everything? I’m not sure about this.

There are so many areas in which accountants in Australia have to keep up to date with. They include areas as diverse as:

  • Tax and superannuation
  • Small business concessions
  • ATO rulings
  • CGT
  • FBT
  • GST
  • Payroll tax
  • Stamp duty

The list goes on and on.

From the clients point of view does he/she choose an accountant who is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants or what about CPA Australia or perhaps the Institute of Public Accountants? A lot of questions.

See you next post,

James

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Increase your fees by not selling!

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Last week I was reading a great article on the Forbes website written by Mike Myatt. It doesn’t speak specifically about professional services but it presents a strong case for not selling when wanting to build your business revenue. Confused? Read on … The full article can be found at http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/05/01/to-increase-revenue-stop-selling/

Creating or expanding business relationships is not about selling – it’s about establishing trust, rapport, and value creation without selling. Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk to someone who wants to manage my account, develop my business, or engineer my sale. I want to communicate with someone who desires to fulfill my needs or solve my problems. Any organization that still has “sales” titles on their org charts and business cards is living in another time and place, while attempting to do business in a world that’s already passed them by.

Engage me, communicate with me, add value to my business, solve my problems, create opportunity for me, educate me, inform me, but don’t try and sell me – it won’t work. An attempt to sell me insults my intelligence and wastes my time. Think about it; do you like to be sold? News flash – nobody does. Now ask yourself this question, do you like to be helped? Most reasonable people do. The difference between the two positions while subtle, is very meaningful.

The traditional practice of sales as a business discipline has become at best ineffective, and in many cases flat out obsolete. You see, good business practices are not static. Stale methodologies and disciplines simply die a slow and very painful death, and it is my contention the overwhelming majority of sales processes I see in today’s marketplace are The problem with many sales organizations is they still operate with the same principles and techniques they were using in the 60′s, 70’s and 80’s. While the technology supporting sales process have clearly evolved, the traditional sales strategies proffered by sales gurus 20 or 30 years ago have not kept pace with market needs. They are not nearly as effective as they once were, and as I’ve alluded to, in most cases they are obsolete.

Trust me when I tell you that your existing and potential clients have heard it all before. They can see the worn-out, old school closes coming a mile away. They can sniff antiquated selling strategies, and will immediately tune out on presentations not deemed relevant. If your sales force is still FAB-selling, spin-selling, soft-selling or using any number of outdated, one size fits all selling methodologies, your sales are suffering whether you realize it or not. If you want to create revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and drive brand equity, stop selling and start adding value.

Lest you think I’ve lost my mind, I want to be clear that I’m not advocating taking your eye off the revenue creation ball. Rather what I’m recommending will help you generate more revenue, with greater velocity by simply doing the right thing in putting your customer’s needs first.

I hear a lot of noise about the tough economy, and revenue being down for many companies. I hear complaint upon complaint that companies just don’t have money to spend, and that nobody is buying. If you’re experiencing this type of reaction from your customer, it’s not because they don’t have money to spend, it’s because you’re selling and not adding value. It’s because you’re talking and not listening. It’s because you don’t get it…

It’s not about you, your company, your products or your services. It’s about meeting customer needs and adding value. When you start paying more attention to your customer needs than your revenue needs, you’ll find you no longer have a revenue problem to complain about.

Not much to add here folks!

What do you think?

All my best,

James

 

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One way you can grow your firm …

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The Accounting profession, is no different from other industries when it comes to rationalisation. In Australia and beyond there has been a flurry of accounting firms leaving networks & joining others, firms buying/merging with other firms and groups of people leaving larger firms to set up their own shops. Mergers & acquisitions definitely appear to be the flavour of the month.

A little while ago I found a great article on inc.com written by Karl Stark & Bill Stewart. see http://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/when-strategic-acquisition-makes-sense.html.

Although it doesn’t specifically address activity in the accounting sector its core message is pertinent for all accounting firms wanting to expand via merger and/or acquisition.

Our business is probably similar to your business, in that our primary source of growth lies in the people we hire. We need to find quality people, build a quality team, and create a culture for them to succeed. If they succeed, then we succeed.

We have high standards for our team, in terms of skill set and attitude. Over the past year, however, we’ve found that we are finding fewer people who meet our standards. It’s been tougher to find highly-skilled, strategically-minded people, and when we do find someone, it’s harder to convince them to make a career move.

This leads us to consider an acquisition of a small firm. Although we don’t need more equipment, new technologies, or additional locations–all legitimate reasons to buy a company–we do need to grow the size and quality of our team. And we may be crazy enough to think that buying another strategic advisory firm is the best way to achieve that goal.

So we’ve found ourselves faced with the same due diligence we would advise our clients and portfolio companies to pursue when considering an acquisition. Specifically, buying another company makes sense if:

1) It results in the acquisition of a strategic asset or capability that is too costly or too difficult to build internally

2) It will enhance value growth beyond what the core business is able to deliver on its own

3) It can be acquired at a fair price

In our case, an acquisition would not necessarily be a slam-dunk according to those criteria, but it would have other attractive characteristics:

We would acquire a quality team of individuals at all levels (which we need) who are already battle-tested
These individuals would bring with them a new set of relationships, which would give us the opportunity to bring our capabilities to more clients and investors
They would also bring new capabilities and new ways of thinking, which could help our business innovate and grow

However, we also understand the potentially significant downsides:

Some, or even all, of the key talent might decide to leave after the acquisition
We would likely pay a premium over the cost of hiring individuals directly
We may find (after the fact) that some of the new team members don’t fit well into our culture
The deal process may be a significant distraction to the continued growth of our business

Given these pros and cons, not any acquisition will do. We need to find the perfect fit, and we will need to invest significant time and effort to do so. In fact, there is a distinct possibility that we won’t find a single organization that meets our needs.

But we’ll keep looking, because the prospect of finding a company that would have a dramatic impact on our growth going forward is too important to ignore.

See you next post,

James E

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Are all accounting firms created equal? (3 of 3)

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We now move on to the 3rd and final installment of what makes a great accounting firm. Of course there are many, many factors which contribute to the greatness of an accounting firm and the people within. The 3 I’ve chosen simply appeal to me – that’s all.

3. Going the extra mile.

I’ve heard many stories throughout the years of business clients telling me about outstanding experiences with advisors. In the case of accountants, the common thread of these experiences seems to be the tendency of the accountant to more often than not leave something on the table. This means that the accountant always does that little bit extra and goes the additional mile when providing a service. It might be some extra service you don’t charge for or some market news you heard that your client may not be aware of.

A good example of that little bit extra is a partner friend of mine traveling to the store opening of one his clients at his own expense. He wasn’t invited or expected to be there – he just turned up. The client saw him in the crowd and just smiled. My friend had traveled from Brisbane to Melbourne to go and show his support for the thirty minute launch. A big deal? Perhaps not – but it meant a lot to my friend’s client.

Incidentally, it might interest you to know that this particular client is a member of the Australian BRW 200 rich list (he is worth about $400m +) and has used my friend’s services for many years. This client has been so impressed by my friends attitude that he has recently asked my friend (and his staff) to personally mentor and coach his three children (aged in their twenties) in the ways of business, finance and personal wealth management. Not a bad gig.

Simple rule: Leave something on the table = the table will get bigger!

See you next post.

James E

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