It can often feel like pushing water uphill when it comes to getting your team to embrace the necessary changes to secure the future success of your firm. In our 20 years of working with accountancy firms, we’ve experienced this more often than not.
However, there are ways and means, techniques and processes that you can use to help your team want to change, to embrace change, so that it’s your team, and not you, which takes the lead in driving change. You can leverage and scale change in such a way that, not only do you secure a future firm, you get a firm that can thrive because there’s a whole team driving these initiatives.
This podcast was recorded with David Hassall, one of the founders of XU Magazine and an owner of a reasonably substantial accountancy firm as well. David shares some really powerful insights about recruitment, along with how to build stronger relationships with clients and how you get your team to embrace necessary change.
So why not join us on this humanisethenumbers.online podcast or at your favourite podcast platform to hear these amazing insights from David Hassall.
The Solution:
I'm a big believer in being on the front foot because then you’re in a really good place to add so much value.
We did a bit of a test – we agreed that we would monitor closely, for a couple of months, what we call our ‘Month 9 meetings’, more than we would normally monitor them, and see what the result was in terms of pure cash in the till. And when we looked, it was bags of cash, because we got work out of it, client recommendations out of it and, if nothing else, we got a happy client out of it and we then discussed additional things in the meeting.
For example, we had one client where we had to put his fees up by, it was like 1500%, and we could not just send that across to them as we knew it would not go down well. But because we were having that meeting, we were able to sit down with the client and explain why we were doing it.
The test was worthwhile as sometimes you do have to make sure you and the client are getting the value out of the numbers from a relationship and operational perspective.
SHOW NOTES
Connect with David
Connect with Paul
Resources relating to this podcast:
Listen to Paul and David talk about recruitment and the importance to your firm of hiring the right people for the right role.
David discusses hiring relationship and numbers people and how he has found, based on past experience, that hiring very good, steady team members that offer a safe pair of hands is easier than hiring blue sky, ambitious people.
He also believes that steady team members are easier to keep.
He discusses his recruitment strategy and how gut feeling plays as big a part in the process as running them through real-work scenarios to challenge them, as well as the importance of offering up the occasional curve ball.
This Bitesize Business Breakthrough will show you that when you follow a proven process you can be confident you’ll recruit the best people for your firm. When you interview well, you hire well, and you'll reap the rewards of working with great people.
Click the link on the button to discover how to hire the right people in your firm, those who are not only right for the job, but who also align with the values, culture and behavioural standards of the rest of your team.
Remarkable Practice Manager Programme.
Could your managers be more skilful, more motivated, or more engaged to deliver better results for your firm?
In your accountancy firm, it’s not just your financial and technical skills and knowledge that drive performance, it’s the quality of your managers.
When your managers grow in capability and confidence, everything else in your firm improves:
- Team engagement goes up
- Client loyalty strengthens
- Work quality and turnaround time improve
- Profitability increases
The return on investment is clear. When your managers develop, your people deliver.
That is exactly why we created our Manager Development Programme — built specifically for the challenges and expectations of modern accountancy firms.
If you want a stronger firm, start with stronger managers.
Click the button below to read more about our Remarkable Manager Programme and if you want to discuss it further, please get in touch via the 'chat with us now' button on the website - it's a real person.
Remarkable Practice Client Manager Programme.
You secure your firm’s future growth and profitability when your clients are loyal, recommend you more, buy additional services and are open to regular price increases.
And what drives all of that?
Not just technical quality. Not just deadlines met.
It’s the behaviour and mindset of your client managers.
When your client managers improve how they engage and care for clients, your firm’s results improve.
So the question is: Could you be doing more to build your client managers’ skills and mindset?
That’s exactly what our Client Manager Programme is designed to do.
It helps client managers:
- Build deeper client relationships
- Deliver value beyond the numbers
- Handle pricing conversations with confidence
- Spot and act on opportunities for additional services
Great client care is no longer a soft skill. It is a strategic advantage.
Click the button below to read more about our Remarkable Client Manager Programme and if you want to discuss it further, please get in touch via the 'chat with us now' button on the website – it’s a real person.
Your Firm’s Future - by Douglas Aitken and Paul Shrimpling of Remarkable Practice
In a world of constant change, uncertainty, and increasing client expectations, one thing separates ambitious firms from the rest: Strategic health.
In our book, ‘Your Firm’s Future’, we share a practical framework built around 8 essential questions that will help you assess and build your strategic health.
Why does strategic health matter so much? Because when your firm is strategically healthy it benefits your team, your clients, in fact everyone connected with your firm.
Strategic health isn’t just an internal metric. It delivers a better outcome for everyone connected to your firm.
Click the button below to take the strategic health of your firm seriously by completing our 'Strategic Health Diagnostic’
or
Click the button below that to buy the book.