FEATURED

Are You a CPA or Social Worker?

It depends. Ask a client.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Where does the universe come from? What is the purpose of life? Will tax season ever end? And what do clients really want? The only thing we know for sure is that Tax Season 2007 ends next week. Hooray! The rest is fairly murky, especially when considering the question: “What do clients really want?”If the tax season is any guide, then clients want to be late and unprepared, which is one of the year’s top gripes, and is second only to the nagging staff shortage. These are the questions of the ages, the ponderings of sages and the mysteries of the deep, dark unknown.

In search of answers to the question of client expectations and desires, we asked CPAs and corporate financial managers (on the client side): “In a nutshell, what do clients really want?”

And how the nutshells are coming — over 1,957 responses, so far. Many of the nutshells are from wizened CPAs who claim to have figured out how to do their jobs and keep their clients satisfied. If you haven’t already joined the study, you can take the survey and receive its complete results.

As we looked for trends in these open-ended responses, we noticed several words that continuously appeared: Value. Timeliness. Care. Attention. Proactive. Service. Price. Quality. Knowledge.

But you already knew that, right?

A few responses went a little deeper, drawing perspectives from other angles.

Douglas A. Sutton, CPA, Olathe, Kans., stepped out of his auditor’s shoes to write this response: “Very few clients contact me without engaging my firm. I explain that I am a social worker (my original college major). Financial statements and tax returns tell a story about the lives involved … Our philosophy is that the client does not know how to manage a business, the tax laws, labor laws, cash flow, etc. If we are only bookkeepers, the client’s chances of succeeding are reduced.”

Another midwest nugget, proffered by Ron Dickinson, Dickinson & Clark, CPAs, Council Bluffs, Iowa, bore a similar message: “Clients don’t care that we are technically accurate or even smart, all that’s a given. They are looking for a sounding board, someone who can help them with sound business fundamentals, strategic thinking and proactive ideas to help them become successful (however they define success).”

Mark D. Estes, a CPA in Columbia, S.C., runs a part-time bookkeeping and tax prep service when not at his regular job. Estes recognizes the psychological aspect of accountancy: “They want accuracy, but, most of all, they want to feel important.”

Mary F. MacDonald, owner of a firm in Bakersfield, Calif., had similar sentiments about competency crossed with care.

A certain partner in a small CPA firm boiled all these poignant pensées down to a more fundamental essence: “What clients want most is to stay out of trouble.”

“Someone who will think out of the box,” said Mary Glenn, Glenn Prather & Company, Midland, Texas.

“Someone to do some serious handholding,” said another.

“Someone who can walk in their shoes and help them go through things together,” said an anonymous small-firm partner.

“Most small businesses don’t really know,” said Wade Larkin, Larkin & Gibbs, Buffalo, N.Y.

“God knows,” said Stuart Jones, 3CA, Kendal, Cumbria, UK.

Frank J. Casey, Tampa’s Vigilant Consulting, had an interesting angle on the question. “Depends on the company,” he said, as he leaned back in a squeaky old banker’s chair, puffing on a pipe and scratching his chin. “A successful company will want a big picture accountant who is mindful of the details, whereas an unsuccessful company will view the accounting function as a necessary evil. In other words, good companies want to partner with the accounting function, bad companies want to distance themselves.”

Here at Bay Street Group, we take an uncompromised position to support all of the above.

[First published by the AICPA]

5 Responses to “Are You a CPA or Social Worker?”

  1. Charles H. Green

    I completely agree. Since I teach professionals (accountants, consultants, lawyers, financial planners) how to become trusted advisors, I run all the time into professionals who tell me that what clients really want is the best (accounting, consulting, legal, financial) advice and expertise they can find.

    Those people are uniformly middle of the road or worse in terms of success.
    The ones who are succesful are precisely the ones who Dennis comments are good at listening, or who Rick suggests are willing to get in and deal with the meaning of life issues.

    What clients really want is to NOT have to evaluate whether you’re the best technically at what you do. If they wanted to evaluate your techical expertise, they’d have to be experts themselves, and they don’t want to–that’s why they’re hiring you.

    Unfortunately, the various professions persist in telling clients to evaluate professionals in professional terms, so they don’t know what else to do. Hence they try to fake expertise, or rely on testimonials, or cover up their decision-making processes so no one witnesses their confusion, or they rely on price (actually, they rarely do rely on price–they just say they do, which is just fine with providers, since they then have plausible deniability when they lose).

    The truth is, clients just want an accountant (or lawyer, consultant, planner) they can trust.

    How do they know? First, they don’tknow how they know, since they’ve bought your industry’s claptrap about expertise. But they make smart decisions in spite of it. They do hire on perceived trust, and it’s pretty simple.

    The one we trust has minimally acceptable competence, reflected in either some well-known standard (CPA, school) and/or a few references. But those are jacks for openers.

    The real tests are:
    -does (s)he seem to understand me?
    -does (s)he seem to care about me?

    In the simplest of terms, these two basic human desires are answered, or not, in terms of:
    a. listening
    b. talking about the client’s issues as opposed to others’ issues

    Simple. Not easy, but simple. Listen seriously to the client. Make sure you understand where they’re coming from. Even more important, make sure that they understand that you understand where they’re coming from (and you don’t do that by saying, ” I understand where you’re coming from.” )

    And spend about 5 times as much time as you think is necessary on that step.

    Then, start working their issues, in real-time. Explore with them the issues that concern them. Don’t mention all your other brilliant successes. Drop the PowerPoint references to past clients. Drop all your self-referential past successes. If you were going on a blind date with someone, would you want to hear them talk about the last 17 people they went out with? So don’t do that.

    Listen, and work their issues. That leads to trust. Because that way they can assess your competence directly, and you give them a sense you care.

    That’s pretty much it.

    Not easy. But simple.

  2. Dennis Howlett

    This is fascinating because everyone misses the most vital ingredient. Being a listener. Very few practitioners are much good at that.

    Those that are might want to extend the idea further by developing community around topics of interest. Very much as Ricks’ place does. Then, that horrific reliance on referral for fresh business goes away.

    Because you’re always referring to client need and not preaching how great you are at doing what can be automated. (to a large extent)

  3. Joseph T. Eckelkamp

    I have to wonder about those firms that are chronically complaining about late clients and clients not being organized and dropping stuff off late. Do those firms do anything to manage that condition or do they simply sit back, let things be done to them, and then complain about it? Over the past 10 years, I have been gradually able to encourage clients to come in earlier and earlier.

    We do things to get that result, however. We make sure our organizers go out the first week of January EVERY YEAR and that suggested appointment time cards go out three or four days later EVERY YEAR. We usually include some small (less than $2) promotional item to make the envelope “lumpy” so they open the package quicker. Next, we tentatively schedule virtually all of our suggested appointment times for February (“To ensure returning clients get the highest priority and attention”.) and so they will need to call to ask for a later appointment. Then, every Friday, our “Assembler” calls to confirm the appointments for the next week.

    We also offer an “early bird special” for those who drop off of come in by February 28th—a $35 gift certificate to one of our restaurant clients. It wins that clients loyalty; we’ve had clients ask us not to do away with the certificates; and we are only billed by our client if the gift certificate is used.

    Any no shows at any time in the season are called the next day to reschedule. If we don’t get replies to our first call, we call again weekly until we find get a reply. Sometimes those replies are “I’ll call you later when I’m ready.” but it helps to know that, too. And my team is trained to ask politely, “Just so we can block some time for your return to be prepared, do you have a feeling for when you think you will have everything ready? If not, that’s fine, but we want to make sure existing clients are taken care of before new clients.” And then we will follow up with them on their timeline, or every 3 weeks if they don’t have one.

    It may be a little “anal” for some firms to do what we do, but we find it gives us a lot more control over the process and we manage the workload instead of it managing us. In fact, every year seems to be a little less frantic–this year I was able to give a large part of the team the weekends off because things were going so well. Plus, I collect my revenue that much earlier in the year. And our overall volume is comparable to last year.

    This process (developed in large part by the team itself over the years) has made busy season just that… a “busy” season and not “chaotic” season. We have had or have scheduled a total of 3 appointments between 4/1 and 4/15 and maybe another 10 or so drop offs. And my best estimate is that 3/4 of the interviews are done in February and about half of the drop offs come in by 3/1.

    Well, that’s my rant for the current time.

    Joseph T. Eckelkamp
    President
    Eckelkamp & Associates, CPAs

  4. CPA in Charlotte, NC,

    As I am in public accounting and still preparing tax returns, I’ll be brief. I have 2 rants:

    1. I understand that some of the larger banks/brokerage firms received extensions until Feb 28th from the IRS to send out Form 1099’s! I thought this was due to dividend changes, usually involving REIT’s. However, it appears the banks/brokerage firms did not segregate and, therefore, a LOT of Form 1099’s were not sent out until the end of February. This serves to compact our tax season that much more. Also, I myself received 2 corrected Form 1099’s about mid-March and, of course, the returns had already been prepared and sent out to the clients. That is about the same as in previous years, so it didn’t do much good!

    The second issue is what does Emancipation Day in D.C. have to do with filing tax returns? The IRS and the Post Office are federal government entities, and do not have a holiday. A few states have received extensions due to state holidays. We already have a 1-day extension due to the weekend – we certainly don’t need another day’s extension!

    Thanks for listening,
    “a CPA working in a small public accounting firm in Charlotte, NC”

    • Lance Mertz, CPA

      I have been doing taxes for 25 years now and have given advice on just about everything you can think of over the years, from helping to negotiate a divorce settlement to normal tax help. Having a small, part time practice I get to know my clients as friends first a lot of times. In some cases I have watched children grow up and ended up doing their family taxes. In these cases you are like an old family friend, not an accountant. Social Worker/accountant is apt.