So, how was it for you?

2008, that is.

I know it’s hard to believe, but the year is virtually over. By the time you receive this edition of The Bottom Line, you might well be thinking about those last-minute gift ideas for someone special, or maybe you’ll be getting over a headache from too many drinks at the office party.

Whatever this year brought you, was it what you expected?

Did you achieve the goals you set for yourself this time last year? If I were a gambling man, I’d wager that well over 50% of you would be saying ‘no’ to yourself.

Why?

If we set ourselves a goal, why is it that so many fail to achieve it?

I believe that a great deal of the reasoning behind this is accountability. If we set a goal but fail to tell anyone, then who knows if we do not achieve it? Only us. And there’s no public shame if no one else knows about it, is there?

That said, we also know that the practice we actually have is not the one we intended to build.

Many public accounting firms end up being designed by the clients of the practice rather than the practitioners themselves. The reason for this is often that we as a profession are too nice – we don’t like to say no to people, especially clients.

As a result, we take on clients and projects that take us backwards rather than forwards in terms of building our practice. The practice then ends up being designed and built by clients who, in some cases, we’d rather not have to deal with.

Now, in previous columns within these pages I have ranted about firing bad clients. And I stand by that. I have also strongly urged practitioners to consider investing in CCH Profit Driver and to start selling services that your clients actually want from you, so I am not going to repeat myself and go off on another rant in that direction either.

So, what am I going to talk about this time?

Planning.

We’ve all heard the saying that ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’, yet we rarely take action.

The root of the problem, I believe, is at we’re already making too much money for it to really matter.

We get stuck in a comfort zone, doing every year for clients what we’ve always done, and as a result, we make pretty close to what we’ve always made in terms of financial reward.

I’d like to set you a challenge for the New Year. In 2009 I would like to see you develop a new service that you can sell to your larger, more successful clients. It should not be time-based, so we don’t have to price the service by the hour.

It should not be entirely dependent upon partner’s involvement, as it should be something that can be delegated downwards to more junior people within the firm, and it should be something of high perceived value to your clients.

How about doing 3 hours work and delivering such value that the client happily pays you $5,000 for and refers more business to you? Not possible? I beg to differ.

This is a simple idea, but one which can make a substantial difference to you and your firm’s bottom line. The problem is that we are all too busy chasing our tails. A client calls with a mundane question and we drop everything to deal with that.

A new client walks in with 4 years outstanding financial statements to be prepared, and we get straight onto it for them.

Another client calls to ask if it’s cheaper to lease or buy new underwear and immediately we research the situation for them.

All these tasks are mundane, low perceived value, low margin work. If only we would take the time to say ’no’ and instead invest in ourselves for a while by being a little creative and designing a new high perceived value service that our better clients are secretly craving.

As part of your planning process for next year, I would urge you to break out of your comfort zone and do something totally radical instead. Such as, creating what I call ‘C4’. ‘C4’ stands for ‘Credit Control and Cash Collection’. What I mean by this is creating your very own program to teach clients how to assess new customers for credit worthiness and then apply strict credit control procedures to the management of their account.

Or you could take CCH Profit Driver to create a benchmarking financial analysis tool. This is much simpler than it sounds, takes very little time, but can have a major impact on the client’s financial results going forward and thus is of high value to your clients.

What appears to be a simple service to us can have a huge impact on the financial performance of our client, and they will pay accordingly.

I promise you it will be worth the time, effort and money to create a brand new income stream for the practice. Many of you will wish you had done it years ago.

So I will leave you with the challenge to create one new service that you can sell to your clients next year at rates far above your regular hourly rate and watch your bottom line grow.

Season’s Greetings to all my readers, see you next year.