Why can’t you create more leverage for advice?

Lack of leverage for advisory services is a very common challenge for managers and leaders in public practice. No matter what you do, it just seems that it’s very difficult to find the time to engage proactively with business clients.

In working with many accounting firms to develop a business advisory service platform, I’ve seen a great deal of interest in tools and processees to assist with client engagement, but the same problem keeps rising to the surface –  challenges in actually getting out to talk with clients to build the type of relationship required to move from a compliance to advisory focus.

What are the practical steps that firms of all sizes need to take to overcome these challenges?

1. Rather than starting with the tools you like, start by talking with clients about their business needs. Engage in open conversations to better understand where clients want to go and what’s preventing them from getting there. Ask them what support they need. Don’t think about tools, think about needs and solutions. A prescriptive ‘dashboard only’ approach, whilst a helpful diagnostic tool, should not be a substitute for careful investigation of needs and root causes.

2. Develop a specific service offering that can be systemised and leveraged within your firm. Of course, reactive advice to clients based on specific issues is both rewarding and valuable. However, it’s often difficult to leverage. If you really want to build your advisory platform, you must systemise the advisory services you offer, as much as possible. Allocate data processing and reporting roles to staff or outsource them if required. Your objective is to focus on advice!

3. To be serious about developing an advisory platform, at least one person in your firm needs to spend at least two-thirds of their chargeable time on this objective every week. This means delegating as much of the compliance and administrative workload as you can. This is the most common reason why smaller firms simply can’t get traction with advisory services, they’re unwilling to make the tough decisions about allocation of time. No software tool will fix this!

4. Accounting firms simply can’t seem to move beyond the limit of hourly rates to having the confidence to present higher value-priced services and packages. If you need to keep some form of internal tracking of time cost, then just do it. But don’t let this influence your approach to communicating the value of advisory services to your clients. Otherwise, you’ll simply find yourself providing all this additional value and getting no appropriate return on your investment.

5. Changing external perceptions of your role as accountant and advisor can be very difficult, as you’ve no doubt observed with existing clients. You need to work on reframing these perceptions through a clear focus on your firm’s brand and value proposition. Your communication at all levels needs to reflect this new focus. Often this means changes in the behaviour of all team members, not just senior staff,

When considering these challenges, it’s clear why the leaders of accounting firms are struggling to move from a compliance to advisory focus. It’s simply very difficult to re-engineer any business from a compliance to advisory focus and the changes you need to implement go well beyond the decision to subscribe to an advisory tool.

Are you prepared for the challenge? Remember the 5 key steps:

1. Talk with clients about their needs and challenges
2. Systemise and leverage the services you want to provide
3. Ensure at least one person in your firm is dedicated to advice
4. Move away from time cost towards value based pricing for advisory services
5. Reframe the role of accountant-advisor. Communicate this consistently.

You will probably find that you simply can’t do this on your own. You keep getting drawn back to compliance work. An external coach is essential for effective change management.

Contact dale.crosby@hightechsofttouch.com.au to discuss how we can help you develop and implement your change management strategy for advisory services.