Golden Practices Blog

Commitment Means Acting Despite Your Doubt...

Gerry Riskin elaborated upon a great one-liner from Larry Anderson's One Sentence Journal.

Larry Anderson wrote:

Commitment does not require the absence of doubt; often commitment means acting despite your doubt.

I believe this is especially pertinent to CPA and law firms who, because of the high percentage of bright and analytical people combined with their general lack of comfort and expertise with formalized marketing, have the most potent combination of indecision and inaction on all things marketing.

Often, they'll prematurely shoot down potential options or halt initiatives short of their full natural lives.

Riskin explains:

Bright people are constantly analyzing because that is what they do to perform their work. As a result, they always see "the other side". No firm initiative can be free from second guessing. Therefore when we ask for a commitment, we either get a feint-hearted one or some level of resistance (from individuals who believe the initiative is flawed.)

Whether dealing with decision-makers or working one-on-one with team members, we marketers need to remember this and coach them through this natural progression of their thoughts and doubts.

No easy solutions here, but sometimes knowing what underlies their resistance can help us to help them navigate through decisions and commitments that don't feel completely comfortable. If they know that NO initiative is going to feel like a "sure thing" (and if it does, it's probably not a big enough risk to make a big difference) perhaps they'll put up less of a fight...

Riskin summarizes this beautifully:

I believe Larry's sentence is the mantra for amazing firms…because there, the troops understand that leadership requires their commitment notwithstanding doubt.

You can read Gerry Riskin's full post here.

Value Added Confusion

"Value added" is a term that is misused and misunderstood by firms. Not unlike the word "branding" over the last decade or so.

I posted this on AAM's Discussion List (mostly professional CPA marketers sharing ideas) this week after someone posed a question that moved me to articulate the following:

A Q was asked about teaching firm members about "value added" services the firm offers. This isn't an answer to the Q (training specific) but it led me to think about they way people are using the term "value added."

My thinking is that there are two types of "value adds":

1) The "free" type that we bundle/package/include with a service/product to make it stand apart from competitors' otherwise pretty identical services/products by giving the client "more" for the same price. (thus increasing the value, in the client's mind, of the sale)

or

2) The not free type that we offer to sell a client because it complements what they are already buying. The additional service "adds value" to the initial service in some way.

Within CPA firms, it is often very debatable as to whether the additional service is a value add for the client.

Usually it's used to mean things that are a value add for the firm as in adding to the dollar value of the sale. I suspect a lot of firms use the term "value added" for any service that they think a client should buy.

Whether bundled in with the original puchase or tacked on to the sale for an additional amount, it must absolutely be remembered that it is only a "value added" item when the client feels that way about it. Therefore, the service/product, in itself, cannot actually be a "value added" service.

And it doesn't become one just because we call it that or tell someone it is. Consumers are smarter than that.

"Value added" is in the eye of the buyer. To achieve that, we--as the seller--need to completely understand whether the client needs and values that offering and how they value it (and how MUCH they value it). This is a market research function (working in conjunction with the service providers, of course).

Be very careful how you use the catch-phrase "value add" and make sure you run any usage of it through the litmus test of TRUE value add.

Beware, because "Value Add," continues to be misused by firms, and may well be suffering the same sad, confused fate as the completely misunderstood term "Branding."

Straight From the Horses' Mouths: What A-Level Clients Like and Don't Like About Their CPAs

Last week at Association for Accounting Marketing's Annual Summit in Orlando, Mike Platt moderated a panel of CEOs of companies that most small, medium or large regional CPA firms would be delighted to call clients.

CEO panelists were: Ron Kaplan of Action Products International Inc. in FL, Karen Hough of ImprovEdge in OH, Dorthea Wynn of the Orlando Heart Center, and Tony Wood of The Leadership Coalition of FL & NY. They each provided responses to Platt's questions and to a few questions from the audience. Here is a collection, by general topic, of some of their remarks:

Service Basics

• What I want is a professional team on my side.
• Be there when we need you. A great example is when my accountant was on vacation but was able to be reached and even came in, off the beach in his shorts, to the attorney's office to help us finalize a critical deal.
• Be proactive and help us be proactive--don't wait until the very last minute for things like year-end tax planning.
• I feel like my firm sees me as a "nobody." I just can't get good service. My firm checks in with my CFO who thinks things are fine but I'm going to fire my firm in the next few weeks because they aren't meeting MY needs. I may go back to a sole practitioner.
• I don't really have anything to say when you ask if my firm has ever done anything "above and beyond."
• I don't appreciate when a firm acts like they can be all things to all people.
• It offends me when an accountant tries to come across as a final authority--as the governing body.
• Collaborate WITH us. Talk to us and tell us what you're doing. Our accountant recodes/reclassifies things, redoes budgets, etc, and it seems duplicative. They should be teaching us how to do it better so they don't have to re-do it.
• Ultimately, know my business and me personally.
• Don't answer a question with "it depends." Instead, put yourself in my shoes and answer the question!
• I know I'm under-served because my financial advisor keeps pointing out certain needs and the services I should be getting. I may be small but I'll pay for quality.
• Continuity of staff is pretty important. We don't want different people every year.
• The devil is in the details. Remember that I don't know what you know.

Billing

• Don't nickel and dime us with a bill for $100 or so.
• Even though I know I'm being charged $100-200 for a single phone call, I don't really want to see it broken out on the bill!
• And, yes, it bugs us when our attorneys bill for phone calls, too. But one panelist piped in with: "My attorney doesn't!"
• I'd rather have a "package" price then one based on hours.
• I love to have an idea, say within 10% or so, of what my monthly bills will be.
• Don't dare say to me "our time is our inventory"! All of our time is our inventory, too. It is our only limiting factor. We are just as busy as you and our time is worth as much as yours. Sometimes you don't act like you realize this. (examples under "Consideration" below)

Consideration

• When introduced to someone else in the firm who would be handling a matter, I was handed off in a poor way.
• I know a lot of people work on my account, and that's okay, but if I work with multiple people, you've got to communicate with each other. And I still want a single, primary point-person.
• I end up spending a lot of time tracking down who I'm supposed to talk to for what and people will actually tell me "I can't help you with that...that is someone else...you'll have to call them."
• Stop sending me stuff that doesn't apply to me. Be selective about what you send. Pinpoint the information to my concerns.
• Before I care to know how much my accountant knows, I need to know how much they care.

Adding Value

• The firm has never yet put me in front of another client with whom my business has something in common. I cannot figure out why...
• Make my life easier.
• Offer to be on my board--don't charge for the time...it's an opportunity for you!
• Know our idiosyncrasies.

Cross-selling

• It flabbergasts me that no one has called to offer me another service -- even as my business is changing/growing so rapidly.
• I had no idea of the other services our CPA firm offers. I had to ask my CFO who used to work for the firm so that I could answer questions today about other services I might be interested in. I thought it was neat that they offer to help interview and screen financial people I would hire.
• I saw a full list of services when I interviewed the firm, but I've forgotten what they provide.
• I'd like, on a yearly basis, to be refreshed of the firm's services and which might be applicable.
• I much rather have other services presented to me, personally, rather than by mail. It's best when you talk to me in person. Maybe a yearly meeting where we talk about what's going on for the next year, touch base, share updates and tell me about additional services.

Measuring Satisfaction

• How can you measure my satisfaction? If I'm happy, I refer a LOT of business.
• Another panelist agrees this is the best way to know if you are doing a good job.
• The occasional survey is okay, but I may be too busy to fill it out.
• An in-person survey is good.
• Come see me and ask me.

How Marketers Can Help Solidify Our Relationship With the Firm

• I really liked the packet given to me when I first met with the firm. I looked at it carefully. Hiring my accountant was a big decision for me.
• Don't market to me based on fear.
• I like to feel like I'm getting a competitive deal.
• I care about the value of the service to my business, NOT "Rate x Hours." Show me where you're adding value.
• Market inside your firm, teach younger people, make them more confident and more collaborative.
• There are givers and takers. Be a giver.
• Know your client-base and market to like clients. Tell me how you help businesses that are similar to mine.
• Trust the power of word-of-mouth marketing. I refer if I'm happy--I give good word of mouth.
• Understand the value of communication and personalized relationships. If your people cannot communicate well internally, how can you do it well outside?

A Key Reason Firm Marketing Efforts Fail

Seth Godin reflected today on a blog post he'd made awhile back called The Myth of the CMO. I hadn't seen it before, but when I read it, it strongly resonated with me related to CPA and law firms.

In his post, he used Verizon's CMO as an example of someone doing a "great job," but whose efforts are essentially undermined (to the severe detriment of the company) by operational behaviors and management decisions that marketing should influence, but doesn't. Godin wrote:

Is Verizon disdained, mistrusted and avoided because Judy's not doing a great job? Of course not. She's doing a great job.

The reason we hate Verizon is they act like a monopoly, have ridiculous policies, a lousy call center, a bad attitude, plenty of outbound phone spam and crazy pricing.

We hate Verizon because of all the things Judy doesn't get to influence or control....

If I were the CMO of Verizon, I'd fix the call centers. I'd fire people with a lousy attitude who aren't afraid to share it with a customer. I'd reward the great ones (like the installer who came to my new office last week) and figure out how to get every one of their thousands of people to understand that THEY are the marketing department. And I'd shut down the outbound phone spam center immediately.

Until that happens, the CEO is the CMO, no matter what the title says.

Sound like any firms you know? Sounds like scores of them that I know.

There exists incredible disregard for fixing problems with all the things that need to happen to ensure repeat business from existing customers. Initiatives to improve the customer experience (thus increase loyalty and the referrals that loyalty SHOULD lead to) are seldom considered in firms' marketing plans. Truth is, they are seldom even seriously considered at all.

In the rare instances when they are included in formal plans, distinct goals are not usually tied to these initiatives, and even more rare is a true expectation of follow-through.

Now I don't know Verizon's CMO or the politics of the organization. But I think that Godin is giving her a little too much credit in saying she IS doing "a great job" and that "We hate Verizon because of all the things Judy doesn't get to influence or control." Maybe it's the "doesn't get to" part that bothers me.

See, if the CMO were doing an exceptional job, I'd think she'd camp out in the CEO's office until the CEO agreed to solve these critical problems. Or she'd leave the organization. After all, her reputation is at stake.

How can she be successful if these problems aren't addressed?

Answer:  She cannot.

That is how absolutely important operations are to marketing.

So, if you're the CEO (aka managing partner) and the marketer works for you, will you listen? Or will you let the weaknesses continue and end up losing the marketer, losing clients, and missing enormous referral opportunities?

Customer Service Book Recommendations

On the Brand Autopsy Blog, there's a great list of customer service related books (the author recently shared the list with MBA candidates).

Some of the ones that I'm going to add to my growing-faster-than-I-can-read-them stack of books are:

• Improvise This! How to Think on Your Feet So You Don't Fall on Your Face - Mark Bergren | Molly Cox
• Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers into Advocates - Shaun Smith | Joe Wheeler

Put Pricing Back in the Right Hands

Last week, I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with my friend Ron Baker who is THE authority on value pricing.

(He wrote Professional's Guide to Value Pricing -- summary found here--and co-authored Firm of the Future with Paul Dunn, as well.)

Ron is always amazing to converse with. We share passionate opinions about the need for the value pricing message to reach not just CPAs and lawyers, but also for the message to reach other industry consultants...particularly those who still encourage, thus mislead, partners to work hard in pursuit of goals based on antiquated measurements of performance (billable hours, hourly billing rates/realization, etc) rather than metrics and goals that actually make sense such as real profitability, quality of life (and practice), customer and employee retention, etc.

Ron's working on his next book, Pricing on Purpose. In the meantime, he pretty excited to introduce the world's first CVOs: Chief Value Officers. CVOs are responsible for researching, determining and continually evaluating the value level of their firms' projects. They are each the final pricing authority in their respective firms!

He permits me to share with you an article he recently wrote on the subject. Remember the 4 P's of marketing? For years I've stood with Ron on the point that we must take the Pricing "P" back from the partners who tend to underestimate the true worth of their work.

These unfortunate people continue to base their entire livelihood on the ridiculous notion that the amount of time one spends doing work for someone is in any way associated with the actual value of that work!

They'd be so much wealthier if they put pricing back in the hands of people who know the marketplace. Ron knows...

Enjoy the article:

Download baker_whos_in_charge_of_value_in_your_firm.pdf

"Would You Like Fries With That?" Follow-up

This post won't make lots of sense to those who weren't at the AAM Conference last Friday attending the "Would You Like Fries With That? Upselling Strategies for the CPA Firm" session that Mike Platt and I presented. (Recordings are available through AAM or I can provide more info and handout copies if you email me.)

In the session, our attendees did some brainstorming on the new concept we introduced and the following items are the results of their brainstorms.

I'll post more about what the session contained in the near future, but for the sake of getting this information to participants quickly as promised, read on for the compiled info...

Association for Accounting Marketing Conference This Week

Our office is shutting down this week so we can go to the annual AAM Summit. AAM is the Association for Accounting Marketing.

Whether you're a partner or a marketing professional, if you've never been to an AAM conference, you should try it at least once. The conferences are loaded with compelling ideas, useful information and people who know the ropes of CPA firm marketing.

Probably what I love most about this conference is the energy level. It is absolutely unlike any other accounting industry event. But more important is substance. I can't be sure if I take home more from the exchanges with attendees or from the speakers, but certainly it's a winning combination.

If you're not busy and you're near Orlando Wed-Fri, you should detour over to the Hilton for a business event you'll never forget.

But if you cannot make it, stay tuned for some highlights from the conference...

Blawg (Blog) Misconceptions

Only a handful of CPA blogs and some 900* lawyer "blawgs" exist today (*per the law.com article referenced below) but blogs are quickly finding their place in the marketing plans of firms who would otherwise have to invest many, many times the money and time to get such widespread and accessible publicity and/or recognition about their areas of expertise.

Of course they can't say "expertise," but if you're a lawyer or CPA, and you maintain a good blog about some area of practice, it's pretty likely you're an expert. And the public agrees.

Beyond a personal recommendation, there's really no better way to find you and see how great you are all at the same time.

Kevin O'Keefe who runs Real Lawyers Have Blogs (and is Pres. and Founder of LexBlog.com, providing classy blogs set-up and hosting for professional service firms) posted about an interesting article.

The article quotes a lawyer and communications director of a 350 lawyer firm who, surprisingly, told Law.com's Legal Technology that blogs are not appropriate for large firms such as his. 

Kevin offers excellent reasons why blogs are perfect for large firms and I happen to agree.

I felt bad for the large firm comm. director who shared some uninformed impressions of the blogosphere, but since he missed the mark on a few key points that even Kevin's thorough response hadn't addressed, I felt inspired to comment. Kevin posted again elaborating on my comment.

One major thing I should've mentioned in my comment is that with 350 attorneys comprising that large firm, there should be no shortage of brilliant content for the blawgs they'll probably create one day because, in the words of Kevin O'Keefe,

"It's not unlikely that within a year most every firm in the country will use a blog," he said, "at least for some of their lawyers."

You go, Kevin! I like your vision.

Individual Marketing Plans: The Permission You Need to Start Small

If you've never had a formal, written Individual Marketing Plan (IMP) --or just never had success completing one, try this:

Just Set Small Goals!

1.  Don't set goals that are too big even if you feel very enthusiastic about them.

It's great to be eager, but it is far more important that the plan is realistic so there won't be unnecessary barriers to achieving it.

Start off slowly.

If, for instance, you're thinking, "I'll meet with one client or prospect per week for lunch," well, while that only means 4 per month, realize that this is a huge goal if there are currently zero taking place on a regular basis.

You probably won't hit this lofty goal, then you'll feel guilty and dump the whole plan. I see it all the time. It's too much habit to change all at once.

Instead, just start with a smaller goal of 1 or 2 per month.

2. Build slowly so you can get into a routine of scheduling and developing conversation so these lunches are as productive as possible.

Starting with a small goal makes a lot more sense when you realize what is involved in accomplishing your goal: effective communications with people who have the influence to use your services.

Fact is, the time commitment isn't just the lunch. The devil is in the details. The goal includes personally scheduling the lunch and -- if you do the meeting right -- 20-30 minutes reacquainting yourself with the client's file and reading the latest First Research profile on their industry before your meeting. 

The QUALITY is far more important than the quantity of your marketing efforts. Don't skip this PREP-WORK.

After maintaining your pace for a couple months, then try adding another.

Yeah, it's simple psychology, but by setting yourself up for some small "wins," you'll end up feeling much better about your planning time and marketing effort.

3.  This is so important...make sure you identify, up-front, exactly who you'll call and when.

Don't just plan "go to lunch with one client per month" and file that away. What is it that you can put into your Outlook?

"Call some client sometime this month"??

When, exactly, do you think you'll get around to thinking about who it makes the most sense to ask? Well, you won't.

Each month comes and goes because it takes too much time and energy to think about it on the fly.

So, what do you do? Procrastinate. You'll think about it later, right? Wrong.

Don't feel bad. We all do it.

Define your plan thoroughly the day you make it. Think through the details of the goal on the front-end! Decide who will be Jan, Feb, etc. Even go so far as to put their phone number on the plan itself. Then you'll have no reason to procrastinate.

Try it, it works.

Workaholic?

If you opened this post, it's the first sign that you just might be.

See Guerrilla Consulting's post on the subject and take the quiz.

As a business owner and mom, I know I am. The quiz only confirmed it.

Probably most of your clients who are business owners are, too. Is there a way you can help reduce their stress?

Bet there is.