October 25, 2023

Episode 94: Darren Glanville of Fathom

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The Story

It’s stating the obvious to say that when you and your team build the knowledge, the skills and the habits that result in deeper, more trusting, more valuable relationships with your clients, you'll end up with a more successful firm.

That success comes because deeper relationships with clients mean that they’ll stay with you longer, they’ll be more loyal, they’ll buy more services from you, they’ll be more willing to pay higher fees and, yes, they’ll recommend you to their friends in business as well.

On this Humanise The Numbers podcast with Darren Glanville, the country manager for Fathom, you'll hear Darren unpack and share his insights on how, when you and your team drop into learning mode, you are able to build deeper and more trusting relationships with your clients.

‘Learning mode’ is about being curious, and what I loved about the conversation with Darren was this blend of questions, conversations and curiosity about the past, present and future, and how this leads to those stronger, more trusting conversations and deeper relationships with clients.

By checking out this podcast with Darren, you'll tap into his experience of working with accountants over many years. You'll be signposted to the knowledge, the skills and the habits needed to enhance the quality of the relationships you and your team have with your clients.

Scroll down this podcast episode page for the contact information for Darren and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

The Solution:

It starts with team onboarding. What team are they coming into? What do we expect of them? What is their role? Who can they go to if they have questions?

We instill from day one that there is no such thing as a silly question and we take our time onboarding them.

We'd like to think that by that point we've hired culturally, now it's just a case of teaching the skills and, so far, that's not been a negative thing for us. We haven't really seen our onboarding process backfiring, so hopefully we've got that nailed.

But it is important that you show them, you teach them, and you get them comfortable with asking questions. There's a lot of technical background stuff that we go through in terms of understanding accounting, the principles of accounting, and why that's important.

They spend time answering support tickets, so they see firsthand how they come through and then they're let loose on them as well.

When they have a good understanding of all of that we slowly introduce customers to them and them to customers so they can start to get a feel for that, so we're not dropping people in the ocean straight away and expecting them to swim, the armbands are on, the buoys are on and the support is there.

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Connect with Darren

Connect with Paul


Resources relating to this podcast:

During the podcast, Paul and Darren discuss KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and the importance of tracking and measuring – but tracking and measuring the right things.

Darren believes that this starts with asking the right questions:

•  What are your KPIs?
•  What are you measuring?
•  Why are you measuring that?
•  What is your 'North Star' metric?
•  What do you hope to see as a result?

Darren emphasises the importance of measuring the right things and not simply measuring something because you think you should.

Many accountancy firm owners and managing partners measure what they think is right rather than measuring what matters most.

We know accountants love to track and measure – let’s make sure you track and measure the right things in your firm. Click here to read this Business Breakthrough report – Healthy Heartfelt KPIs – and discover how to use them as key PREDICTIVE indicators.



During the discussion, Paul mentions the High Performance podcast, with Jake Humphrey and Damien Hughes, in relation to the inspiring triathlete, Chrissie Wellington.

Darren talks about people wanting to feel passionate about doing something, and Paul recalls the podcast with Chrissie. Chrissie did a bit of running, cycling and swimming when she was younger, but she did not know she loved triathlons until she actually did them.

So how do you know your team is enthusiastic about doing something unless you allow them the space and give them the confidence to try it?

Darren firmly believes that you have to give your team members the opportunity and the confidence to try something, but if after that they say it's not for them, you have to respect that.



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