The third and final part of a conversation between business development expert Rob Brown and Australia’s accountancy thought leader Trent Mclaren focuses on a future-proof survival plan for accountants.
And at the heart of navigating tomorrow’s professional landscape is a business-winning team.
Rob, who’s speaking at Accountex 2018, asks Trent: “How can professional firms best encourage or incentivise their people to win business?”
Trent, head of accounting at Practice Ignition, sees KPIs and mission statements as key factors in establishing the right culture. The aim should be summed up as: ‘This is what we did last month, this is what we want to do this month, this is what we need to do, week on week.’
Business winning attitude
“If that’s your focus, you can only track what gets measured, and if you’re not doing that with your team, but wondering why they’re not doing it for you, then there’s your answer. But not all accountants are in that business-winning frame of mind. “They don’t all have that hungry urge,” says Trent.
“So you’ve really got to identify who is hungry, and who wants to win business? And then, who are my hard workers that are the more introverted ones, the ones that are great with the client, work? And then, balance it out that way, and make sure you apply those roles accordingly.
“I think about a good football team. You’ve got different positions for different things. You wouldn’t want to put your goalkeeper as a striker, because that wouldn’t make sense.”
Rob asks: “What do you see in progressive firms? What do you see them doing really well, to grow, and thrive, in today’s competitive world?”
Trent suggests: “Start building products and services around clients. What do our clients need? What do they want? How do we help them be successful?”
Put your customers first
“Then building customised services around that. Because, if you do that, then they’ll grow. If they grow, you’ll grow. Put your customers first, in terms of what their needs and desires are, and solve those things.
“Even if it’s things they don’t necessarily understand, or identify with, it’s your role and responsibility to help them understand what their opportunities are, based on the circumstances that they’ve presented to you.
He adds:”I’m seeing a lot of accountants look outside of the accounting industry for technology that can help them scale their practice. I’m seeing a lot of firms using things like Slack, Skype, Zoom… using all these different platforms to interact and engage with their clients that improve the communications internally with their teams.
The next five years
And Rob’s final question for Trent is: “What excites you most about the next few years, when you look in your industry?”
Trent says: “I get excited when I see firms start looking at better ways to innovate their technology?” When firms say this: “Oh, my goodness. This is so good. I literally don’t have to spend 10 hours every month doing this anymore. It’ll just automatically happen.”
Good example, we just practised the initial, and we just released a really cool integration in December, which would now allow all of our accounting firms to trigger five or 10 different actions to occur, once a proposal is accepted. So, for a lot of firms at the moment, if you’re doing it all, let’s say, manually. It’s a Word document. They print it, sign it, scan it, and send it to the client. Client gets it, prints own scan, send back.
“That’s the kind of stuff that gets me really excited, because it’s kind of mindblowing.”
So, roll on the future!
