Helping Your Small Clients

Source: ConvergenceCoaching, LLC Inspired Ideas

In this blog, Michelle Baca* writes about helping small business clients succeed. Here are some excerpts.

• Ask questions at the end of each client meeting or phone call, such as:
  • What concerns or challenges are you dealing with in your business?
  • What are your goals for 2010?
  • What critical decisions are you facing?
  • How are we doing for you?
  • How else can we support your accounting or business planning functions in your organization?
  • Or just ask "How's business?"
• Look for ways to add value, such as:
  • Getting to know them and their industry.
  • Understand their business cycles.
  • Provide benchmarking statistics.
  • Make suggestions for process improvements.
  • Understand your clients' lives and businesses so you can provide tax savings advice.
  • Introduce them to your network of contacts (e.g., bankers) to ensure they have the right financing.
• Ask satisfied clients who else they may know that could benefit from the same service. You may be surprised at how willing they are to refer you.
• In this economy, many businesses are in financial crisis and you can act as a resource to turn to in tough economic times. SourceMedia's Accountants Media Group issued a Special Report in the current issue of Accounting Today entitled "CPA Firms Answer SOS Calls From Small Biz Clients" and gave examples of how firms are doing exactly this.
• As Carly Bohach suggests in another recent Accounting Today article, CPAs Get Credit Flowing to Cash-Starved SMBs, "The bottom line is that CPAs have to put on their chief financial officer/controller hats."

For the complete post, see "Tending Your Small Business Clients," January 7, 2010.

From ConvergenceCoaching, LLC Inspired Ideas, http://blog.convergencecoaching.com/.

*Michelle Baca is a member of ConvergenceCoaching, LLC, a national leadership and marketing consulting firm dedicated to helping CPA and IT firms achieve success by helping them develop and implement leadership, succession, marketing, and training and development plans. She is a frequent speaker at association meetings and in-firm training engagements.