From Accountant to Consultant

Source: CPA Trendlines

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Gale Crosley.

Admit it. You're good at what you do. Your clients trust your proven ability to help improve their businesses. Perhaps it's time to take the step of enlarging your vision of yourself from accountant to consultant.

What is Consulting, Anyway?

Consulting is fundamentally a proactive pursuit. As such, it differs from compliance-related duties that are based largely on assessing and responding to existing financial conditions. Consulting is about influencing the future.

Think “Value,” not “Time”

One obstacle for many CPAs is determining how to charge for consultation. How do you bill for creating strategies and improving business conditions? How do you charge for an idea that may have come to you in a flash, but would never have come at all without years of experience?

Think about this: Your physician doesn't charge less because he or she sees you for 10 minutes rather than 30, right? What matters is that the doctor solved your problem. The same applies here.

I urge CPAs to package and price the advice they offer differently from how they charge for other services, for example on a project or retainer basis. This lends the work the significance it deserves while moving you away from legal-style, minute-by-minute billing that doesn't reflect the nature of the work.

What's important is to make sure your clients understand the value of your offering. What may seem a relatively simple suggestion could significantly shortcut the amount of time a client has to spend on a matter. The value of days or even weeks of time? The value of better decision-making? Considerable! The fact that you've seen many similar situations and can reliably predict the outcome is what your client is buying.

For the complete article, read “Expand Your Vision and Expand Your Business.”

From CPA Trendlines, December 11, 2013, http://cpatrendlines.com.