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Promoting Continuous Improvement
in CPA Firm Leadership.
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Building a Consulting Niche is About Relationships
by Richard Rinehart
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Building a consulting niche in a CPA firm is about
relationships—but with whom? Have you ever had the experience of
developing a new consulting niche for your firm and none of your
partners or professional staff support your efforts by giving you
potential clients? There are many reasons why this might be so. Your
partner compensation plan doesn’t reward cross-selling services. Your
partners and staff lack an understanding of the product or service and
are not able to recognize an opportunity. There is a lack of perceived
client need among your partners and staff. The single biggest reason why
new consulting niches fail is because of a lack of relationship. Either
you as the champion of the new consulting niche have not built the right
relationship with your partners or your partners have not built the
right relationship with their clients.
How is
Your Relationship With Your Partners?
When it comes
to consulting niches such as business valuation, strategic planning,
financial modeling or performance measurement, your partners are
critical referral sources. They have the relationships with their
clients and should know what they need and when they need it. (More
about that later.) When you think about your other referral sources such
as bankers, attorneys, investment advisors and insurance brokers, how do
you treat them?
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Do you take
them out to lunch?
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Do you ask
them “how’s business”?
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Do you send
them articles?
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Do you
refer new projects or clients to them?
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Do you
thank them for their referrals?
Your partners
are no different than other referral sources. They need attention. They
respond to praise. An occasional “thank you” and a referral back once in
a while are in order. In many ways, your partners hold you to a higher
standard of appropriate behavior than other referral sources. Your
partners are putting their annuity relationships on the line for your
consulting niche. Your great work or not so great work on their clients
will reflect on them, on you, and on your firm.
In most
firms, both the client relationship partner and the consulting partner
will get some credit through compensation for internal referrals. Be
sure you keep track of both the number and dollar value of referrals.
Send out an e-mail every time you receive a referral from a partner.
Praise him/her publicly. Tell the story of how you got the referral,
what the value was to the client and what the fees were to the firm. Ask
your partners for referrals. Your continued efforts in building internal
referral relationshipswill not go unrewarded.
How are Your Partners’
Relationships With Their Clients?
I have found
that top CPA marketers of consulting products and services have as their
primary relationship the client CEO. While this is not always true, it
is certainly true in most cases when the client is a closely held
business. CEOs buy consulting products and services more often than CFOs
or controllers.
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Your partners are no
different than other referral sources. They need attention. They
respond to praise. An occasional
thank you and a referral back once in a while are
in order. |
If you think
about which partners in your firm sell more consulting products and
services you will probably find it to be those with CEO relationships.
If your partners’ primary relationships are with CFOs and controllers
focused on compliance services such as audit, review and compilation, or
tax services, it is unlikely that they have positioned themselves to
introduce your new consulting niche.
Ask all of your partners to give you two or three
names of clients that may need the new consulting product or service.
Compile a list of those clients and begin working with your partners to
schedule meetings with the clients. Ask them to take you with them the
next time they have lunch with a client CEO. Prepare for the
meetings by reviewing client files. Talk to your partners about the
client’s “hot” buttons.
Be prepared when you meet with the clients. You
may need to help your partners get started with their clients. Let them
see how you present the consulting niche. Let your partner position you
as the firm “guru” in the consulting niche. Tell them how to set up the
lunch meeting. For example, “Client, I’d like to set up a lunch meeting
with you and my partner, Sam. Sam is the “guru” of a new consulting
product or service that I think you would find valuable.”
Talk to your partners about building their books
of business through building better relationships with their clients.
The better they understand the needs, wants and desires of their
clients, the more likely they will be to see opportunities for
additional work for your firm. Show your partners how much in additional
fees are represented if they can introduce the consulting niche to
several clients. Ask them which is easier, selling additional work to
existing clients or finding new clients.
Building Referral
Relationships Takes Time
Building
referral relationships takes time, whether it is building relationships
with your partners or helping your partners build relationships with
their clients. If both types of relationships are not right, it makes
selling a consulting niche inside a CPA firm an uphill battle fraught
with frustration. If the relationships are right, the second, third or
fourth consulting niche dropped into a CPA firm’s client base will yield
rich rewards for the firm and those who take the time to build
relationships.
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Rich Rinehart is a CPA and consultant to CPA/Consulting firms. He
assists firms nationally with practice development, strategic planning,
facilitation of partner retreats, partner compensation, succession, and
development of their consulting practices. He is cofounder of GRANT
Partners, LLC in Denver, Colorado, consultants to professional
service firms.
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Click here to send Rich an e-mail. |
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