What Big Firms Can Learn from Sole Practitioners and Small Firms.
“The best independent practitioners have a singular focus on helping their clients achieve their goals,” according to Andrew Sobel, author of the exemplary “All for One: Ten Strategies for Building Trusted Client Relationships.” “They deliver value at every stage of their work, and they do so as quickly as possible and with ruthless efficiency,” he says.
The most successful independent professionals:
- Create personal brands by building individual market renown. They create notoriety for themselves through publishing, speaking, and networking, and by focusing on a core specialty for which they become well known. All too often, professionals in large firms spend years sheltered under their firm’s brand.
- Regularly develop and disseminate intellectual capital. Often, there are just a handful of partners in large professional firms who create all of the intellectual capital, and everyone else feeds off of it.
- Focus on conversations, not on PowerPoint. While it is always a good idea to outline your thoughts in writing, creating so many PowerPoint presentations takes a huge amount of time and energy. The best independents lower their threshold for a client meeting. They talk often to their clients, and they have learned how to hold an engaging conversation.
- Try to achieve success, not perfection. When you lack resources, you have to focus on delivering a solution that is good enough and works — not on the one that is most comprehensive and elegant.
- Have learned to eliminate non-value-added activities. For a solo practitioner, every single activity has to contribute directly to the project’s goals and deliver value to the client — otherwise you work yourself to death and/or end up seriously diluting the time and effort.
- Take responsibility for their personal development. Without mandatory training seminars or meetings, independents must really think about the skills they want to develop.
- Organize around clients. Large firms must reconcile geography, practice groups, industry sectors, and functional expertise within the same organization structure. Independents are always organized around one simple and essential dimension: the client.
- Truly act like it’s their money. For independents, every cent they spend on expenses is a cent that doesn’t go into their pockets (after taxes, of course). It’s a good mindset and a good discipline — often neglected in large organizations.
6 Responses to “Eight Ways the Smallest Accounting Firms Compete and Win”
Does Solo Mean Better Service?
Rick Telberg explains how it can all work in the accounting business in his smart outline at CPA Trendlines, which is published by the Bay Street Group. Telberg’s tips can be used by all kinds of solo practitioners. He starts by quoting Andrew Sobel, the author of All for One: Ten Strategies for Building Trusted Client Relationships.
“The best independent practitioners have a singular focus on helping their clients achieve their goals,” Sobel says. “They deliver value at every stage of their work, and they do so quickly as possible and with ruthless efficiency.”
Organized around the client
Ruthless maybe sounds scary, but surely being a customer on the receiving end of that “singular focus” sounds like a good experience. Telberg comes up with some specifics for solo practitioners, urging them to organize around clients. “Large firms,” the site says, “must reconcile geography, practice groups, industry sectors, and functional expertise within the same organizational structure. Independents are always organized around one simple and essential dimension: the client.” Again, the notion of being nimble strikes again. Delightfully.
In another nice moment, Telberg advises us to take time with clients and not get lost in either selling or technology. Or as it’s put here: “Focus on conversations, not on PowerPoint.” Those presentations take “a huge amount of time and energy,” he says. “The best independents lower their threshold for a client meeting. They talk often to their clients, and they have learned how to hold an engaging conversation.”
Imagine that: talking to the clients. It just might work.
[...] Mentioned on Twitter by Jenni Fleck Jones said: RT @tomhood: Great tips for our sole practitioners and local CPA firms... http://lnkd.in/yT2aYQ [...]
[…] Mentioned on Twitter by Jenni Fleck Jones said: RT @tomhood: Great tips for our sole practitioners and local CPA firms… http://lnkd.in/yT2aYQ […]
SMALL CAN BE VERY COOL | Solutions For CPA Firm Leaders
[…] A story on CPA Trendlines (Rick Telberg) got me to thinking about all this. Check out the story, Eight Ways the Smallest Accounting Firms Compete and Win. […]
Kevin Phillips
Great summary. I find the most interesting statement, however, is the first one. “The most successful independent professionals. . . .”
Most independent accounting professionals are not “most successful.” Our research (and dialogue within the profession) tells us that most independent accounting professionals struggle.
They work hard. They are decent, caring people. Their limiting resource is first, time and then, money.
Simple habits prevent most independent accounting professionals from becoming “most successful.”
We find that in your list #6 needs to be #1. Unless a professional “takes responsibility for his or her personal development” they are not professionals at all, but amateurs.
When professionals take their personal development seriously, the rest of the items on the list will follow.
Gary
This is a great summary. Smaller firms are able to move and adapt faster. They are not as tied to “firm standards”. Large firms seem to adapt to what they feel is important and not the client. It becomes too checklist and CYA driven. Yes standards need to be upheld, but the important fact is that we need to identify what the client really needs and not what the check list indicates.
ClockWork Accountant
Great tips for those of us not wanting to go the Big 4 route. As a relatively new accountant I find tip #4 especially helpful. Sometimes I take forever doing something because I want to do it perfect. I think accountants as a profession suffer from perfectionism. Appreciate the post.
Nate