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Assessing
Your Bench Strength
Several
firms that I have worked with for many years now, are seriously looking
at their bench-strength when it comes to their team of CAs, CGAs and
technicians, and are looking to improve their overall strength.
If the
Partners truly want to be involved in higher value assignments, they
need to create the time to ‘sell’ the concepts to their chosen clients,
and then have the time to deliver these services.
Not an
easy task in today’s environment where nobody seems to have enough time
to do the day to day work required of them, never mind these ‘value-billing’
opportunities. As such, many firms put it on the ‘to-do’ pile, and,
of course, it never gets done!
These Partners
want to be able to pass more work down to staff members, and some of
these firms feel that they do not have sufficient strength in depth
among their team to be able to do so to the extent that they would like
to, and that causes another reason for delaying a start to value billing
assignments.
Others
are planning to spend five to ten extra minutes with each corporate
client during their year-end review meeting, in order to ask some pretty
important questions of their major clients. They want to do this so
that they can get even deeper involved in their clients’ affairs, and
add value to their already strong relationship.
The types
of questions they’re thinking of asking include:
• What
would happen to your family if you were to meet a premature and untimely
death?
•
When do you plan to retire from the business?
• What do you plan to live off when this day comes?
• What exit strategy do you have right now?
• Is this sufficient/realistic?
• What do you think your business is worth?
There are,
of course, many others, but this is a good start. The whole purpose
of this exercise is to get the client thinking beyond this year’s financial
statements and tax returns, although important, and to look at the bigger
picture. It’s amazing how many educated clients miss what we would think
should be obvious.
For example,
how many of your own clients have an up to date will? I’d wager that
many of your clients either don’t have a will at all, or their will
hasn’t been reviewed for many years. Both dangerous scenarios, and both
could produce some very nice tax planning work for you.
The type
of engagements that can be generated by asking these simple questions
can make a major contribution to your bottom line, as these types of
projects are often seen by your clients as high-value work, and as such,
they expect to pay fees commensurate with their perception of the level
of service you are providing.
However,
in order to be able to have the time to be able to get involved in these
projects, you will need to have a team that you can delegate work to.
It’s an old habit that many practitioners endure; ‘Well, I’m here with
the client – I might as well make the journal adjustments myself’ is
a common thought many a practitioner experiences.
But STOP!
If you could pass that work back to someone else, you won’t get tied
up for another half an hour.
Pass the
file to a staff member who is just as capable of doing the work, and
instead, ask your client some of the above questions.
However,
there are several barriers that prevent many practitioners from doing
this;
• I don’t have the staff to pass the work to
• I do have staff, but they’re not ready for this yet
• I don’t trust my staff to do it as well as I could
• My clients aren’t interested in this other stuff
• I don’t have the time to do this
All of
the above are valid thoughts, but all are red herrings. You see, if
you don’t get around to doing this type of work with your clients...
someone else will, and then you’ll be kicking yourself for not getting
around to it.
It boils
down to MAKING the time to do these things and having the tenacity to
follow through on them. I can’t tell you where to start, as each firm
is different, but I can tell you that now is the time to review your
processes, bench strength and how you’re going to handle year-end review
meetings next tax season.
The sooner
you do it, the better prepared you’ll be next year, and the more likely
it is that next year will be your most profitable of all. And who wouldn’t
want that?
© 2003-2011,
Steve McIntyre-Smith. All Rights Reserved. |
