Why Do You Do What You Do?

Source: CPA Success

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a November 24 blog entry.

How do you serve your clients?

By preparing their tax returns? Auditing their financials? Diversifying their portfolios?

Don't make me laugh. If those are your reasons for being, you're not helping anybody.

Just ask Edi Osborne.

"People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it," Osborne, a business performance management thought leader and author of Strategic Benchmarking for Success, told a crowd of CPAs at Accounting Today's Growth and Profitability Summit in Las Vegas. "What you do is the manifestation of what you are passionate about."

Think about it. Is your passion selling tax or accounting services? Is that truly why you got into the business?

Of course not. You wanted to help people, right? You wanted to give your clients insight—to help them understand how the numbers impact their long-term goals.

Somewhere along the way, though, we all became salespeople. In Osborne's words, we're out there "committing random acts of consulting." We're trying to sell as much as we possibly can without really understanding what the client needs.

Here's the thing: According to Osborne, the really good clients don't want your services. They want your passion. They want to know that you care about their problems and are committed to finding a solution that's right for them.

"Most firms take whatever comes through the door," Osborne said. "Tax and accounting services should be a byproduct of an advisory relationship. They should not be the focus of that relationship. By focusing first on why you do what you do, you will attract like-minded clients and talent that appreciate and value your passion."

For the complete blog entry, read "Nothing great is accomplished without passion."

From CPA Success, the blog of the Maryland Association of CPAs, www.cpasuccess.com, November 24, 2010.