Transcript 12 ways to provide better service to clients, make more

Pennsylvania Society of
Tax and Accounting
Professionals
1
Practice Management
Retreat
June 17, 2015
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Presented by
Edward Mendlowitz, CPA
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Edward Mendlowitz, CPA
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Partner emeritus with
WithumSmith+Brown, PC
Author of 24 professional books
Admitted to practice before U.S. Tax
Court
On BottomLine/Personal panel of
experts
Practice management techniques have
been reported on by The Wall Street
Journal, and other publications
Testified twice before House Ways and
Means Committee on tax equity and
reform
Has been a Team Captain and
performed peer reviews for over 60
CPA firms
Professional sharing
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and issues – also free.
1. Quicker billing
 The perception of the value of your services decreases as the time
between the performance of the service and the billing date increases.
 Actually, the greatest value of your service is BEFORE you do any
work. The longer the gap between the work being done and the bill
bring received, the less likely you are to be paid in full.
 Fast billing equates to the clients’ perception of a professional
business attitude by the CPA.
 Clients get nervous when they are not billed promptly – they expect to
pay and don’t understand why they are not being billed.
 Delayed billing means a greater amount that will be due the
accountant. No single bill is significant in and of itself to the client.
However, accumulated billings lumped together can
be significant and this causes payment delays and
collection problems. Ask for retainers
 Accept credit cards
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1. Quicker billing
The lower the time gap between
doing the work and getting paid,
the more fun you’ll have
2. Anxiety busters: TIO, DIN, MIT*
 Eliminate your piles – TIO [piles include your unanswered telephone
calls and postal mail, your email in box, and work that is just not
completed…yet]
 Eliminate your “To Do” inventory – TIO
 Unpleasant things don’t go away – DIN
 If it has to be done, might as well do it now – deciding to do it later
creates a mortgage on your time – DIN
 You can only have 1 MIT – do that first [M = MOST, not ALMOST and
not the TOP 3,4 or10]
 Meet deadlines - TIO
 Disaster plan – DIN
* Touch It Once, Do It Now,
Most Important Thing
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2. Anxiety busters: TIO, DIN, MIT
The lower the amount of
what you put off till
tomorrow,
the more fun you’ll have
3. Putting the Q* in your oversight procedures
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What the real purpose of reviewing work is
Put Quality Control into the review process
Quality Obsession
9 times in a row: right and 10th time: relaxed =
procedures not being followed thereafter
*Q = Quality
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3. Putting the Q* in your QC procedures
The lower the errors,
the more fun you’ll have
4. More effective hiring and training
 Settling retards growth
 The alternative to getting what you want is reduced
expectations
 Make training an investment [compare to a manufacturer’s
investment in equipment]
 Assume you fired someone who wasn’t performing well.
What is their potential for success in the firm that then
hired them BECAUSE they seemed great at the interview!
And now consider the opposite – you are hiring the person
they fired! What is your chance of success with them?
• Review your past staffing successes and
failures.
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4. More effective hiring and training
The lower your turnover,
the more fun you’ll have
5. Commoditization
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Routinize your procedures
E-Myth concept [Recommended book: E-Myth Revisited
by Michael E. Gerber]
Automate, outsource, fool-proof, duplicate and
standardize processes
In spite of the above, never forget to treat your clients,
at a minimum, in the manner that they expect to be
treated; and never forget that they are your customers
and pay your salary; and it is your job to have them
feel they got their money’s worth!
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5.
Commoditization
The lower the number of your
nonstandardized procedures,
the more fun you’ll have
6. Interacting with clients
 Manage your client contacts
 You must have frequent “contact” with your top clients
 What about the rest of your clients? Is your 80th largest
client any less important to you than your 8th largest – I
bet they don’t think so
 If you look at your 81st to 100th largest clients as ONE
client, and you aggregate their fees, how large would
they be; how much time do you spend with them and on
their work; and how profitable are they compared to your
8th or 9th largest client; and how many
sleepless nights do you have because of
them versus because of your 8th or 9th
largest client?
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…interacting with clients (cont’d)
 Additional business from current clients
 Referrals from clients – best measure of their satisfaction
and their confidence in the service you provide
 What are your clients’ problems? and how do you respond?
 [Agenda item for your retreat (#7 ): Try applying
their
solutions to your practice business]
 Assume your largest client calls you later today to drop you,
what would you say to them?
 What would you wish you had done, and when,
that could have stopped you from being fired?
 Why not do it now - DIN
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6. Interacting with clients
The lower the number of client
generated meeting requests,
the more fun you’ll have
7. Partner retreats away from home
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Puts perspective in your practice
Develops and refines your vision
Defines goals of your practice
Take an “inventory” of your practice – where are you, and
where are you going? Is where you are going, where you
want to go; or where you thought you would be going at this
point in your life
 Do business plan of your practice as if it were starting today
 What stage of a business’ life cycle is your practice – ways
to jump start it if it is on the downward slope
 SWOT analysis
 Who is the firm’s leader – and why is it that
person
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…retreats (cont’d)
 Is the leader a reactive or proactive person (i.e. a problem
solver or a problem preventer?)
 To be a preventer, the leader must think about what can go
wrong and then implement procedures and processes to
avoid that – and not wait until the problem occurs (and then
be the best world class fixer upper)
 Distinction between fire prevention and fire fighting
 Is time spent putting out fires or planning for future and
sticking to a course fashioned from the leader’s vision?
 Practice lifecycle – how does a practice grow
when it starts and how does it grow after it
reaches maturity, and does it keep growing or is it
stagnated?
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…retreats (cont’d)
 What are the risks to your practice?
 What would happen if you had a big lawsuit; criminal
indictment against a partner; lost your right to practice before
the IRS or were suspended for a brief period; could not do
audits before completing a series of CPE programs; or lost
your CPA license because you did not reregister on time or
blew the CPE requirements; or lost your largest client that
accounted for 42% of your business?
 What do you think Arthur Andersen, Bear Stearns, Enron,
Merrill Lynch or Lehman Brothers wish they
had done differently?
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7. Partner retreats away from home
The lower the disagreements
between you and your partners,
the more fun you’ll have
8. Running more effective meetings
 Plan and direct your discussions
 Stick to the big picture issues
 Is the client and/or you getting value from the meeting
(and does the value exceed the cost?)
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8. Running more effective meetings
The lower the amount of control
others have over your meetings,
the more fun you’ll have
9. Building personal wealth outside of practice
 Qualified plans
 Other investments
 Eventual exit strategy
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9. Building personal wealth
The lower your worry about your
future financial security,
the more fun you’ll have
10. Revenue from clients
 How much of your revenue is from clients you had 10 years ago?
 How much are the fees from your top 10 (or 20) clients as a percent of
your total revenue?
 To what extent is the practice growing with clients that are growing or is
growth from new clients, and why?
 How did you get each of your top 10 clients?
 Are no profit and/or unpleasant clients dropped (Determine realization for
each client. Also determine family tree of a client before dropping them.)
 Existing or new clients – who are more profitable?
 Question: How much potential is expected from new clients? Do this for
the new clients you got 5 years ago – how much has been attained
vs. what you expected?
 Do low level activities crowd out high value
services?
 Fee increases – raising fees or rates – how often
should you?
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10. Revenue from clients
The lower the number of
slow payers and write offs,
the more fun you’ll have
11. Niches
 Niches create specialization, depth and concentration of
learning
 A niche can be an industry or service area
 Can a geographic area be a niche?
 Use in marketing - networking, cross referrals (e.g. bonding
companies), attorneys, consultants, focused advertising and
promotion.
 Staffing advantages: extra and directed training and CPE;
critical mass to spread cost of specialists
 Becoming a “player”
 Re: Your top 10 clients – are they in any special
niche (how many niches do these clients fall
into?)
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11. Niches
The lower the array of services
you personally need to be expert
in,
the more fun you’ll have
12. What clients really want
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Return their calls
Show up
Don’t miss deadlines
Be available
When a client complains…
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Deal with it immediately
A partner should handle complaint
How to respond
Recognize importance of complaint or issue to
client…and feel it
 Opportunity for you to improve and bond a stronger
relationship
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12. What clients really want
The lower your clients’
discontent,
the more fun you’ll have
13: Some items not covered
1. _______________________________________
2._______________________________________
3._______________________________________
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Things you will now do
1. _______________________________________
2._______________________________________
3._______________________________________
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Doing #1
– 12 =
+ You providing better service to
clients
+ You making more money
+ You having more fun
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You are welcome to call me with your
questions.
Ed
I can be reached at:
WithumSmith+Brown, PC
One Spring Street, 4th Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: 732.964.9329 Fax: 732.964.9330
e-mail: [email protected]
Blog: www.partners-network.com
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