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Personality styles have been studied since biblical times. The ancient Greek Hypocrites identified four distinct personalities.

Others have identified many more and have concluded that everyone has several personality styles.

I have learned that you can do a lot with Hypocrites’ four styles: directors, compliants, influencers, and steadies. These styles are similar to a modern system called DISC.

Directors
The directors are usually quick decision makers and will allow you only a small amount of access time.

They require few facts and are very bottom-line and goal-oriented. Directors live life their way. Director personalities are exhibited in a high percentage of CEOs.

Compliant
Compliants are people who measure their decisions by some internal or external set of rules.

The compliant personality is a methodical decision maker and will examine many facts. Engineers, accountants, and doctors have a high percentage of compliant personalities.

Influencers
Influencers exhibit persuasive and outgoing personalities. They enjoy moving other people to their point of view.

Influencers are friendly and powerful communicators. They are fast paced and have a short attention span. Influencer personalities are exhibited in many CEOs and sales managers.

Steadies
The Steady personality is a friendly person who thrives on consensus and being well liked.

Steadies are usually uncomfortable with making rapid decisions. Their primary concern is for the effect of a change on other people in the organization.

Wrapping up
By utilizing this knowledge of different personality types, you will be better able to present yourself in a way that is more likely to be accepted.

One of the saddest events I witness in professional firms is the exodus of good people with experience. Yet this is just the group of people firms want to keep.

The policy of “up or out” – you make partner or you leave – strips firms of great experience.

And it can cheat staffers who are not supported in doing what it takes to make partner. All too often, the staffers leave because they or their firms did not make a regular investment in their future.

Partners who focus junior associates on the technical job at hand and then skimp on training and marketing may profit in the short run, but will lose long-term profitability.

Invest in Yourself
If you are an associate professional or staff member, avoid the easy trap of exclusive focus on your work.

Make this the year that you invest in yourself (even if your firm does not). You will make yourself more valuable to the firm, and enjoy your job more as well.

Recently I asked a group of about 50 professionals if anyone had spend as much as $100 of their own money during the preceding 12 months on education.

Two people raised their hands. Most people spend more on the outside of their heads (hair styles and cuts) than they do on the inside of their heads.

At a recent marketing session, several of the people complained about the time (four hours) to read two paperback books on customer service. These 30-year-olds had begun the process of retirement at an early age.

Developing Your Selling Skills
Here are three key areas where you should invest in your marketing acumen now:

1. Speaking and Writing
All professions are changing from technicians to communicators. Technology is becoming the “technician.” Join Toastmasters International or take a speaking course. When you invest in your communication skills, you are creating a bright future for yourself.

Write at least two articles for publication in the next year. If you do not feel qualified, as someone who is an excellent writer to coach you and proof your material. Consider taking a creative writing course.

2. Invest in Your Clients
Spend 2% to 5% of your time meeting with clients “off the clock.” Find out about your clients’ businesses.

Learn about their problems, competition, and technology. Learn about their families, friends, and other acquaintances.

Others are selling to your clients. Why shouldn’t you? Don’t assume you know what your clients want – ask them.

Make certain you let you clients know you are investing in the relationships so they don’t think you are billing them.

3. Develop Two New Referral Sources
Your clients’ other professionals and bankers are good places to begin developing referral contacts.

If you will focus on developing two new strong referral sources a year until you’ve gained 12, you will never starve for new clients.

Partners who have 12 acquaintances who send them just one referred lead a year are known as rainmakers.

If you start building referral contacts early in your career, it is easy. If you wait until you’ve been in the business for 10 years, building 12 referral sources is hard. Inch by inch, anything is a cinch. Yard by yard, anything is hard.

3  Strategic Advances for Your Owner Group
A retreat is really a preparation to advance vigorously. That’s why most of my clients now use the word advance. Holding an annual strategic advance will help you accomplish three key things:

• Strengthen your firm’s overall strategy.

• Assure that your structure, systems, and staffing are in alignment with your strategy.

• Improve your commitment to action.

With a strategic advance, all of your owners can feel involved in the firm and its management processes, enthusiastic about marketing the firm to clients and others, motivated to achieve their individual objectives, and an important part of a committed them.

The principals of Waugh & Co. have conducted and facilitated advances for over 25 years. Our clients have used them with great success.

Management’s Advance
While some advances are opportunities to “get away from it all,” advances really should be for “getting into it”.

Educational and religious groups have used advances for years. But only recently have advances become popular for professional firms.

Objectives
We want to get away from the daily routine, the phone calls, the meetings, and all other activities that might distract us from the advance’s objectives.

A successful advance will have a major impact on the achievement of company goals. Therefore, it requires the unfettered participation of the attendees.

Leadership by top management in planning and conducting the advance is a must.
Advances can have any or all of several objectives.

A group that hasn’t worked together very long or closely can use the advance to build lines of communication and establish relationships among members.

The advance should almost always be used to motivate the management team and build a spirit of teamwork. Achieving those objectives can be greatly enhanced by following a few simple rules:

• Keep the dress and atmosphere informal.
• Keep the size of the group manageable so everyone can and must participate.
• Arrange seating so participants are comfortable and feel part of the group.
• Eat meals as a group.
• Provide some social time for spontaneous interactions among members.
• Everyone remains at the advance from start to finish.

Wrapping up
An advance offers an exceptional vehicle for educational programs for management. Remember, it’s imperative that you know what your objectives are for the advance, or a substantial time and money investment will go down the drain.

One of the crises many professional firms face today is a scarcity of loyal, talented, and experienced people.

What if, when you were age 24, one of the partners of your firm, whom you respected, invited you for a cup of coffee.

Then after some initial chitchat, the partner said to you, “I’d like to help you succeed in this business.”

Develop Your Staff’s Talents
What if that partner went on to say something like this: “We have several young staffers in our firm, but I’d like to coach you.

We hired you because you are talented and I think you are outstanding. I want to help you succeed here or wherever your career takes you.”

And what if, over time, that partner followed through? He met with you, watched over you, guided you, and helped you make better choices and avoid mistakes.

Many of the best people gravitate to firms that recognize, pay for, and appreciate them. Yet too many firms use a sink-or-swim approach with their young talent and often the firm is the loser in the end.

There is a way to help cure this problem once and for all if it exists in your firm: Develop a formal coaching or mentoring program.

A marketing coaching program can promote a can-do attitude throughout your staff. It can have a dramatic ripple effect throughout your firm.

You can help your staffers build a business network. And, should your protégé leave your employ, you will have a friend for life.

How to Do It
Coaching for success can help both your and your employees develop dramatically better skills. For the most part, you should only coach one or two people at a time.

Take them on sales calls, take them to Rotary Club, and take them home with you for a meal.

Talk to your young associate about what it really takes to succeed. Pour out your wisdom and help them build relationships and grow.

A basic rule for coaching is to be friendly, frank, fair, and firm. With that formula, you can grow an excellent crop of future partners and build your firm for the long term. Coaching need only take an hour or so a week, but it should be consistent.

Want to learn more on how to coach? One of my favorite writers, Linda Richardson, has a book titled Sales Coaching. The book, published by McGraw-Hill, can be found in your local book store.

Would you like to work more deeply and become a mentor? Whereas a coach is more skill focused, a mentor helps a protégé with his entire life: financial, physical, family, and faith. Bobb Biehl’s Christian-based book titled Mentoring (Broadman & Holman Publishers) is an excellent choice for people of all faiths.

2 The Value of Training to Train
Give your staff the training to train. For example, students of our Rainmaker Academy are asked to teach what they learned at the Academy to other people at their offices. No matter what the content area, research shows that teaching enhances learning.

1. People who are expected to teach pay more attention and learn more than students who do not expect to teach.

Preparing to teach will help embed the newly learned information more deeply into the attendees. We highly recommend the material be taught within seven days of learning it.

2. Training gets passed on to managers and others in the firm who have not attended the training session.

Everyone who aspires to leadership in professional firms must develop sales and marketing skills.

Training just one person from a firm impacts only that person, whereas training three to five people is obviously more fruitful.

3. Students subtly develop a mentoring and coaching program in selling skills. One student should train three to five others in the firm.

Training only a few others puts less pressure on the student and requires less logistical planning time.

For ongoing training, teaching the same protégés over time creates strong relationships among the team members.

If the teaching and coaching works well, the firm can expect to double the effects created from the student.

4. Students develop leadership and teaching skills. Good leaders model the activities for less experienced people to adopt.

As students implement training and are held accountable for doing what they say they’ll do, they become model leaders for their firm.

When others are also held accountable, they develop significant credibility within the firm.

5. Skills are delivered in a more cost-effective way. When the participants teach the material they’ve learned to three other people, the per-person training cost to the firm drops considerably.

Summing up
While the return on investment is still very powerful for one person’s training participation, the return on investment becomes overwhelming using the training to train concepts.

In many legal and accounting firms, CE, CLE, or CPE selling is a frequently neglected marketing tool. Continuing education (CE) is viewed as a burden rather than a beneficial sales tool.

Many professionals view their CE requirement with disdain. Some even cram their hours into the last month of the year and try to do as little as possible to maintain their licenses.

I’ve even heard some complain to their clients about their CE requirements.
Every businessperson competing in today’s economy knows that to stay ahead and on top of changes, their professional advisors must continuously upgrade their skills.

The best and the brightest have adopted a lifelong learning attitude. Yet some professionals neglect their training and forego the tremendous marketing advantage it gives us.

Why not make a strong commitment to your training program and then use your efforts to market your practice?

Whenever you plan to attend a training course of any type, consider how you might use the training to your marketing advantage. Here are a few examples.

Learn More Marketing and Selling Skills
In some states, such as California, attorneys can’t take marketing CLE classes. Nevertheless, even there, they can take customer service and ethics classes that deal with marketing issues.

In most states, you can find classes that will improve your skills in this crucial area. You benefit your business, and receive CE credit besides.

Obtain Skills that Will Attract Clients
If your area of concentration is family businesses, why take a course in credit unions just because it is being held in Las Vegas?

Clients of advisory firms are screaming for their professionals to add more value to the relationship by acquiring a deeper understanding of the clients’ businesses.

Don’t be content with just a general understanding of your clients’ businesses, limited by what they tell you. Become a decision influencer by learning how you can help your clients grow and prosper.

Let Your Clients Know about Your Commitment to Training
A while ago, I read a great article in American Way magazine, written by American Airlines’ Chairman.

The article was titled “Where School is Never Out”” and covered American’s commitment to training.

Just reading the article made me feel safer about flying on American Airlines. My clients are now sending a similar letter to their clients.

The letter emphasizes the value of their commitment to CE and how it can help the clients. This can only build their loyalty.

Great advances have occurred in the professional training programs available today. Firms want a bigger payback from their investment in training.

Accountants and attorneys are looking for courses that are satisfying, challenging, and rewarding.

They want practical, exciting ideas for gaining efficiency and increasing their value to clients and prospects.

How to make training in technical areas work for you more generally will be addressed in the next strategy.

Marketing and sales training has some obvious paybacks, starting with more business and the ability to select the kinds of clients you want for your firm.

Motorola and others repeatedly have shown that a dollar invested in training returns 15 to 30 times the investment.

Yet many firms say, “I don’t want to invest in training then have people leave.” But the more relevant question is, “Would you rather not invest in training and have your nontrained people stay?”

How to Make Training Work
Even the finest training will not succeed without three keys. The first key is top management’s support.

Top management must not only agree to the training, but they must also become strong adherents of developing new habits.

To improve marketing and client relations, partners need to tell staff members, “We have been training you technically for years, but to advance further, let’s work together to develop skills and habits that will hone your competitive edge.”

The next important key is follow-up commitment by the firm and staff members to rise to the challenge of developing new habits.

For instance, we have added a self-directed 12-week follow-up program to many of our training courses.

Firms need to hold follow-up marketing meetings, brown bag lunches, or periodic role-playing exercises to build new skills.

Third, commit yourself and your partners to train constantly in areas of client needs. Many professionals design their training classes around a good location or an interesting intellectual subject. These criteria should take a back seat to impact raining.

Wrapping up
The most successful professionals and firms are those that commit to excellence in training.
 

You know the old story about the youngster who asked how to be successful. The successful professional said you need experience.

And how do you get experience? You try and fail. The error of the past is the success of the future.

Encouraging Effort
How can you encourage your partners and professionals to fail more in marketing so they can succeed long-term? Can you create a forgiving or “brainstorming” attitude? In doing so, you will make your firm more dynamic.

A mistake is evidence that someone tried to do something. Nowhere is this truer than in selling accounting and legal services.

As professional firms are becoming more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, great managing partners and CEOs are encouraging experimentation and risk.

Business is too competitive to wait for perfection. In order to succeed in sales, you must risk failure time after time.

All advertising, public relations, and direct mail programs have failure rates (nonresponse) that exceed 95%. But the 1% to 5% success can create excellent leads and pay for all your efforts.

Redefining Failure
Bill Jenkins, CEO of Kennedy & Coe, recently addressed his owner and management group with, “Setbacks are not to be considered failures.

Instead consider breakdowns as breakthroughs, and disappointment as opportunity. This requires guts and self-confidence.

Day after day, as a leader, you must reassure people of the benefits of failure until everyone in our firm learns to embrace setbacks as windows to learning.” I predict Kennedy & Coe will succeed even more by learning from experimentation.

Networking can often seem fruitless. But the most powerful rainmakers have built a Rolodex of powerful people by sorting through the one-in-a-hundred odds at networking events.

Wrapping up
In high-growth companies, failure is prized, not scorned as it is in many firms. In fact, almost all successful entrepreneurs have failed multiple times. This is how they learned how to succeed.

It’s not that you fail, its how you deal with the failure that counts. Do you not try again? Only then do you fail.

If you are undaunted; if you learned from the failure; if you keep trying to obtain that impact client – then your “failures,” mistakes, or experiments will ultimately lead to success.

Has business life for your clients become more complex? How about competitive? Regulated?

Are tax and legal issues more difficult? If your answer to any of these questions is in the affirmative, you believe as I do: “The demand for high-level professional services is growing, not declining.”

This phenomenon puts great pressure on the service professional who sees all the opportunities in the complexity, but does not have the capital to build the solution from the ground up.

Available Resources
A solution to this perplexing issue is to become involved in a strategic alliance with other similar professional service firms.

One such alliance is the Enterprise Network. Enterprise Network is one of the largest alliances of professional service firms in the United States.

Enterprise Network partners share resources and work together to strengthen the business skills of each partner.

What should you look for in strategic partners? The key ingredient I’ve found in successful alliances is that the cultures of each member must be synergistic.

Each member must have a similar business philosophy and a need for each other’s expertise and assistance.

Besides, the most successful firms in an alliance are those who have an inclination toward participation, enthusiasm for the mutual sharing of ideas and services, and a desire for sharing and open cooperation in alliance development.

Sharing the Benefits
Clearly, two or more heads are better than one. Partners always searching for a better answer for their clients tend to be the most successful.

Partners who believe in abundance are more apt to be open and cooperative. They want to share their best practices with the expectation that others will reciprocate.

Everyone wins in this scenario. Professional firms that take the team approach to client service within their own firms only multiply those advantages when they participate in an alliance relationship.

Wrapping up
If you want to serve your clients with better services, consider the benefits of a strategic alliance.

These alliances offer you value, best practices, expertise, education, efficiency, productivity, and improved client relationships.

Growing your firm through a strength-in-numbers approach can be powerful for you and your partners.

An alliance with other service professionals will make the whole worth more than the sum of the parts.

Building a brand can be a powerful force in your practice if your firm truly operates as one firm.

Most firms operate as a collection of practitioners sharing overhead. Operating together as one firm enables you to create synergy when communicating with clients and prospects.

Synergy from One Firm
How can you tell if you are operating as one firm? Ask yourself a few questions:
• The partner compensation system built on the book of business mentally rather than each partner’s total contribution to the firm?

• Does a significant amount of our revenue come from partners introducing other partners’ services to clients?

• Do we have a system in place that will consistently achieve good service from partner to partner and from office to office?

Even beyond the desire to operate as – and present – a one-firm image, every professional firm needs to “reposition” themselves in the minds of the customer.

Using Branding
Branding can be the key to extending your most trusted advisor status to the new service areas you’re offering.

Do your clients think of you first when they need human resource services? Business advice? If you haven’t extended your brand in a way that redefines who you are, I guarantee you the answer is “no”.

Branding is a method to build a larger – and possibly redefined – space in the minds of your customers.

Successful branding connects what clients are passionate about buying with what you are passionate about delivering.

Branding is not just advertising or promotion. Your brand must permeate your entire operation.

In order for your branding campaign to have impact, your marketing messages should express your firm’s culture and values.

Your messages should be clear and your operations should be consistent and congruous with the message.

Wrapping up
Your brand may be an intangible asset, but never doubt that effective branding can deliver bottom-line results.

Successful branding will enable your firm to obtain premium pricing, to receive more opportunities to serve clients and prospects, and to become recognized as a market leader.

Successful leaders have a vision for their business. Whether you are CEO of your firm or a practice leader, you will be more successful when you lead with vision.

The “Vision Thing”
What is a vision? A vision is reality in the future. A vision shows where you want to go and what things will be like when you get there.

Vision is derived from the Latin word videre, which means “to see.” Your vision can be a powerful driving force to keep your team members focused on the growth you want to achieve.

Working on your vision requires you to consider mission: What is it you want to do? Our mission is to transform the lives of professionals.

We truly want professionals to be different after an encounter with us. For your mission to be powerful, it must make a difference. Without a difference, you will be just another vendor of services.

Usually the difference you make with your clients will translate into competitive advantage for your firm. Prospects and clients use you because of the difference you make in their business.

Acting on Your Vision
Once your vision is in focus and linked to an appropriate mission, your strategy must support the achievement of your vision and mission.

Remember, your strategy is more flexible than your vision or your mission. Your realized strategy may be quite different from your intended strategy, because you adapted along the way.

Once you have a clear vision, mission, and strategy, your attention must focus on getting the structure, systems, and staffing in alignment with your goals.

Structure and Systems
For instance, if your vision calls for rapid and consistent growth, you must have structure, systems, and staffing that will support the growth.

To achieve rapid growth, a firm must be able to make decisions quickly. We often encounter firms who have high growth strategies but because their structure is a partnership, the high growth cannot be achieved.

A partnership structure, by its nature, is more deliberative and less concerned about making decisions quickly.

The same can be true with systems. For instance, hourly billing and collection systems deter partner attention from serving the client.

To achieve your vision, you must adopt systems that won’t fight the achievement of your goals.

Wrapping up
A team that is emotionally moved by their vision has the strength to overcome the obstacles of business life.

A clear vision for your firm creates a good picture of your future. Sharing this picture with your associates can be a major motivator to them.
 

Becoming an insider and selling to owners, board members, and top management takes a unique combination of attitude and aptitude.

Attitude
To operate successfully in the boardroom, you need the self-confidence to feel on equal footing with the top officers.

Such an attitude also presumes that you can understand the issues facing the top officers.

It means that you are willing to articulate your solutions in such a way that you can be a change agent in the business relationship.

Top officers exude power. If you are reticent about networking with top officers, you must push yourself to learn the ropes and overcome your fear.

After you have met with a few chiefs (a common reference to CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CAOs, and related titles), you will begin to relax as you realize they are just like you, but different.

As my football coach used to say to get us to overcome our fear of the opposition, “he puts his pants on just like you.”

Aptitude
Time is a precious commodity to top officers in businesses. The further up the food chain you move in a company, the more time sensitive your prospects and clients will be. For this reason, you will also need aptitude in dealing with the chiefs.

People who are unsuccessful selling to top officers waste time, don’t tell the whole story, and communicate poorly.

Top officers and especially CEOs have learned to make decisions with very little information – they want only the key facts.

Their jobs require them to make lots of decisions in a short amount of time. Many of them fear wasting time with someone trying to sell something.

Investing her time wisely will enable a chief to make steady progress toward company objectives.

Before you meet with a top officer you must do your homework and know about the company and its problems. You should have other insiders on your side, if possible.

CEOs are particularly suspicious of a professional who only covers the upside and fails to cover the downside.

In his book, Think and Sell like a CEO, Tony Parinello recommends you use a balanced reward equation to communicate your benefits.

When you say that your service will save $400,000 in taxes, the CEO is thinking, “And how much audit risk or extra compliance costs will I have?”

Be like Abraham Lincoln, who always gave both sides of the case in a debate to appear fair and to disarm potential counterarguments.

Last, communicating with CEOs takes skill. You must learn to cover the “bullet points” succinctly and accurately. As you cover the bullet points, use written materials to handle the details.

Wrapping up
With the right attitude and aptitude, any professional can sell successfully to top managers, board members, and owners.
 

The first time you hold an advance, you can spend all the time on developing a mission and vision.

Once your vision and the process becomes established, you will spend more of your time on how to achieve specific goals.

Prioritize and Organize
With a solid mission in place, an executive team can select the action steps that are most important to the accomplishment of the firm’s vision.

Otherwise, everyone seems to let the latest “rush job” divert attention from the important actions.

Here’s an example: A business had gotten behind on deliveries. Some customers were complaining and the employees were ducking calls because of the many complaints.

One problem was leading to another. Once the timeliness problem was addressed at the advance, the executive team identified the bottlenecks and prioritized the steps to solving the problem. Within 30 days of the advance, systems for logging, preparing, reviewing, and streamlining delivery were revamped. Within 60 days all deliveries were timely. Had the problem not been prioritized, serious customer losses could have occurred.

Energize
There is something intangible that occurs when a team is focused on a common vision and mission.

When the systems and strategies are in place to accomplish the vision, a powerful belief develops.

Focus and belief can energize your clients’ executive teams and your entire staff. The energy that surrounds an on-purpose staff will spark enormous results.

One of our clients has held strategic marketing advances for the past five years. Their 30% compound growth is a direct result of an executive team being on-purpose, being committed to the same goals, agreeing on systems and strategies, and holding each other accountable for results.

Wrapping up
The process of firm planning sometimes doesn’t look as practical as responding to immediate needs.

Nevertheless, when you run a good advance, it helps you clients avoid “fighting fires” and becomes very practical.

The value ladder is a way of looking at the value clients receive from our services. Services at the bottom of the ladder are commodities.

Commodities are bought and sold by the pound, at the lowest possible price. You will have many competitors at the bottom of the ladder. As you begin to move up this imaginary ladder, client’s price resistance will diminish.

The Top of the Ladder
Moving to the top of the ladder, clients view our services that have an impact on their organization with almost no price resistance.

Operating at the top of the value ladder requires you to use leverage in your services delivery.

In order to achieve leverage and climb the value ladder, here are some keys to help you be more successful:

1. Select projects that will have a high degree of success. For instance, last year, in working with a partner group to jump-start the firm’s growth, we had a choice to work with two partners who needed a lot of intense help or two who were leaders.

Since this was a newer client, I chose the two leaders because I knew their early success would encourage others that they too could succeed.

2. Focus on working yourself out of a job. When you focus your services on making your client self-sufficient, you empower their employees to perform the commodity-level work, while you focus at the top of the value ladder.

You must work with your client to overcome the myth that only experts can do the job and you must help the client’s personnel to be more effective with their time.

3. Coach your clients to see the value of your working at the top of the value ladder. Explaining the value ladder concept to your clients will help you communicate the power of this formula.

4. Work personally with senior management and in groups with others. Senior management has the most influence within the organization for advancing your services or project.

Rather than work individually with lower-level personnel, you should structure group meetings and workshops to help them progress.

5. Train others within the organization to do your job when you aren’t present. We work with many marketing directors and coordinators to keep the momentum of our work progressing when we aren’t present.

These directors carry on our work after we are gone, and they are able to multiply the client’s return on their consulting investment.

Wrapping up
Working at the top of the value ladder is a good way to improve your client’s profits and your profits from the services you provide. Moving up the ladder will require you to think and act differently.

One of the best ways for you to become an insider with your clients is for you to help their top management focus on business strategy.

Trends in leadership and management come and go, but the need for an executive team to get away, visualize, strategize, prioritize, organize, and energize is universal.

You can be the catalyst for your best clients when you lead them in a strategic retreat.
Most of our clients have eliminated the term retreat for a more purposeful description like go forward or advance.

The real purpose of an executive getaway is to focus the energy of a business on its mission.

Every business executive team should hold such a meeting at least once a year. Here are some ideas to help you organize a client advance. For practice, you can run an advance for your own firm.

Visualize
Plan some time at the beginning of your meeting to review the vision and mission for you and your business.

Two of our clients spend an entire weekend working on the mission of the individuals on the team as well as the mission of the business.

Managers and employees can operate most productively within an organization that knows where it is going.

Too often, when a firm’s mission ill defined, the needs of key stakeholders are not being met.

When the needs of clients, employees, families, and owners are not all addressed, serious problems undermine the success of your firm.

Only when your mission is defined can you select the appropriate systems and strategies that will lead you to your vision.

Effective business planning is perhaps the single greatest challenge facing the small business owner today.

Whether you call it a “retreat” or a “strategic planning session.” Going away from the business at least once per year to plan for the future is critical to a company’s success.

With the fast-paced environment we operate in today, it is too easy to lose sight of the vision and the goal of balancing the business’ goals with the objectives of the shareholders.

Failure to plan is like starting the Boston Marathon with no idea where the finish line is.

Strategize
During one of our client’s advance, the executive team examined their strategy for developing a technology consulting practice.

The executive team members had a clear vision of the next three years: “to be the dominant financial advisory firm for small (less than $150 million in revenue) manufacturing businesses.”

The firm’s mission is also clear: “to utilize our most-trusted-business-advisor role to help our clients succeed in a challenging world.”

The technology strategy that had been used positioned the firm as a vendor of software.

The executive team decided this strategy did not align with the vision of being an “advisory” firm and that being a vendor of someone’s product threatened the perception of objectivity on which “the most trusted business advisor” role is founded.

A more powerful, technology strategy emerged during the advance that is in alignment with the firm’s vision and mission.

Want to build the most profitable relationship with your client? Try focusing on their profits first.

When you focus on achieving client profitability, you create business relationships that are synergetic, whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its separate parts.

A true partnership creates an equation where one-plus-one equals more than two. So, you have a choice to go it alone or partner with your clients.

Key to Partnering
How can we build the most effective partnerships with client? Here are five keys to building the most effective partnerships with clients:

1. Show your clients that you care about their success, not just the most recent transaction.

Successful partners never miss an opportunity to build the client’s business, to help with the client’s customers, and to solve the client’s problems.

Profit-focused professionals are more than order takers or transaction sellers. They have a completely different focus on the relationship. You will realize that the client’s success will improve your success.

2. Ask more than you tell. Telling can put clients in a defensive posture quickly. Always be respectful of your client by guiding with good questions to ensure that you and the client are communicating before you give advice.

Of course, the client wants your advice, but you will be more effective if you lead with questions.

Implicit in the idea of asking is the concept of listening to what is said, not just hearing.

You want to listen to the words and the meaning. To get the meaning, you must listen with your eyes and your heart, because the meaning is transmitted from the emotion, not the words.

3. Clearly establish roles and goals. In successful partnerships, each partner fulfills his role with reliability.

If it is possible to be misunderstood, you will be. Therefore, you must clarify who will do what by when.

Put everything you can in writing so each party has a good record. And finally, make no promises you can’t keep.

4. Be flexible. You have a standard approach to your practice, with standard system and contracts.

Nevertheless, your partner may want one that is not cookie cutter. One of the keys to an effective partnership is to fashion a relationship that is, of itself, unique.

5. Communicate regularly and thoroughly. Call your client-partner regularly, not just when you need business.

Call and visit on some periodic basis to communicate the nuances of the business partnership.

If you only communicate around the business transaction, you will be relegated to vendor status. If you want to be a partner, communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Wrapping up
When you focus on client profits, you both get the benefit of advisor status, plus you become more indispensable and obtain more repeat business.

Remember, you must abide by state and federal rules and your code of professional conduct regarding independence.

Professionals who are involved in attest services cannot afford the appearance of also being an insider with their clients.

It is mandatory that accountants who are involved in attest work never allow their independence to be compromised.

You must abide by the code of ethics of your profession, as well as state and federal rules regarding independence.

The strongest and most profitable relationships with clients are those in which you are considered an insider.

When your and your clients’ interests are assumed to be the same, you are treated as one of the team rather than an outsider who has to prove himself. As I see it, there are three distinct levels of being an insider:

• Level 1 – The advisor can be an insider, if top management of your clients always checks with you prior to making important decisions.

Your clients trust you and rely on your perspective before deciding to act. Being accepted as an advisor may be an indication that your client would be receptive to level 2 insider status for you.

• Level 2 – The counselor is an insider who generally sits in on all key management meetings and participates from start to finish in the decision-making process.

From time to time, the counselor may take the lead in organizing planning meetings, conducting strategic advances, and negotiating contracts with your client’s customers.

• Level 3 – The Partner Leader is an insider who functions as a part-time chief: CEO, CFO, CIO, CAO, or CMO: Many accountants and attorneys function in such a role, sometimes without title.

Operating as a partner leader, you have the ability to inject forward-thinking strategy into the top management of your clients.
Being a Deep Insider
Many companies cannot afford, nor do they need, a full-time CFO. For example, the price tag on a top-level CFO might be $500,000 per year.

What the companies do need is $100,000 worth of a $500,000 talent. Instead, what many companies settle for is a $50,000 talent for which they pay $100,000.

The same concept is true with the CAO. Attorneys who fill the role of part-time CAO provide the high-level talent at a fraction of the cost.

So how does one become a deep insider? Usually, the client makes the decision after some period of relationship building.

You are more likely to be considered a candidate for this role if you are responsive, reliable, and creative for your client.

You also must have your sights set on something more than just a sale. Author Jim Holden believes that sales effectiveness moves through several stages.

The highest stage is insider status. With insider status you focus on helping the client in their markets as if you were an insider or partner with your client.

A great example is an insider status is the IBM and Federal Express alliance developed for service efficiency.

Federal Express stocks IBM parts in the FedEx warehouses for faster fulfillment. FedEx is focused on the IBM customer’s satisfaction with delivery of critical parts.

Wrapping up
When you begin to focus on your client’s strategic direction and customers, you will make yourself a candidate for deep insider status, perhaps as partner-leader.

If you’ve been looking for ways to encourage staff members to ask for referrals, they might appreciate a few pointers from the clients and professionals they would be approaching.

Information direct from the “horse’s mouth” will always have more impact than what you might tell them.

When you’ve established a solid relationship with another professional firm in your town, you might want to ask them to serve on a panel discussion attended by your staff.

Invite the professionals to tell your staff members how they like to be asked for referrals.

You may even be able to obtain a panelist who is a staff member at another professional firm.

They can provide an ideal role model for your staff. Encourage the panelists to provide specific stories and examples of people who receive their referrals.

Five Keys to Referrals
I recently worked with a panel of attorneys to help CPAs stimulate their referrals. Much of what they said would apply to any professionals.

1. Work from your strengths.
People who are overly cautious will not earn respect. Help your referral source anticipate the future and prevent problems.

As a staff member, your statements about your firm are given more credibility than the partners’. Provide a balanced picture while still plugging your firm’s strengths.

2. Talk results.
Vague statements about quality don’t impress people. Give them clear examples of ways your firm has made a difference for clients.

3. Shoot straight.
Be up front about any problems or limitations of your firm. It builds your credibility.

4. Understand your referral sources’ needs.
Talk to potential referral sources about how to improve their own profits and how to satisfy their goals.

5. Share your professional expertise.
Advise your referral sources on how to use your firm’s services to their benefit. Give away “free samples” when possible.

Asking for Referrals
May professionals and staff, as a group, are timid and fear asking for business. There are ways to ask without being aggressive. When you are meeting professionals or their staff, you must express your personal style.

In general, to build rapport with a referral source, you need to understand their style and approach them in a way that will be comfortable for them.

Wrapping up
Some of your best referrals will come from happy staff. When your staff give you referrals, they have more credibility than when you ask for the business directly. They are seen as relatively objective sources of information.

Once you’ve prioritized your referral contacts, the next step is to make an effort to build the relationships with low-priority contacts and to directly encourage referrals with your most likely prospects.

Refining Your Follow-up System
One accountant specifically budgeted the follow-up for each type of referral source. His “C” sources received his quarterly newsletter.

The accountant sent his “B” sources the quarterly newsletter plus, once a year, a business book with a personal note explaining why the book is of interest. His “A” sources received the newsletter plus a book every quarter.

“Hot” Referral Possibilities
There is a momentum to relationships. When you meet someone who has “A” referral potential, follow up immediately.

For instance, invite the “A” prospect to your office right away. To convince them that he or she will also benefit from such a meeting, you might say, “Our associates are always looking for excellent people to whom we can send our clients. Could u come by for an informal meeting?”

Prioritizing your potential referral sources is the first step to more efficiently reap referrals. What are the objectives of this second meeting?

First, to communicate how your firm is different – and better – than your competitors. And second, perhaps to ask for a referral.

If during this meeting you discover that the person is in reality a “B,” you might say something like this: “We share many clients with professionals just like you, and we hear they like our service.

If you have an opportunity to refer one of your clients, I assure you they will receive the best personal service I can provide.” Upon saying this, wait for a response.

Many times, the response will be, “We send our clients to Smith & Jones.” Respond by saying, “I’m glad you respect them so much. I hope one day to earn your trust and I’m willing to wait for you to be comfortable with me.”

Time Builds Relationships
For “A” prospects, you can afford to take a more subtle approach. Take the time to get to know their practices better, introduce them to all of your associates, and establish mutual trust and rapport.

Make the effort to keep in contact; research shows that they will become more comfortable with you over time.

After the first meeting, here are three possible next steps you can take.
• Invite your new business friend to meet with a client who may be a good match for them.

• Offer to host a “mixer” for all their associates.

• Invite them to an upcoming special event, such as a play, concert, or sports event.

There are other ways to expand the relationship, such as attending a group they already attend or exploring an interest you have in common.

At this juncture, it is vital that you move to enhance the relationship. Do not let the relationship drop now.

Wrapping up
Once you have established relationships with “A” sources, referrals and joint business should come naturally.

Some referral relationships will develop quickly once you’ve made contact with someone who refers to providers in your area regularly.

Other relationships will take years to develop fully. After you’ve make contact with a potential referral source, you need a system to follow up and build the relationship.

One of the first things you want to find out is the extent to which your new contacts actually refer clients to others.

Prioritize Your Efforts
I use an ABC system for rating new referral sources. You can also apply this rating and follow-up system to people you’ve known for a while. They also vary in their potential as referral sources.

The next step depends on whether you’ve classified them as an “A,” “B,” or “C” potential referral source.

A “C” contact is one who says he or she rarely refers clients to other professionals, or one who has a well-established relationship with a competitor of yours. About half the people you meet will be “Cs,” at least initially.

Follow up with these people by putting them on an email or newsletter list, invite them to your seminars, and practice other low-cost ways of staying in touch.

Some will warm up over time, and some will end their relationships with your competitors.

A “B” contact is one who might be able to make one to five referrals to you each year. He may have a relationship with another firm, but you sense potential. Initially, as many as 40% of the people you meet will be “Bs.”

Follow up with this group as with the “Cs,” plus. Contact them twice a year, just to stay in touch, and – if your talks prove fruitful – schedule another face-to-face meeting.

Your Best Contacts
An “A” contact either needs services for his or her own practice or has the opportunity to refer clients to you more than five times a year.

Of course, you probably won’t meet too many of these – probably about 10% percent of all the contacts you make will begin as “A” contacts. But, for these few, you will want to undertake the highest level of follow-up.

Wrapping up
Prioritizing your potential referral sources is the first step to more efficiently reaping referrals.

The most profitable marketing activity in which you can engage is building referrals. And the best way to develop referrals is getting to know all the other professionals – the bankers, bonding agents, insurance brokers, accountants, lawyers, and so on – whom your present clients utilize.

These other professionals have a natural inclination to help their clients’ businesses. And, that includes meeting with you to generate new ideas for the benefit of your mutual client. During the brainstorming, business relationships get built that lead to referrals for you.

Most referrals come from people who are impressed with your work and who trust you to handle their friend well. There are three great ways to stimulate your referral sources to send you business.

Ask for a Referral
Many professionals I’ve met say they don’t want to offend their good clients by “hitting on” them for new work.

The truth is the person is really too timid to ask for the referral. Every person enjoys the feeling of doing something for someone they like. So, don’t deprive your good clients of this pleasure.

Some of your clients may think you don’t have room for another client. Let them know your doors are open for business by asking for a referral.

Several successful firms will write a letter periodically asking for referrals to about a third of their clients annually.

Enhance their Revenue
When you get to know your client’s other service providers well, you can find ways to enhance their revenue.

Send them a referral, include them as a team member on decisions affecting your mutual client, or do business with them.

When you enhance their revenue, you create a due bill of which you will be the beneficiary.

Stay in contact
Asking for a referral may be difficult for a timid professional. And opportunities to enhance others’ revenue may be limited. But anyone can stay in touch.

In many interviews I’ve conducted with people who refer to professionals, they tell me they send most referrals to the professional they think of first.

That means that the person who stays in touch regularly through a newsletter program, a letter campaign, a seminar, personal visits, phone calls, or for any business reason is going to capture a portion of the referral source’s mind. When you capture a share of the mind, you will get a share of their referrals.

Do you have anyone in your circle of relationships, business or professional, who would say great things about you? Perhaps even say them to a potential prospect?

If you do, congratulations – consider them a treasured source, real gems with which to work. If not, why not?

How to Spell Referral
The earliest recorded use of the word referral in the professions was in 1927. It’s been around awhile. Maybe it’s time to rediscover it again.

Here is a simple summary of referral source development basics:
• Relationships. Relationships are the key concept in RSD. The quality and quantity of referrals you get depends on the quality and quantity of the referrals you give!

Referral marketing works because within these relationships, the goal is mutual benefit.

• Engagement. Teaching your referral source how to engage a prospect in a first contact, on your behalf, has the most significant impact on your later success in converting them to clients. Always remember: someone else can “sell” you better than you can see yourself.

• Follow-up. After the source talks with the prospect, more follow-up may be appropriate.

First, from the source, with further verbal or written information (materials you have thoughtfully provided to your source).

Then you meet with the prospect soon thereafter, ideally with an introduction from your source.

• Evaluation. Analyze the activities and results of your RSD all along the way and you’ll be able to tell what to stop, start, and continue doing!

• Recognition. It’s important to recognize your sources – both at the time the referral is made and certainly after a referral has become a client. Keep your referral sources informed.

• Rewards. Establish a consistent reward program that demonstrates your appreciation.

Rewards would include thank you letters or phone calls, or having them visit your firm and meet with your partners.

You may ask them to attend CPE or CLE courses your firm sponsors. You should not, however, pay for referrals.

If you sometimes reward certain actions and sometimes not, your sources may consider you ungrateful or unreliable and, certainly, inconsistent.

• Advising. Provide your sources with valuable advice. Make them confident that you are an important source for them and referees.

• Leadership. RSD requires self-leadership. Stay with your RSD efforts for the long run.

• Service. Continuously seek and find ways to serve your best sources.

Wrapping up
If you have not yet realized the vital role of RSD in the long-term success of your practice, use this formula to set up a system that works for you.
 

You know that referrals are the best way to get new clients. To get the best referrals, you need more than naturally occurring word of mouth. You need to have a program to actively encourage referrals in multiple ways.

You’d think that clients would give you referrals because they like you or your service. Nevertheless, it doesn’t always happen this way.

To have a top practice you must do more than produce good work and wait for referrals to follow.

Some clients are just more likely to give referrals than are others. When you identify someone who is liberal with their referrals, cultivate them.

They will be worth several people who like you just as much but aren’t in the habit of giving referrals.

Ask for Referrals
You need to set up a regular system of asking for referrals. In addition to calling current clients and asking them for referrals, you can call past clients and ask them for the names of people who might need your service. Often they also turn out to be interested in trying you again.

A good time to ask for referrals is when people compliment you. A woman said that her clients sometimes thank her effusively for helping them with their money situations.

She tells them “The best way to thank me is to send your friends who might need the same help.”

Reward Referrals
While you can’t “pay” people for referrals, you can reward them in some ways. One accountant holds an annual dinner for his referral relationships.

After dinner, he takes a few moments to thank everyone for sending referrals. A lawyer I work with always sends a letter of appreciation.

You certainly should thank them and try to send them referrals in turn, so long as the quality of work and reputation is of high caliber.

Or you may be able to do business with them yourself. You can also arrange meetings between clients who might do business with each other.

Wrapping up
You may think of asking for referrals as an admission of weakness – that you want more business.

But if you don’t ask for referrals, why should people assume that you want them? If you’re established in business, you need to be clear that you want more business.

Asking can also show your strength. People understand that you may want to grow your business, or obtain more clients of a certain type.

Attorneys and CPAs are pricy to more information about their clients’ business affairs than any other professionals. You have the powerful potential to add real value to your client relationships.

One key area in which you can add value is in helping your clients visualize their business futures.

You are uniquely qualified to help clients with business strategic planning, personal financial planning, tax planning, technology planning, and many other types of forward-thinking strategies.

Sell Top Value
Most clients will tell you that business planning ranks near the top of the “value ladder.”

Commodity services are on the bottom rung and services with high impact rates are the top of the ladder. In between the bottom and top rungs are various stages of value in services.

Price resistance is highest at the bottom of the ladder, and competition is stiffest. Near the top of the ladder, both competition and price resistance fade away.

Some experts will tell you, “Accounting and law are moving away from compliance services.” I say, “Not true.”

It is true that most compliance services are commodity-like in nature and therefore reside near the bottom of the value ladder.

Nevertheless, if you add only 20% in high-value services into your mix, you can collect premium fees on the commodities. You will also experience a noticeable decrease in fee complaints.

What Premium Services Can You Offer?
For example, strategic planning is a value-added service you can help provide clients. Encourage your larger clients to hold an annual planning advance (what has traditionally been called a “retreat”). Perhaps you could facilitate the advance.

Certainly you should attend and contribute to the dialog. You can help with projections or forecasting.

Many business people are excellent at visualizing their futures, but many are not good at the in-depth thinking and calculating necessary to develop a strong plan.

You can help. When you help clients plan for their business futures and keep track of their pasts, you will become a true full-service professional.

Another service offering is personal financial planning and tax planning. They are value-added services that other businesses have taken away from the accountants and attorneys.

Many of us have been so busy protecting our low-end commodity services that banks, consultants, insurance, companies, and others have become well known for these services.

Summing up
CPAs and attorneys have unique qualifications. Talk with your clients about helping plan their business futures. Many of them will welcome your suggestions and you will increase your position of trust and profits.
 

The summary close is especially useful when you are offering a new service to one of your existing clients. (Sales to existing clients are the most profitable.)

When you approach the end of your presentation, your client is faced with the task of organizing all the pieces of information into one clear and comprehensive picture.

The summary close is excellent to use in this situation, because it is a logical organization of the features and benefits. With the summary close you are partnering in the decision-making process with your client.

Help Them Decide
Although you client may be very impressed with your vast knowledge, he or she may experience some difficulty organizing what you have said.

In essence, the summary close is designed to refocus your prospect’s thinking on a composite picture of those parts of your presentation that clearly fit his or her needs.

Amateur sellers tend to think of the summary close as a quick review of what they like best about the services.

They fail to match the summary close to the buyer’s specific situation, and then wonder why the client didn’t buy.

How to Do It
There are four separate steps to a successful summary close:
1. Introduce the close with a smooth tie-back statement. Say something like, “Tom, I realize we have covered many aspects of the like-kind exchange technique.

Why don’t we take a few moments and summarize the salient points?” With a good transition statement, you have prepared the client for the review.

2. Briefly reconfirm your prospect’s specific needs. You might say it like this: “Tom, you have a very low basis in the real estate you want to sell.

When you sell it outright, you will pay a substantial tax. What we are trying to avoid is paying all that tax right now. This is what you’d like to do, right?”

3. Summarize how the benefits of your features meet the client’s explicit needs. Some professionals use a T-account (summarizing the pluses and minuses for a decision on one sheet) so you and the client will agree on the pros and cons of making the decision.

4. Ask for the business using a direct request. When you have completed the summary, now it is time to close. You might ask something like this, “Our tax expert, Jeremy, is available to work on this next week. Shall I reserve his time for this project?”
Wrapping up
A summary close helps clients understand what you have to offer. And it helps build your profits by making the sale.

If you are like most attorneys, consultants, and accountants, many of your clients utilize only a few of your services.

Too often, a client engages another professional to perform services that you could provide.

Cross-selling is when you sell a new service to an existing client. Cycle selling does this in a more complete and systematic way that can become an automatic way of increasing your business.

In a Weber State University study of why clients switched CPAs, the number one reason given for switching was that the CPA was not proactive in delivering services. You can be proactive in delivering services if you will adopt the cycle selling method.

Let clients know what you offer
You know that selling to existing clients is far easier and more profitable than developing a new client.

To ensure that you are providing all the services possible, take advantage of cycle selling.

For each client, maintain a listing of all your services, perhaps in the front of a permanent file.

Then, over a period of two to five years, present each service to your client. Keep notes of your actual conversations with the client and what resulted from your exchange.

This cycle selling concept is not a one-time only proposition; you should keep updating your list of services, and keep reviewing your capabilities with your clients year after year.

Your bottom-line strategy is to make sure that all your clients are aware of all your service capabilities.

Never Assume Clients Don’t Need Certain Services
And don’t overlook the services that fall into the category of “He (or she) will never need this.”

Instead, say something like this: “Mr. Jones, you may never have a need for the service I want to tell you about, but I would be remiss if you weren’t aware of all of our capabilities.”

You never know when this will create a referral to someone who does need the service.

And, by discussing services that you know won’t be needed, you remove sales pressure.

This builds into the relationship the expectation that you will share what you do with the client.

You can even use such discussions as a forum for soliciting advice about the service, or who would need it.

Your newsletter can also support cycle selling. Over time it can feature different clients benefiting from different services, but your personal presentations will have more impact.

Create a System
Present only two new services at a time. Most people are unable to absorb and retain much information at once.

Depending on many factors, you could present two services every three or six months. Develop a system to make it a natural part of your relationship building with each client and you will build your business along with client satisfaction.

Recently, I was sitting with a client in a “chain” restaurant. Our waitress was well mannered, knowledgeable, and polite.

We enjoyed our salad, a fantastic steak, and a glass of wine. We were all quite satisfied.

At the end of the meal, as our waitress cleared away the empty plates, she asked, “Any room for dessert?” While the option was there, we did not (and could not) take her up on her kind offer. We paid and left.

What was missing, both for us as customers and for her as a service provider?
Yes, dessert was the key element that was missing – not because it was not offered – but because the offer came too late in the dinner.

Since we had not been thinking about dessert or mulling over in our minds the wonderful flavors of a soufflé, it was easy to say no.

The Art of Offering
For professionals, offering additional services to your client is similar to offering dessert. There is an art to success.

Successful restaurants, and professional service firms, offer dessert early in your dining experience.

Some have desserts tantalizingly displayed on a cart that you must walk by as you go to your table.

Capture my imagination and you will capture my willingness to engage you further. By sowing the “seeds of a need” early in the relationship, I am more likely to expand the engagement beyond the initial service needed.

On the other hand, if dessert is not offered, we would all be disappointed. We would think something is missing from our experience.

Your clients feel the same way. Have you ever had a client say, with an edge, “I didn’t know you did that”?

Imagine your disappointment when you later learn the client has done his estate planning with another professional, when he could have done it with you.

Dessert = Extra
But why is dessert so important? Because this is where higher levels of profit for you and the client exist but are rarely tapped.

In any fine restaurant, the chef will tell you that higher profit is made from dessert than the entrée.

It is cheaper to prepare and sells at a premium price. The analogy is equally important in any professional services firm.

Often, in the first year of a new engagement, little (if any) profit is made; however, if dessert (additional value-added service) is offered early in the relationship, the client is already presold and a premium price may be asked.

Summing up
Your clients are looking for “one-stop” shopping. Offering dessert is a way of maximizing profitability, enhancing relationships, and ensuring that your clients are left with a “good taste” in their mouths. Bon appetit!
 

Pricing is one of the four Ps of marketing and is one that few professionals use. Accounting and law firm marketing has improved over the past 20 years in three of the Ps of marketing (place, product, and promotion). But pricing is still being done using cost-accounting techniques.

Limits of Hourly Billing
Most clients hate hourly billing and will be very willing to alter the way they work with you.

Ron Baker’s book The Professional’s Guide to Value Pricing is one of the more intelligent and informative books on the subject.

His is a foundational book, one that comes along at an important time: a time when people are looking for a new direction, when paradigms are shifting.

Some of your clients are quite willing to pay you more than your are receiving from them, but you are failing to maximize your profits.

For instance, there are people who choose to drive luxury cars, when more affordable transportation is available.

These same types of clients would pay you more if you designed a pricing system to capture what they are willing to pay for your results.

Other Fee Approaches
Commissions and contingent fees will become the norm within the next 20 years. But, there are alternatives to commissions and contingent fees.

To obtain higher pricing, you must focus more on providing value that clients want. The profitability to you and your client of various pricing methods will help you focus your attention on achieving both.

Using a fixed-price agreement combined with a change order system is one method we can all use to improve our pricing.

Spelling out what you will and won’t do for your fixed price is the essence of a fixed-price agreement.

Items not covered in the agreement are changes, just as your builder does with your home as it progresses.

Wrapping up
If you bill by the hour, to make more money you have to work longer hours. If you bill by value delivered, you have the chance to make more income, and focus on client satisfaction.

For instance, one firm specializes in “Starker” exchanges of real estate. (People avoid taxes by trading one investment property for another, without having to make the trade themselves.)

Fees for changing a $1,000,000 taxable event into a tax-free transaction are based on the expertise involved, not on the hours.

A key marketing technique used by some top firms is the client business review (CBR). The CBR is used only on the firm’s “top 25” accounts, defined by the total size of the annual fees, referral potential, or other criteria.

The CBR takes a business consulting approach to understand and evaluate the systems of your clients.

The CBR usually requires about 20 hours per client and is done about every two years. Clients whose businesses are rapidly growing or changing may warrant a more frequent CBR.

Building Client Loyalty
If there is a question of loyalty, during the CBR the client will give you an opportunity to cure the problem, long before they tell you competitor.

One attorney said, “But what if I bring up an issue where the client had not been unhappy until I mentioned it.”

It’s better than this issue surface with you than your client bring it up with your competitor! When you hold a CBR, you will thwart most competitive advances on your territory.

Your Return on Investment
There are many additional benefits associated with a CBR. It is a way to train staff to market to clients.

Well-trained staff can perform the CBR on second-tier “top 25” clients with less partner and total time invested.

A CBR will increase the satisfaction level of a client from “satisfied” to “delighted.” And, delighted clients are the ones who provide the best referrals.

The payback on the CBR program is consistently 5:1, whereas that with the new client sales program is about 2:1.

In almost every situation, you will come away with a project on which significant fees can be generated.

The cross-selling opportunities are endless. Additionally, the CBR program is protecting the large percentage of your fees (over 50%) from your key clients. Your new client marketing program starts each year at zero.

Most of the CBRs are performed during your slow periods, so that the real out-of-pocket investment is usually only the cost of lunch.

So on a $20,000 client, a 6% marketing investment (about $2,400 in time) is made and on a $150,000 client, a 1.6% investment is made (done every year).

Summing up
Doing a client business review with your best clients will elevate your level of service so that you can make a contribution to your client’s business and organizational decisions.

When you make an impact in this manner, you will protect your client loyalty and improve your realization rate.

When you can help your clients achieve their strategic and financial goals, you become an indispensable part of their team.

On a plane from Orlando to New York, I sat beside a meeting planner for PricewaterhouseCoopers. She told me a story that bears repeating.

The meting planner had asked the catering department at Disney World to prepare an event for the PwC partners.

Disney’s caterer priced the affair at $50,000. But the meeting planner’s budget was $35,000. Disney dropped its price.

Later during the event, the PwC meeting planner noticed that every item in the original event was included in the program.

She mentioned this, with great appreciation and astonishment, to the Disney caterer. His reply was, “Disney may reduce our price, but we never will reduce our service.”

Clients Who Pay Less
How do you handle clients who cannot pay your first-class price? Many times, I have observed these clients receiving second-class pricing and third-class service.

Often, partners and others resent the discounts afforded some clients. Discounting and resentment often lead to a downward spiral or service and even greater discounts or to unhappy and lost clients.

You would be better off avoiding low-class service to any client. The undertone of resentment by the partner and staff will be transmitted to your client personnel in many ways.

Slower phone call returns, slower reporting, lack of a management letter, and yearly staff turnover occur when you resent your lower fees.

How to Serve Budget Clients
A better approach would be to provide the same excellent service to your budget paying clients as you do to your first-class ones.

But, how can this be possible? “Everyone cannot be treated like my number one client,” you may say.

The way to make this work is to create trade-offs with your discounted clients. For example, determine if the work can be performed during a period of your year when a premium is not charged.

Determine if the work can be staffed and managed by a lower billing rate individual. Determine if the work can be a joint venture with another firm, so you can spread the discount.

Commit to first-class service for all your clients: meeting your promised deadlines, promptly returning phone calls, making unsolicited visits and phone calls, maintaining continuity of staff, and providing management recommendations to your discounted clients.

If you cannot make money on a client, it may be better to not serve the client than to give them second-class service.

Wrapping up
I have witnessed numerous discounted clients willingly increase the fee structure when high quality is received.

After all, before they started, they didn’t know what to expect, and thus were cautious about costs.

Most clients leave firms because the value and level of service is not up to the pricing. Don’t let yourself fall into the downward service spiral of some professionals.

Use the Disney motto, “We may reduce our price, but we will not reduce our level of service.”
 

The client satisfaction survey is one of the most misused marketing tools employed today. Most surveys fail to obtain reliable information. Even worse, many surveys obtain misleading information.

The single most important reason to perform a survey is to determine client intentions. What your clients say doesn’t always equal intentions.

A few years ago, in a focus group, Sony Corporation asked teenagers which color of boom box they would prefer? Black or yellow? The overwhelming response was yellow.

At the end of the three-hour session, the teens were told they could pick up their choice of a free boom box as a gift for participating in the focus group.

The overwhelming choice was black! The key to client intention is not what people say, it’s what they do.

Ask Questions that Deal with Client Intentions
Following are a few ideas to improve your use of client surveys so the information you receive is more reliable and useful:

• “Will you come back to us for your next need?”
• “Have you or will you refer us?”
• “Would you use us for other services?”

Use questions like these to reveal client intentions.

Design a Competent Survey Methodology
Professionals who understand anything at all about statistical sampling realize that a 35% response rate from clients probably does not reflect the true responses of your client base.

Were the responses from your best clients or your worst clients? Were the responses completed by decision makers or influencers of your clients?

Use a methodology that will give you reliable feedback on your most important clients.

Personal or telephone interviews of your largest clients will receive a much higher percentage response rate than mail surveys.

If you insist on using a mail survey, at least send a gift to reward your client for completing the questionnaire for you.

Ask Yourself, “Should We Do a Survey?”
If you do business with a limited number of clients and send them a survey every year, you will create survey burnout.

If your clients have a complaint about your service, your people, or you’re billing methods, many will not want to put it in writing.

You may be better off to visit your clients individually and explore their perceptions in-depth.

All clients’ comments are not created equal. But in a typical mail survey, a $300 tax return client’s responses receive the same weight as a client who pays you $100,000 per year.

Wrapping up
Surveys offer little chance of discovering anything unexpected over and above the topics being queried.

The problem with this is that your own thinking contaminates and limits the thinking of your clients.

Surveys can be useful tools to help firms grow and respond competitively to the marketplace. But to gain new information, you must be careful to design a process that will give you useful and reliable information.

When a new CEO, COO, CIO, or CFO joins your client, your relationship may be at high risk.

Smart professionals never take a client for granted, but they are particularly sensitive when there is a change in top management.

In many cases, the new chief will not know you and probably will have some level of loyalty to another firm. Your key is to make life easier for the new chief.

Be Proactive
If your first reaction is to lay low, or to wait for the new chief to call you, this is the wrong approach.

You should be proactive in building communication links. Your first role is to educate the new chief by reviewing the services your firm has provided the client.

Show how you have had an impact on past cost savings, legal structure, business success, or other significant events.

It is good insurance for you to review the past while emphasizing the reasons why you should continue.

Most new chiefs will bring new ideas, new initiatives, and a new team to their new roles.

Some chiefs’ approaches may be radically different from their predecessors. So, you don’t want to represent the “old way.”

If you have had significant management or internal control recommendations, bring them up early in the new chief’s tenure.

Increase Communications
Professionals who have weathered management changes offer some good suggestions:
1. Begin to mentally prepare your next proposal to your client. If the new chief has a relationship with another professional, they are probably asking for an opportunity. You would do this if one of your best friends took over a new client.

2. Don’t assume that business will go on as usual. You must give more attention to the client’s personnel with whom you have worked.

You may be asked to alter your services package to suit a new direction for your client. It will be better for you to be a part of this planning process, if you can engineer it.
3. The quickest way to alienate a newcomer is to act superior or overconfident. Treat the new chief with great respect. You must recognize the new chief’s ability and stress your wish to serve in the new environment.

When Family Members Become the Chief
The time to build relationships with family members who may become the chief is months or years before they are promoted.

Often, successful CPAs have built strong relationships with the elder chief and avoided the children.

Meanwhile, the children are forming their own relationships. Perhaps, now is a good time to focus attention on the sons and daughters of your client’s owners.

Wrapping up
A change in leadership is a time of both danger and opportunity. If you are mentally prepared and build your relationships broadly within your client firms, you will be better positioned.

In the last chapter, you were reminded that the way people inside the firm treat each other greatly impacts how the employees of the organization treat clients. Both internal and external service initiative must be coordinated.

Implementation of client service opportunities must begin with the partners. Norman Vincent Peale once remarked, “Nothing is more confusing than people who give good advice but set bad examples.”

It’s important for partners to lead with verbal guidance, but it isn’t enough. They also must lead with their actions.

Ron Zemke, in his book Service America, says “There must be a client-oriented culture in the organization, and it is the leader of the enterprise who must build and maintain this culture.”

The way employees are treated by partners greatly impacts how the employees of the organization treat clients.

Internal Service
As covered in the last strategy, external service starts with internal service and respectful treatment. Sometimes reinforcing the right norms takes forceful intervention.

A partner with a large international firm told me that when he was a manager, he called a partner in Chicago.

The partner did not return the phone call. The manager called again the next day. Still, no return call was forthcoming.

The manager reported to his own partner in Atlanta that the client matter was being delayed awaiting a response from the Chicago partner.

The Atlanta partner called the unresponsive Chicago partner, got him out of a meeting, and reminded him of the policy of respect for each other. And that respect included responding to any employee anywhere in the firm.

Role Modeling External Service
In law and accounting firms all across America where service is excellent, the partners do a lot more than tell employees what they want.

They act as role models and show genuine concern for clients by taking time to listen and help them.

And they back up their commitment to client service by looking for, measuring, recognizing, and rewarding performance that results in good service at all levels and in all jobs.

We don’t want to support the old proverb that familiarity breeds contempt. Rather than breeding contempt, we really want to look for the good in others and use that good to provide great service to our clients.

Recognition and praise are two of the most powerful motivators of all, yet you’d think that paying someone a compliment costs $1,000.

Wrapping up
If you see any other employee without a smile, give her one of yours, and maybe she will pass it on to one of your clients.

If you see any opportunity for improvements in this area of your firm, perhaps your training programs should emphasize internal client service this year as the basis for great external service.

Service consistency is a goal most midsized professional firms strive toward. It provides control over your customer service. It is also a great reason to contact your clients.

The journey to firm-wide consistency is difficult because of the lack of communication with existing clients about the quality of the current service being delivered.

None of us wants to hear bad news, but talking with client is crucial. The difference between a satisfied client and a highly satisfied client can be night and day.

For example, Xerox found that customers who rated them a 5 on a 5-point satisfaction scale were six times more likely to purchase further products than customers who rated them a 4!

Accountants seem content to send out useless client surveys in the mail, but hesitate to go see the clients personally.

Standards of Service
The only way to establish service consistency is for the owners of a firm to set down the service laws:

• Promptness in dealing with client concerns
• Maintaining client comfort in difficult circumstances
• Ensuring regular communications during engagements
• No training of junior staff on client’s nickel

Develop Consistency
For every significant engagement, the managing partner or marketing professional should visit the client and ask the two key questions: How did we do? How can we get better for you?

The service consistency equation becomes more difficult when a firm is focused on growing inexperienced staff members.

Will each one of them be able to deliver fine service consistently, or must an owner always be present?

McDonald’s delivers a consistent product with minimum-wage employees because they have clear service standards and train the team members to deliver your food the same way, every time.

Wrapping up
Before advertising your service excellence, make sure that you can deliver services consistently and that your whole team is on board.

Clients are more loyal to professionals who are proactive about providing service than ones who just react.

Our five-star client service training is patterned after the service you receive at a five-star resort.

The five-star client service system helps your firm reduce staff turnover, improve internal communication, raise the level of trust inside your firm, and ultimately achieve more loyalty from you clients.

In order to deliver five-star service, professionals focus on steps like the ones listed below.

Taking the Order
Waiters who take your order in fine restaurants have a big responsibility. Incorrect orders result in enormous cost increases from the rework of the food and customer dissatisfaction.

In a professional firm, when the order is not taken correctly, review notes and reworks abound.

If you track your cost overruns and delivery delays, most of them would relate to not taking the order exactly.

Many times a partner takes the order from the client and then plays “pass-it-on” to an associate.

At each level of “pass-it-on” the message becomes garbled. The person lower on the totem pole does not want to press the issue of slight misunderstanding.

He or she want to move forward with the work and will do so without a clear picture of the order.

In order to take the order exactly correct, the partner must commit to a few more minutes with the client.

It is necessary to listen carefully, take notes, and repeat the order back to the client. The associate must do the same, even though the partner may seem anxious and you may feel rushed.

Connecting
How would you feel if, after you have placed your order in a fine restaurant, the waiter did not check back with you?

Many professionals commit this error for various reasons: tight work schedules, a fear that the initial order wasn’t taken right, communication reluctance on the part of the service provider, a lack of care, or simply a lack of awareness of the importance of connecting with the client.

Connecting allows us to strengthen the relationship. We achieve this not only by simply keeping the client informed of progress and making contact, but by asking three simple questions:

1. “What are we doing so far that you like?”
2. “Is there anything that we can improve on right now?”
3. “How do you feel about things so far?”

These questions serve to uncover any hidden emotional concerns and problems before they occur.

They also serve to strengthen the bond between you because the client feels attended to. Connecting also helps to overcome price anxiety, collect the fee, and plant the seed for further services.

Wrapping up
Great service is dependable. Success in service excellence happ