“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
Life is short -, break the rules -. forgive quickly -. kiss slowly - love truly - laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.
The world owes you nothing -. It was here first."

The 7 Must Follow Trends Accountants can’t afford to Ignore.

There is a change in the air.

You already know that to achieve growth – beyond ‘glacial pace’ as one four-partner firm said to me we need to incorporate advisory services and consulting into our services suite.

Our core compliance services have grown long in the tooth and are now thinly margined.

To provide clients the value they demand, remain relevant, and expand, all signs point to consulting especially in the business sustainability and growth-related offerings clients need right now.

For decades our profession, and most likely your firm has been relying on traditional accounting services – mostly renewable annual engagements centered on tax and audit.

In many firms, compliance work represents as much as 90 percent of total revenue.

However, the shift to advisory services brings with it the requirement to continuously develop and manage opportunities that do not necessarily happen every year. As a result, a consistent pipeline process supported with professional selling skills will be the key to driving successful revenue growth.

Why professional selling skills? It’s simple.

Advisory Services are not bought – they are sold.

Statistics suggest the pivot to advisory services is under way and while we’ve seen consulting revenue inch up over the past three years within the Big Four from 38 to 40 percent of total revenue ... and some substantial increases in the next twenty or so firms ...the remaining Top 100 have stayed flat over the past few years with consulting only making up about 17 percent of revenue.

It seems there is more talk about doing it rather than actually doing it . What is it going to take to substantially grow consulting revenue?

After 30 years of helping directors and partners of accounting firms achieve their goals, dreams, and aspirations I’ve witnessed a common thread running through a handful of these firms who are just bursting out the top – all the time.

They are meeting and exceeding their goals. They are realising their visions and aspirations.

They are always over and above expectations – and these robust, energised, continually successful firms seem to have a secret. And frankly, we’ve done everything we can to find the formula that says –

“We will be one of these firms in this very small select-group that achieves perpetual success.”

The secret, the clue, the common thread is 7-fold and is more obvious than we think.

The secret is revealed in the following

TREND # 1

Lead like a BOSS

What is it that leaders do that makes people want to follow them? What makes a leader effective? The simple answer is A leader leads. They treat people with respect and value, and they lead their people and their firm as they charge forward.

They do this in many ways.

THE VISION THING. Having a Vision of where she is leading the people in her charge and the ability to share it in a compelling way – is what draws followers to her, and what inspires them to take action.

MAKING CHANGE. Most firms need to change to produce greater results than they are currently producing. That means a leader leads change. That change is what moves the firm from its current state to its future.

STRATEGY. A leader must have some idea of how to compete and win. They need a strategy. Without strategy, the vision will not come to life, and the change will not be achieved.

COMPLETION. A leader must ensure completion. Completion is a big deal. You can have the best strategy on Earth and the tactics to achieve them, but without completion, it is all for nothing.

FOCUS. Focus is the elimination of options.

Leadership requires you to say no to all but the few, critical, strategic initiatives that are going to move the firm you lead into the future. Focus is the discipline of saying no to all but the few things that are most important. Leaders provide that focus.

GROWING PEOPLE. Completion isn’t easy. To complete, the people in your charge will be required to change, to grow and to develop personally and professionally ( you cannot have the latter without the former). A great leader helps those in their charge become the best version of themselves. The greatest of leaders build ‘leadership factories’ and they rely on ideas like

https://bossfactor.com.au/

TEAMS. Leaders build teams. They bring diverse groups of people together to achieve what would otherwise be impossible. Teams are a force multiplier, creating value far in excess of the individuals that make up the team.

NON-NEGOTIABLE VALUES. A leader creates a culture. They decide what values are non-negotiable , the core beliefs and behaviours that make the firm in their charge what it is. They decide where the firm stands, what it is for and what it is against. And then the leader protects the culture.

TREND # 2

Leaders put their Teams First

Sir Richard Branson suggests - if you put your employees first – they will work harder and ultimately become your most important brand ambassadors with your clients. The idea is employees come first, clients second and shareholders third.

Other CEOs, like Sir Richard Branson, such as Craig Jelenik of Costco are finding similar success by putting their employees first, and that’s really saying something since Costco goes head-to-head with brands like Walmart, Amazon, and Target. In fact, Costco’s stock has doubled since 2019 and they are now the second largest retailer in the USA behind Walmart.

Putting your team first has many bonuses …and one is positioning yourself as the GO-TO firm in your location for new recruits…and for experienced accountants looking for a change.

Team first is the first step to creating an ‘irresistible’ place to work. A place where everyone is on the same page.

The old is new again and it’s causing a stir amongst accounting firms. It’s new and it’s positive and it holds the surprisingly simple truth for attracting, recruiting, and retaining top-quality accounting talent. In fact, it’s the key.

Team first will have your people saying:

• I can’t imagine working anywhere else
• I’ll never go back to working at a traditional accounting firm.
• It’s clear why people want to work here – everyone is encouraged and supported to be successful.
• Their business model allows teams to bring their whole selves to work every day.
• The culture here is irresistible.

“Business has to give people enriching and rewarding lives or it’s not worth doing.”

PS. Quick Question…is your website geared to attracting staff as well as clients? If not, and most are not, then you need to make the necessary changes.

TREND # 3

The Same Page

When teams are NOT on the same page, things go wrong. Time, money, and resources are wasted. Frustration builds and spreads throughout the team, and everything slows down. Mistakes are made. Quality takes a nosedive. Client loyalty is compromised. Blame, finger pointing, justification and throwing people under the bus emerge as a new skill set.

How can you attract and retain great people when some or all of this is happening?

Conversely, imagine a place where everyone is on the same page and the four major challenges of leadership and management – People, Process, Product and Profit are working positively and in harmony.

A culture where time, money, and resources are maximized. Morale is high, and work moves along quickly and efficiently. Mistakes rarely occur because everyone is knowledgeable, committed, and accountable to the processes, procedures, and systems – so much so that innovation perpetuates constant improvement.

Best of all, there are no more buses around for people to be thrown under. And that’s just the beginning.

When your team is operating in a bustling sales and service culture and are totally focused on the task at hand and know how to treat people with respect, and therefore gain respect and get that everything – I mean everything, can be at least 1% better – then you have a team that is on the SAME PAGE.

With this mindset in place there is nothing they can’t achieve.

It just gets done.

The SAME PAGE is a foundational philosophy of virtues and values. It’s a code – a code which YOU need to ‘CRACK.’

We will help you crack the code...

TREND # 4

Retention is the NEW Growth Strategy

The ultimate growth strategy has been in front of you all this time. Your existing clients. All you have to do is make them happy and then figure out how to provide even more value to them.

According to a KPMG study, it was found that client retention was the most important revenue driver for businesses (KPMG’s 2014 Retail Industry Outlook). A high client retention rate can improve earnings by up to 95%. (Bain & Company). Furthermore, it can cost up to 5 times more to attract a new client than it does to keep an existing one. * (* I’ve done extensive study on this claim and am now cool with it.)

I’m also cool with Frederick Reichheld’s claim that by improving our retention rate by a little as 5 % can increase profits by 25% to 95%.( See his book – The Loyalty Effect)

Both points make a strong case for investing in RETENTION.

• How many firms do you know that invest in Retention rather than Acquisition?
• How many firms do you know that have a Retention Plan or a Client Relationship Plan?

Human beings are social creatures, and as the amount of our daily interpersonal interactions has shrunk, our desire for connection has grown. This has resulted in an incredible opportunity for you to close the gap, provide connection, and make a notable impact on your client base.

When firms neglect these needs, the lack of relationship with clients can leave firms vulnerable to price wars, economic downturn, and competition.

That’s because relationships and satisfaction are noted as the most important deciding factors when it comes to whether a client will stay with your firm or consider your competitors.

Remember, it’s always about the long game.

TREND # 5

Sales Training and Sales Management

Here’s how these firms that are ‘bursting out the top’ are closing the gap between ‘limitations and possibilities’ when it comes to their Business Advisory Services :

They have found the ‘missing piece.’

Advisory Services are not bought – they are sold.

When you think about it every business is two businesses. There’s the one that does the work and the one that sells the work and as you know if you don’t, won’t or can’t sell the work – there’s NO work to be done. No work, no clients, no sales, no cash , lights out.

If Advisory Services are on your ‘growth agenda’ then training your team in professional selling and having key team members ‘sales’ managed is critical.

Nothing happens until something is sold and it’s been my experience over the last 30+ years working with accounting firms and their clients that most people know how to make the thing they sell but there is only a handful who know how to sell the thing they make.

Clearly, we need to know how to market our firms better, how to sell the value we bring to the table, how to identify the gap between a client’s current state and their future state and sell more of our services and how to deliver a level of service equivalent to what you would expect in a five-star hotel.

Although selling is not for everyone, everyone does indeed sell. (Daniel Pink – To Sell is to be Human)

TREND # 6

A structured, formal, scalable Referral Program

We all know how powerful REFERRALS are…together with Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Advertising they make up about 90% of all NEW lead opportunities for all small to medium size businesses.

You also know there are few guarantees in business – but if you already generate 20%

- 80% of your revenue from referrals and word-of-mouth using NO formalised referral strategy them imagine what you could do with a:

Structured, formal, scalable referral method that delivers as many referrals as you want, when you want – and of the type you want.

A quick ‘straw poll’ of 30 firms revealed only one firm had anything that resembles a ‘structured' approach to attracting more referrals.

If it’s true you rely heavily on referrals and word-of-mouth for substantial revenue growth then how can you be certain of the growth, profit implications, personal income, and equity growth if you have no control over the number of referrals, the timing of them and the quality.

A growth strategy where you cannot control the variables and, in this case, possibly the primary variable will inevitably fall-short of your expectations and desire.

If you do nothing else – make sure you follow this trend and implement your lifeline to future growth…and as you will discover, it is an important extension of your retention strategy.

Talk to us about our ACCOUNTANT ALL-STARS REFERRAL CODE .

TREND # 7

Personal and Professional Development

I have to confess to something here because it is an ‘all-consuming belief’ my partner, Eve Dallas and I have about leadership, business, and life…

LEADERS ARE READERS

I’m confessing because it’s a trend we push with everyone we meet and encourage everyone we meet - to follow.

That said, we are not on our own with this belief:

It was Harry S Truman who said, “Not all Readers are Leaders, but all Leaders are Readers” … and many world-renowned business leaders often quote President Truman’s philosophy as one of their keys to success.

For example:

• Warren Buffett spends five to six hours every day reading newspapers and corporate reports
• Bill Gates reads 50 books per year
• Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks
• Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother
• Mark Cuban reads more than 3 hours every day

…and the list goes on…

What I like about reading is it allows us to spend time with smart people. We may not be able to have lunch with Michael Hyatt, Sir Richard Branson, James Packer, Oprah, Gina Reinhart, J K Rowling, or Peter Drucker but we can spend as much time with them as we want by reading material, written by them.

Reading elevates us above our current situation and can multiply our experiences…and all of this is in the name of personal and professional development. We cant have one without the other.

Try something – we call it the 5 Hour Rule. Spend a minimum of 5 hours every week extending your knowledge and understanding by reading. Why, how, and what we read are all questions for each of us to answer.

…here’s a good place for you to start https://bossfactor.com.au/

CONCLUSION

are aligned with and designed to help you achieve your Business Advisory Goals.

1. Lead like a Boss
2. Leaders put their Teams first
3. The Same Page
4. Retention – the NEW Growth Strategy
5. Sales Training and Sales Management
6. A structured, formal, scalable Referral Program and
7. Personal and Professional Development

If you would like to know HOW to implement some or all of these trends into your firm – just let us know and we’ll show you how.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Trevor Marchant BBus and Eve Dallas are the founding directors of Marchant Dallas Consulting. MD has been serving accountants and their clients for a little over 30 years with one goal in mind ‘Coaching, Educating, and Inspiring people to be the best they can in all areas of their lives – particularly their business lives and being their ‘springboard’ to the Next Level …whatever that level may be.

Our experience reveals that most business owners are passionate about what they do, they’re good technicians and they want to help people BUT they have difficulties when it comes to setting up a stream of people wanting to do business with them.

They also have some difficulty when it comes to ‘selling the value’ they bring to the table and helping people close the gap between their current state and their future state…between what they have now and what they would like to make happen for the future.

Trevor was for several years the Head of Training, Education and Development for Westpac. He is a Bachelor of Business and has a talent for making the complex seem simple.

He, together with Eve, have been featured in the top 1 percent of Sales ( and Business Development) Coaches, Managers, Trainers and Mentors in Australia and New Zealand.

Eve and Trevor are the creators of several awarded-winning coaching programs – including the nationally accredited – Road to Success; the Growth factor, the SALES factor, and the BOSS factor …including the BOSS factor library – a library of over 100 publications about Business, Leadership and Life.

There have also been a couple of best – selling books …including RU Fit for Business, Eve wrote with Dr Ross Walker an eminent Cardiologist.

Eve has tertiary qualifications in Psychology and Counselling and has a strong Sales background with many awards including the top listing agent in Queensland – 2 years running – with a national real estate company.

Over the last 30 years they have helped – at last count, 93 accounting firms and 5000 + of their business clients reach their goals, dreams, and aspirations.

When you work with Marchant Dallas – you work with both Eve and Trevor and more to the point …they work with you on a ‘risk-free’ results basis.

THE GROWTH FACTOR BUSINESS SYSTEM

for holding on to what you’ve got and attracting more of the same ...

“ A business improvement and growth system for ALL business owners.”

There’s a common thread that runs through those few businesses who are just bursting out the top - all the time.

They’re meeting and exceeding goals.

They’re realising their visions and aspirations.

They’re always over and above expectations….and these robust, energised, continually successful businesses seem to have a secret. And frankly, we have studied it, we have gone to school, we have consulted, we’ve done everything we can to find the formula that says – “We will be one of these businesses in this very small, select group that achieves perpetual success.”

The secret, the clue, the common thread is simply how you treat people.

It’s how you treat your fellow man, and how you treat your team members and how you treat your clients, your regulators, the public, your audiences, your communities. How you value the worth of an individual, how you bring the human factor into real importance and not just a statement you make in your ‘wish list’ of strategic objectives.’

If you treat people with respect, then you are well on your way to earning respect…which is what every business leader must have to even have half a chance of becoming successful.

If people don’t respect you, it follows they usually don’t like you either and therefore they won’t trust you….and trust as you know is the one thing that changes everything.

Without trust – you may as well go home.

So, if you want to improve your retention rate and remember a 5% improvement in retention will lead to a 25- 60% increase in profits and if you want to grow your revenue exponentially and all of this makes sense to you then a closer look at THE GROWTH FACTOR BUSINESS SYSTEM for ALL business owners is an essential NEXT STEP...