Your business advisory implementation doesn’t have to grind to a halt during busy season.
As a partner myself, I was acutely aware of the frustrations brought about by ‘busy season’. Nothing was more frustrating than being part way through implementing a growth strategy when a compliance deadline came into sight. We would not only lose momentum with our action plan, but we would often emerge six weeks later trying to remember where we were up to.
It’s also important to remember that all firms are inundated during busy time. Thus, if you can invest in your development right now, you will be able to make greater progress in comparison to firms who are simply trying to get through their current workload.
Recently, a firm approached us for help implementing value add service and I threw down the challenge to make it happen now, regardless of the upcoming busy season. I’ll tell you how they went later on, but first I want to share the strategy.
Premium Practice model maintains ultimate strategic view for busy seasons
It should be no surprise to my regular readers that I believe the solution lies in the Premium Practice model.
Our client had worked through the first two stages of this model so they already had a clear 10 Year Vision and a Three Year Implementation plan in place. This meant that they were in a prime position to be able to action my tip and capitalise on the benefits.
If you don’t have the first two in place yet, you can still benefit and will be better off than if you did nothing at all.
If you do want help, take a look at the Chairman’s Program – it’s a full service consulting package in which I personally guide you through the planning and implementation stages.
Most effective strategy for Growth during Busy Season (even if you haven’t started business advisory implementation)
The single most effective action you can implement during busy season is to get focused on 3 key strategies that you will implement over the next 90 days.
I guarantee, that if you can make the time this week, to decide on three key strategies and maintain a focus on implementing them over the coming three months, your firm will continue to grow despite the normal disorder of busy season.
Let’s get into how you make this happen.
A guide for implementing your 3 key strategies over 90 days
I use the same outline with consulting clients that I used when I was in practice. It works exceptionally well during normal times, but it still remains the best strategy I ever used to maintain our firm’s profit goals during busy season.
Your Three Key Strategies
- Pick strategies that the whole team can be involved in.
- It means you need to sell the reason why this strategy is right for the firm and for the team, but it also means they can help you make it happen.
- Layout the steps and templates needed.
- Follow-up and support the design and implementation.
- Train the whole team on how it works making sure they know exactly why the strategy is important to the firm and clients.
- Report back on progress and wins.
- This means tracking results, and keeping the whole team focused on real time outcomes.
- Celebrate.
- Make sure you take time to celebrate milestones reached and acknowledge team and individual contributions appropriately.
Tips for staying on track when it is busy
- Allocate weekly implementation sessions.
- If you don’t schedule the time, it’s too easy to lose momentum. Go ahead and book yourself 90 minutes every week for the next three months.
- Remember that Strategy > Milestones > Tasks
- Being clear on your task means maintaining momentum towards the Milestones that drive the task to completion.
- Eg. “Today I’m going to flowchart the system.” Regardless of how long it takes, you know you have to achieve that task before you leave the session.
Case Study: How one firm drove their business advisory implementation during Tax Planning Season
Once you’re clear on the path it’s all about taking up the challenge and making it happen. The following is a live case study of a firm that did this.
Strategy to develop clear service offering prior to this year’s tax planning season
Imagine this… A suburban Sydney firm with its fingers firmly on the technology button were looking for ways to generate more revenue from existing clients by offering them tremendous value.
The large volume of compliance services has been keeping them busy but was starting to level off and growth from this service line was starting to slow. Additionally, the value added services they were delivering to clients were really projects, meaning that their key people were extremely busy and there was no real consistency in the delivery of these services.
The Partners wanted to find a way to take their knowledge and ‘compartmentalise’ this for their clients so that they could sell and deliver more value added services. Further, they wanted to build these services so the team could be more involved in delivery, know how to price them and learn how to talk about the product in client language in order to communicate benefits and create demand.
The Firm began the 90 day phase by isolating three key strategies that were determined to be crucial to overall growth goals. These were diligently monitored and nurtured on a weekly basis with a combination of partner sessions, team meetings and one on one coaching exercises with myself.
At the end of the three months, they reported several unexpected outcomes in addition to the achievement of their KPI’s.
Key Outcomes for the Case Study Client
There were several lessons from the challenge of “making it happen now”.
“We started approaching clients differently about our new service packages and VAS products and the response has been very positive: clients are moving to the buying stage a lot earlier”.
The clarity of the service communication with clients translated into faster transactions, and smoother transitions into the new products.
What they implemented in the practice as a result of this…
“We now have a structured deliver tools to demonstrate how it works and documents to assist in the decision process for the client so they are not left in the dark on making the right choices for them”.
The Firm had a new, simplified business model and a clear communication methodology with clients.
As a result they increased value added service revenue and new clients.
“We have successfully sold $70,000 worth of value added services and picked up $50,000 in new clients.”
This created a positive environment for future growth…
“We have total confidence in doubling our revenue within the next 12 months, and now have the activity plan to make that happen.”
Get your priorities right with the FREE TOOL “DRIVING SUCCESS DIAGNOSTIC“
Of the firms I speak to on a weekly basis, three quarters of them are missing TWO CRUCIAL elements needed to grow their business. Until you identify these in your firm and take the steps to implement them, your firm cannot grow into the next tier.
This free tool, the Driving Success Diagnostic, will quickly position you to take the next step towards growing your firm.
- Understand exactly the stage or step that’s currently holding up implementation
- Get focused on “what to do next” to move forward with implementation
- Become confident that your results are closer than you think…
Access the Diagnostic in Google Docs here.
You may also download a printable PDF here.
“The clearer you are on your essential business building tasks, the easier it is to get them done because you understand how important they are and exactly how the firm will profit from their implementation.” – Andrew Robertson, TwentySix Group