When consulting with partners of accountancy firms around the UK we often refer to a three-circle venn diagram describing the work of accountancy.
The label of each circle is T, W, R
T = Technical work.
The accountancy work, audit work, payroll work and so forth. You and your firm do this to a standard and if you were to score it out of 10 – where 10 is perfect you’d give yourself a score of…?
Most firms score themselves an 8 or 9 on this one.
How would you score your firm?
W = Workflow work.
The speed with which your technical work gets done. The firm doing this the best, from our consulting clients, turns sets of accountants around in less than 20 days from receipt of records (this is the average turn around time for all clients).
They also present draft accountants within 13 weeks of client year end dates for all clients.
They’d score a 9 or 10.
How would you score…?
Last but not least…
R = Relationship work.
The work you and your team do to build stronger relationships with your clients. You know – meetings and calls and valuable emails, etc.
The firm who does this the best has created a 24-point contact programme for their platinum clients – this includes several meetings, a series of proactive calls and lots of other valuable stuff too.
How would you score your accountancy firm for relationship work…?
Mostly accountancy firms score themselves lower and lower as we move from ‘T’ to ‘W’ to ‘R’.
The most important question…
What matters most to your business owner clients? The technical work or the speed of the work or the relationship work you do?
Answer…
Chances are your high-grade business owner clients value most the trusted adviser relationship work you do.
Yet your firm has the technical work as the focus of the firm doen’t it?
Yes the technical work has to be right and presented to a high standard for you to be credible as an accountant.
But what can you and your colleagues do to be better, stronger, higher scoring at the relationship work?
What does your contact plan for your platinum clients look like?
What is it your clients value the most?
Paul Shrimpling
Author of ‘Bamboo Marketing For Accountants’ – the route map to marketing success for accountants in practice
Creator of ‘BUSINESS BITESIZE’ – cultivating a greater flow of new clients for your accountancy firm through profitable word-of-mouth…
And let’s get LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulshrimpling