Stop Selling and Start Doing

Source: Rain Today

Accountants overvalue their talents. They can hardly be faulted for it, having spent their entire careers becoming expert at what they do. It seems cruel to belittle it. Prospective clients encourage this because they believe technical expertise is the most important factor in selecting an accountant. But they have limited ability to evaluate technical expertise.

Technical expertise may get you to a client meeting. Once there, however, it will not help. It might hurt, because focusing on your technical expertise is about you, not about the client.

The best way to demonstrate your technical expertise is to provide a sample of it. Do this by using your meeting time to do something for the client. (Editor’s note: The article doesn’t give an example, but one idea is to help the prospect with an analysis such as would be required in a buy v. lease decision, or a make v. buy decision.)

From Rain Today, www.raintoday.com, August 1, 2007. For the complete article, click here.