This is my fourth* annual report(!) intended to help others benefit from what I have learned about getting value from the time I spend on Linkedin. Why this could be useful to you In 2021 my SSI moved marginally up to 86/100, having been consistently 85/100 during 2020. This means I continue to
Instead of a final post of the year, I offer you a reminder of ten of my most popular blog posts (out of the 50 posted, one each Tuesday) in 2021. I’ve included the links in case you missed them originally or you want to take another look. Early in January I
In this blog post I explain five key issues in the context of your competition as an accountant. I have discussed them many times with clients during mentoring sessions. Often I find an accountant's perception as to who is their competition is blinkered and limited. They are often shocked to realise they
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and a lot of knowledge is empowering. The problem is the gap between the two can be quite large! This is something it took me years to learn when I was in practice. Let's consider a simple example. What do you know about the tax
Most accountants are justly proud of their technical skills. No doubt you make time to keep your technical knowledge up to date. Most accountants I know focus a majority of their CPD efforts here. Equally most accountants seem to undervalue the importance of ensuring that they have all the business skills they
Many accountants appear to approach the idea of finding new clients with conflicted emotions. If you do this you are probably making life harder for yourself than it needs to be. On the one hand your website and marketing activities try to promote you and your firm as able to act for
Regular readers will know that I am both very active on social media and highly ranked for my online influence (such as it is!) Equally you will also know that I do not routinely encourage accountants to use social media for promotional and marketing purposes. And I challenge the apparent evidence and
This post follows on from a previous post in which I set out the 12 ways in which you can Keep In Touch with clients and why it is so important to do so. As I explained in that post, this demands personalised 1-2-1 contact. It is very different to simply following
You want your clients, certainly the better ones, to stay with you. By implication therefore you want them to appreciate that you care about them, that you are interested in them and that you want to help them as much as you can. Those are just some of the reasons for Keeping
As a teenager, before I started studying to become an accountant, I was a children's party entertainer - and I continued doing this for about 25 years. When I look back I realise that I quickly learned 3 key lessons that now, many years later, still inform my thinking and advice to
Accountants have a distinct advantage over most other service professionals. Your clients need your help on an ongoing basis, at least once a year and often more frequently than this. This leads some accountants to be a little complacent about client retention - certainly as compared with most solicitors and financial advisers.
It's all to easy to assume that all clients want the same things. But unless you ask, you won't know for sure. It's probably true that most clients want their accountants to help them pay less tax and to keep them straight with the authorities. Probably true. For most. But these may
In an educational context we refer to the three Rs as being those crucial elements that all children need to master. That is, Reading wRiting and aRithmetic. This is somewhat ironic given that only one of the three topics actually starts with an R. (The phrase is used apparently because each of the three
Do you ever think about how your practice and your client base might be impacted by changes and developments over the next few years? Historically most clients stay with their accountant for many years. They generally move only when they feel their accountant doesn't care enough about them, puts their fees up
Do you consider yourself to be a confident person generally? What about in terms of your ability to attract and win over prospective clients? And to keep clients happy and willing to pay you the fees you deserve for the work you do? Whilst many accountants I work with have a fair
Many an otherwise savvy sole practitioner tells me about similar problems with their client base. "They won't pay higher fees, they don't want additional services and they leave everything to the last minute" If you have clients like this, you're not alone. Often it's a direct consequence of how desperate you were
When I ask accountants what they would like to be different in their practice, one theme is more common than any others. They frequently express the desire to have better quality clients, to increase their average fees and to be doing more interesting work.One sole practitioner accountant I was mentoring expressed this quite
So many accountants tell me that most of their new clients come from word of mouth and client referrals. In most cases however this seems to be a function of luck rather than planned in any way. Have you ever thought about how you could make it easier for your contacts to
Over the years I have worked with hundreds of accountants. I have also judged hundreds of entires for multiple accountancy awards. Having completed the judging process for a recent competition I reflected on what it takes to win and to be successful generally. Let me be clear here. I am talking about
Not everyone who calls me for my input becomes a client. I sometimes offer some simple advice to accountants who are not yet in a position to need or afford my mentoring services (even though these are much more affordable than you might expect). One of the accountants I spoke with recently
Ok, maybe not real 'commandments', so I wonder if you agree. And if there are any where you know you could do better. If so, then maybe focus on what you could do to improve your client service in this regard over the next few days, weeks and months. 1. Ask good
The following observation on Facebook reflects a common perception. ‘It’s a shame that nowadays it isn’t enough to just be good at what you do. You need to be good at all this other stuff (marketing etc.) otherwise you don’t get anywhere.’ My response was as follows: — It has NEVER been
This is a very different blog post to usual. I hope it will be of interest to accountants and tax advisers generally even though it does not contain any of my usual insights, guidance and advice. Thirteen years ago, in July 2008, I authored the lead comment article in Taxation magazine: Why
What do people say about you when you’re not in the room? What would you like them to say? Few accountants seem to think this through. If you are clear about what you want people to say though you are likely to find success a lot faster than anyone who is ‘just
The following list is a salutary lesson in what NOT to do if you want to keep your clients. You could also use it as a checklist to have counterpoints to raise in each case when talking to prospective new clients. If they are moving from a previous accountant, they will appreciate
