Today, or this week, define the customer-time focus of your practice, and that of your clients.
What I mean is…
You can be focused on one of three things, the…
PAST PRESENT or FUTURE
Where are your clients focused?
Are your business clients focused on their past, present or future?
Chances are they are looking at the coming year and working out how to make it a bigger and better success than last year was.
If your firm is consumed by tax returns you’re past focused. You’re not talking about your clients’ future. Your priorities are not congruent with your clients’ priorities. There’s a mismatch which is hindering the relationship with your business clients rather than helping build it.
Yes tax returns have to be done on time.
And yes you should ALSO be having conversations with your clients about their plans for this coming year (and how you might be able to help and support them).
What a great opportunity for high quality, meaningful conversations with your clients this month!
If you are uncomfortable or don’t know where to start with embarking on these conversations go here discover the six most important questions (and what order to ask them in ) you should ask to get the conversation flowing.
It would be a crime…
It would be a crime wouldn’t it if you let this relationship opportunity go begging because you were so consumed by tax returns?
Next steps…
1. If you have your tax-return workload under control, get your client-facing team together for 10 minutes. Then plan as many client calls this month as you can manage. Make the calls and have future-facing conversations with your clients about their business and about their plans for this coming year.
2. If you are totally consumed by tax returns (dealing in historical data) then having a debrief to plan the ways-and-means to radically change (improve) your tax-return workflow makes sense. You can then be more future-focused for next year.
Warning…
If one of your competitors has tax-returns under control and is calling your clients (their prospects) about your clients’ future plans then your GRF and partner profits for the coming year are threatened. You know it’s the quality of the relationship you have with your clients which determines their loyalty to your firm this year (and every year).
You have an immense opportunity to build better relationships by having future-focused conversations with them.
So go on then… call them!