Are these to blame for our frustrations?
Two fundamental issues for our profession:
- Clients don’t value our core product, financial accounts.
- Clients don’t pick up on the advisory services that we offer.
The two most common explanations?
- Financial accounts are historical and don’t tell the client much that is useful to them.
- Clients don’t want to pay for additional services as they don’t see the value or can’t afford them.
I think that there is a different take on this that, at best, doesn’t help our cause and possibly is the core reason for the failure to get client buy-in into these services.
Take financial accounts. I see many views expressed within the profession that actually endorse the clients’ perception. If we criticise our own core product, say it has little use or low value, then we shouldn’t be surprised that clients aren’t interested in paying too much for the service.
Financial accounts are criticised for being out of date, not clearly understood, not providing useful information or lessons. Is that the fault of the product or how the accountant is using them?
The need for a set of accounts and a tax return remains the number one reason (rightly or wrongly) why people seek out an accountant. We should be embracing, embellishing and raising up the benefits of the product, not diminishing it further. A set of accounts can and should be so much more than a set of accounts. There are so many tools out there to effectively achieve this but the accountant has to want to make them more valuable by putting more benefit in and raising the value and quality of the service.
The second point is this issue of promoting value added services. I see so many articles about how accountants can raise the services that they provide by adding value and they are all right. Presenting clients with up to date, meaningful, understandable and valuable information that benefits their business is how the modern accountancy should and must run.
But’s here’s my issue.
Okay, digital technology has moved us on but I was hearing the same message about providing clients with value added services back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. People like Chris Frederiksen and Steve Pipe have been rightly banging this drum for decades. So why are they, and others, still having to do it? Why have we not consistently embraced this approach as a profession so that it is now part of the common perception of the accountant’s role?
Either the experts in our profession have got it wrong, and clients really don’t want to improve their businesses, or we’ve failed to deliver as a profession.
I’m sad to say that I firmly believe it’s the latter. There are accountants out there successfully delivering this sort of work to their clients and have been doing so for years. In our firm, this was our style, every day. There is nothing different about the clients, the local market place, or the core products but, the attitude of the accountant is very different and they’ve driven the change.
It’s a change that has been far too slow to be adopted in our profession with far too many making excuses.
Time is running out for them to wake up.
Value your compliance.
Drive your advisory.
