Strategic Advisor Blog

Scaling New Heights 2018 was a great experience! It’s always a true pleasure talking with customers face to face and reconnecting with industry peers. It’s also fascinating to see how the industry is growing and shifting year over year. This year there were a few big takeaways for me.

The accounting industry has seen rapid growth and change in the last five years. The message to accountants is clear: client advisory services are the focus.

When I decided it would be good to align LivePlan’s method for advisory services with a workflow toolset, I wasn’t sure where I would begin. Then I met Ian Vacin, VP of partnerships and education at Karbon (and known accounting industry thought leader).

LivePlan has released the first of what will be a series of updates to our reporting and forecasting features: LivePlan’s Scoreboard has become the Dashboard.

Helping a client to build a more profitable and successful business is one of the most valuable things we can do. It would be crazy to price this work based on time—that would leave too much money on the table.

If you are reading this, you probably are already offering Strategic Advising Services, or researching the topic for your firm. Some of you may already be using the LivePlan Method for Strategic Advising.

I’m guessing that you also have a desire to move from being just a historian for your clients’ small businesses to someone that provides more value, and helps small business succeed, which ultimately will lead to more value for you (e.g. more revenue for your practice).

As Geoffrey James so eloquently explains in this article, “Selling is the process of making dreams come true." And even though this is absolutely true (or maybe because of this), many accountants are still very uncomfortable with the notion of “selling." They find it off-putting, or difficult at best.

This article on website optimization is pulled from LivePlan’s Best Practice webinar on sales and marketing for your accounting firm. Our own marketing director John Procopio offers concrete advice for assessing your website, and he offers a two-step checklist for implementing changes.

Anyone who has been providing client services for a while has processes that they follow. But there is a difference between haphazard processes that have grown organically, and processes that are intentional, well-considered, and documented. The difference between the former and the latter is the difference between having a firm that is merely surviving, and one that is thriving.

There’s no doubt social media sites are marching forward in their quest to take over the rest of the internet. Once a repository for news feeds, career advice, and silly cat memes, social sites are now going toe-to-toe with more traditional channels for their share of the advertising and ecommerce spoils.

It’s the question I get asked the most by accountants who are thinking about branching into Strategic Advising services: “I do budgeting already. What’s the difference between a budget and a financial forecast?"

The answer is both simple and complex, and has a lot to do with the real value of advisory services, which is aiding small business growth.

A few months ago, I finally bit the bullet and bought a Fitbit.

I’m a runner and general exerciser; I figured I was “active enough,” so I never really saw the appeal. However, one of my recent goals has been to integrate walks into my daily routine, and I assumed (correctly) that some fun wearable tech would make it easier to build this habit.

Client advisory services, like any other offering in an accounting practice, must be profitable to be worthwhile for your business. At the same time, Strategic Advising, or client advisory services, have the distinction of being the most open-ended type of work you can do in the spectrum of public accounting.

This might seem like a really great opportunity, but it can also be your biggest potential risk if you don’t plan for the work correctly.

The best way to grow and scale an accounting firm—and this is true of any type of service firm—is to implement standardized and structured business processes for all work. Categorize the work by service type and implement a manageable process—one that will ensure solid client deliverables, and also profitability for your firm.