What is your client switch?

I recently posed a question on LinkedIn to see what switches accountants on when it comes to advising and supporting their clients. You’ll see the link to the post below.

In true Simon Sinek fashion, I talk a lot to accountants about the importance of understanding their ‘why’, the reason why they do what they do. Understand your why and you can better build your firm around your core values, goals and drivers.

But your own why isn’t necessarily what switches you on in the context of supporting and advising your clients. It may be, but equally the nature of your client relationships could be as much about the how as the why.

For example, your own personal why may be to create an amazing present and future for your own children, given your own experience as a child. As an accountant, you design your accounting business to fulfil that why. Tax happens to be your thing and therefore, in building your accounting firm you decide that utilising your strengths and interests as a tax advisor is both what you want to do and what you are best at and therefore your best route to achieve your goals driven by your why.

You design and market your firm and build your brand around minimising the  tax liabilities of your clients, attracting clients with similar goals in the process and achieving success as a result.

Why do I raise this?

Because that’s not my dream nor my firm. They are not my strengths and that’s not my target market. It’s not my route to happiness or success….but it may be yours!

My LI question was this:

As an accountant in practice, what, ideally, is your primary aim when it comes to having a positive impact on your clients.

·     Increase their profits

·     Reduce their tax bills

·     Improve their business

·     Ease their compliance

The answer is possibly all four, and, of course, they easily inter-relate,  but I didn’t want to give an easy way out. If push comes to shove, which would be your primary aim?

It has prompted some interesting comments.

There is no wrong answer. Each one of us will have our own right answer, depending on how we intend to deliver our why but that doesn’t make the answers of others wrong.

As accountants in practice we are told too often what we should be doing. Maybe I’m guilty of that practice as well and you are welcome to call me out if that is the case but I think that there are only four things that we should be doing:-

1.   Providing  great services for our clients

2.   Delivering the services efficiently

3.   Charging fairly for those services

4.   Framing them all within our vision, values and goals

What those services, clients and prices look like is surely determined by your own values, goals, drivers, strengths and interests. Create a firm reflective of those and you attract the right clients. Where you focus in terms of increasing their profits, reducing their tax bills, improving their business and easing their compliance, or any combination thereof, is your call and yours alone.

Build your firm your way. Believe in that and the right clients will come. That’s what will underline your focus.



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