All posts from March 2010

I coach youth soccer and have worked with a team for several years now.  They have become a very good team, ranked in the top 50 of all Northern California teams in the age group, and the games have become incredibly competitive.  Last season I implemented something that helped push them to the next level.

See as a coach, like a business manager, you are striving to get the best from all your players all the time.  What a lot of us do is focus on the technical stuff, in soccer this is touch and control, vision, moving the ball, moving off the ball, passing and finishing among dozens of other skills and techniques.  In an accounting firm, this might be answering the phone, greeting visitors, running client meetings, processing returns, balancing ledgers, filing, reviewing, auditing and dozens of other critical functions.

Last season my boys were in the championship game of a tournament.  They had dominated their bracket winning all three games and outscoring the opponents 15-0.  They were playing in top form when we went into the final game.  In this final game they came out flat, were out of sync, were not moving well, were not passing well and were not creating chances.  They gave up two great chances to the opponent, one resulting in an opposition goal.  It was 97 degrees on a Sunday afternoon in September when they came off the field at halftime down 0-1.

As a coach, like a business manager, you have all sorts of choices of how to respond and give direction when your team is not performing the way you desire.  My boys know how to play the game, they know each position, its role and how to execute their jobs in those roles.  They did not need me telling them how to do this again.  I needed to tell them they could do this and put them in a good frame of thought to go get it done.

At halftime we discussed three corrections to make in the play of the game and then… I told the boys two jokes.  After the second joke, they were all laughing and commenting on the jokes to each other.  We huddled up then and, in this new frame of mind, focused on the second half.  The boys went out and scored 5 goals and won the championship game 5-1.

Right now in your office it is likely 97% stress on a Tuesday morning.  Your team is in the final stretch of tax season and they might need you to help them reframe their thinking.  Check in with them regularly, let them all know you are in it together and then have a good laugh.  I suspect the end of the season might go more smoothly, be more enjoyable and everyone will perform a bit better.

Comments (0) • Posted March 23rd, 2010 at 9:17am

Edi Osborne wrote a great article, Interesting vs. interested – advice from a prospect, on AccountingWEB. This letter from a potential prospect describes the frustration in dealing with CPAs who are interesting people but wonders if they are interested in the prospect and the business. Reading this, I’m reminded of the Theodore Roosevelt quote, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

I wrote about caring in my earlier blog Building Rapport is a Key to Creating Client Loyalty. That posting covered using tax appointments to communicate how much you care. Here are some guidelines to use for meetings with potential business clients.

1. Prior to the meeting, do your homework. Find out what you can about the prospect and the company. There are many sources of intelligence regarding businesses and individuals.

2. Prior to the meeting, get mentally prepared for the meeting. Work on emotional detachment, as well as making others okay. You are here to serve their needs not your own, so be sure to put your agenda aside and focus on how you are going to learn as much as you can about the prospect and their business.

3. As a first step in your meeting, use your approach to bond and establish rapport with the prospect.  This is a chance to begin breaking down barriers and establishing some trust.

4. As a second step in your meeting, qualify the opportunity.  Take some time to discover the prospect’s needs, emotional motivation for doing business, the economics of that motivation and the decision making process.

5. Now that you have gathered a fair bit of information about the prospect, you are prepared to discuss how you can provide solutions that address the needs mentioned.  These may be services you have, consulting, value billing or other solutions you have developed. 

6. Finally, end every meeting with clarity about whether there are next steps or not, what they are and who is responsible for them. 

How much you care about the prospect and their business will be apparent if you are thorough in your preparation, your meeting and your follow-up.  Following these guidelines will turn prospects into clients and you into their trusted advisor.

Comments (0) • Posted March 19th, 2010 at 9:00am

With tax season in full swing the last thing on most accounting and tax practice owners’ minds is buying, selling or merging their firms.  But for someone that hopes to sell their firm before the 2011 tax season, that is a year from now, the time to start is immediately after this tax season is finished.

We have found that those practice owners that start the selling process in April, May and June are much more likely to have a successful outcome (better choice of buyers, more money upfront and better overall price) than those that wait until October or November.

Many practitioners believe that buyers and merger partners will not want to close a transaction until the fall, or even just before the next tax season, and end up starting of the process too late.  Most buyers realize that in a competitive market, the time to buy or merge is when the best firm is available and that is not always on their time line. 

Another reason practice owners miss the sales window is they begin the process as a “For Sale By Owner” and work with only one or two buyers at a time.  They start talking to someone about buying or merging in May or June, and then let that process play out all summer, only to find out in the fall that the buyer or merger candidate is either not qualified or not as interested as they initially let on, leaving the seller less time to identify their successor.  

Keep in mind, most buyers see “For Sale Buy Owner” as an opportunity to get better terms from the seller and ultimately pay less.  A better way is to work through a process to identify multiple ready, willing and able buyer or merger candidates.  This aligns market forces so that you can identify the best successor for your clients (and staff) and ultimately end up with the best price and terms.

Comments (0) • Posted March 17th, 2010 at 1:35pm

Rita Keller, in her recent blog Surroundings Really Do Matter, asks the question "do people perform better work in a neat, clean, organized environment than they do in an environment of disorder?"   She lists points to ponder that relate to staff and management issues, such as how cluttered offices hinder the working environment with loss of productivity and ultimately increased stress.  It is interesting because we often have to address this in the sale of a practice.

Many years ago I went to meet a prospective seller of a CPA practice.  His entire office was a disorganized mess.  From dust and cobwebs to piles and piles of files and other paperwork.  I recommended that he really ought to clean and organize the office before we have a buyer come to meet with him .  After several weeks of preparation he told me he was ready.  So I set up a meeting with a prospective buyer.  After the meeting the buyer said, "John, I would need to spend $50,000 just to get that place organized."

Whether we are working with a firm who is looking to grow or a client who is looking to sell his or her firm one of our main concerns is the office condition.  Remember, there is only one chance to make a first impression to any prospective client or buyer of the firm. 

Here are a few quick tips you might be able to use.

• Use some type of a contact management system.
• Establish a routine for incoming mail.
• Keep your desktop and workspaces available for actual work. One former client had a one file out at a time policy that each person in the office followed.
• Consider a file system utilizing less paper (or better yet paperless).  You can start by scanning your current year files.
• Schedule a few minutes each day for planning, clean up and organizing.

For more ideas take a look a Rita’s blog.

Comments (8) • Posted March 3rd, 2010 at 7:38am