You Don’t Just Want A Piece of Your Best Client’s Business.

CHALLENGE:

“There are too many situations where firm reporting lines get in the way of our people in doing what’s best for the clients and our firm. We’re functional. But I wonder: Are we really seeing the bigger picture as true business consultants?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

Drill down together so that we can identify the obstacles that are barriers to our professionals consistently acting as valued advisors to our clients. Determine how to best empower our people, to ensure they bring the appropriate firm resource to address and solve client issues, regardless of office or regional considerations.  We focus on how to create the proper recognition systems to ensure that client satisfaction is job number one.

CHALLENGE:
“I feel like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to fully recognizing and rewarding the individuals in this firm for their contribution. It’s not that we don’t do it. It’s that we may not be fully incentivizing everybody on the team for their efforts and measuring the right things to properly reward success.”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

The most significant barriers to higher performance are internal barriers created by firms which are rooted in revenue managed measurement based on each individual. The good news is that it’s in our own hands to reverse course in the name of greater team recognition and retention.

Since more than one individual is frequently responsible for serving  the client or selling additional work, let’s evaluate the merit of incorporating new incentives for team-oriented behaviors based upon total revenue generated, work generated for others, team measurement metrics, and superior service.

CHALLENGE:

“We can’t know everything. We know that. But how are we supposed to earn more of the client’s business if we only dabble in certain areas?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

It’s not about how many people we have in certain areas like International Tax or Tax Controversy. It’s about how deep their technical expertise is and how quickly we can recognize the opportunities to deploy these team members to help address client issues. Too often the client relationship partner believes that bringing in other firm professionals to address client needs put his/her client relationship at risk. The exact opposite is actually true. Let’s pinpoint these critical moments so that our specialized tax team members can get more deeply ingrained in our client’s business and build greater loyalty before our competition does.

CHALLENGE:

“We say we believe in serving all our clients the same. But let’s get real. I fear we’re losing money and taking on greater risk with some if we don’t get honest with ourselves about profitability and whether our rates need to remain the same.”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

The riskiest clients we often have in CPA firms are the ones that don’t like to pay us for the value we provide. If we don’t take a hard look at the profitability of such clients, we’re going to continue to serve them at the same high level as those who do value our services and pay us appropriately. Instead, let’s do a deep dive into client profitability analysis so we can identify where we’re losing money, if we need to raise rates, which clients we need to shed by referring them to someone else and what payment policies need to be implemented now. That way, we can create additional time to service the best clients we have.

CHALLENGE:

“We tout ourselves as business advisors and not just accountants. But how are we showing that to our clients and potential prospects?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

Client service planning is the key to uncovering two significant issues:

• Knowing the client’s top three business challenges and
• Knowing how to solve those challenges. Let’s work on understanding those in great detail rather than just talking around them. In doing so, we will be in the perfect position to live up to our billing as business advisors.

CHALLENGE:

“It’s not easy to build a culture of superior client service. Not all of our higher-up people want to take the time to truly understand how to distinguish ourselves through superior service. It’s a challenge to ask them to do that.”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

Create a training regimen that’s easy to follow each month.  Provide tips and insights on how to penetrate companies and sell work that the client needs. Let’s teach our rising stars in the firm how to ask appropriate questions that create a more open dialogue and deepen rapport with clients.

CHALLENGE:

“How do we deploy Partners to their best and highest use?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

If anyone in the firm knows how to serve big clients, our best Partners do. So why hold our own people back? Let’s build a strategy that enables our very best people to spend more time serving our best clients and growing the firm through new client acquisition!

CHALLENGE:

“Tax returns have become a commodity. Heck, accountants have commoditized themselves by ignoring the question of value add. What can our firm do to change that in our environment?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

We can start by being as efficient as possible in order to make more money and free up resources to focus on value added activities. That includes exploring outsourcing, co-sourcing and taking hours out of the tax compliance process. If we do that, we’ll create new opportunities to invest in our younger team members and provide them a more challenging overall experience versus doing little more than putting numbers on a sheet of paper.

CHALLENGE:

“What kind of verbiage can we put in our engagement letters so that we don’t take on unlimited exposure and open ourselves up to future lawsuits?”

PSG’S NEXT STEP:

We believe that engagement letters, policy alerts and tax manuals are there to protect all parties – both the firm, its professionals and its clients. Let’s create the policies necessary to manage risk wisely, limit exposure, steer any disputes toward arbitration rather than the courtroom, and create faster cash collections.