Highlight the heartfelt benefits over the business gains

Richard Brewin • October 26, 2018

Let’s dispel the view that “my clients won’t pay for value added advice”.

As accountants, we get understandably frustrated when we present to our client ways to grow their business, improve their cash flow, increase their profits and so on but find them reluctant to act or pay, even though we know it is clearly good for them.

This leads to an impression of a client base that isn’t interested in paying for this sort of advice. “They just want their accounts and tax doing”.

I’ve yet to meet a business owner-manager who didn’t want a better life or at least to improve some aspect of it. So why the disparity?

To an under-pressure business owner, advice to take steps in their business, however positive, can sound like more cost; more demands on their time; more things to think about; more decisions to make; more challenges to their ability; one more thing to worry about. Logic finds itself up against stiff competition. Easier to say, “Can we look at it again later?” and get back to doing some work.

There needs to be a stronger driver for change.

To many clients, their business is a means to an end. They do what they do with a dream of creating a better life for themselves and their family: a better house, holidays, more time with their family, better things for their partner and children.

Tell a client you can work with them to increase their business profits and you may trigger the negative worries. Tell them you can show them how to get that two-week holiday next year, or the extension for the extra bedroom they’ve talked about and the cost and efforts are put in a much more personal, positive and meaningful light.

Your advice will be the same, but linking actions to personal benefits rather than business improvements can be so much more powerful.

And, of course, it helps differentiate you as a firm.

Will MTD ITSA be the next big gift from the accounting profession

By Richard Brewin • April 2, 2025
Question… Should accountants charge for the additional work and obligations they will have when MTD ITSA finally comes into play next April? Not sure? Let me ask another one… Should business owners and taxpayers be expected to pay for the work that their accountant does for them and for the expertise that they receive? Put down in black and white, the answer seems obvious but there are many in the profession who are losing sleep over this issue.

“Accountants can’t or won’t sell”

By Richard Brewin • February 25, 2025
Accountants selling to their clients is a topic as old as the profession itself. I regularly hear criticism from those looking to monetise the accountants’ relationships with their clients that “accountants can’t sell”. I also come across an attitude within the profession that “accountants shouldn’t sell to their clients…it’s unprofessional…it’s not what my clients expect”.  Let’s tackle the issue.

Progress, what progress?

By Richard Brewin • February 11, 2025
Back in the 60’s and 70’s, when I was a lad, doing the family laundry was a time consuming chore. Mum would disappear into the kitchen and close the door so that the noise around the rest of the house was at least manageable. She would be in there for hours, swapping between washing, rinsing and squeezing out.  Every so often the noise level would resemble a fighter jet taking off on an aircraft carrier as the tumbler element kicked in and then she’d reappear, wooden tongs in hand, to ask for help to reposition the twin tub that had danced across the kitchen floor.