The Moment
On stage at an accounting conference this year, I revealed a slide with just two lines in huge letters, the first line was in red, the second in green:
WE GIVE THEM THE BUSINESS THEY NEED
SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE THE LIFE THEY WANT
It was the ultimate punchline to a story about one of my accounting clients having an epiphany, a breakthrough in how to truly differentiate their firm.
The Realisation
The clients who pay you the most, value you the highest, generate the most profit, create the most referrals and stay the longest; all have one thing in common:
They are paying you to create for them the business they need, so that they can have the life they want.
Yet, most of our clients go through years of working with us without ever being asked:
- What are you really in business for?
- Why did you start?
- Why do you continue?
- What kind of business do you need to have the life you want?
The Opportunity
When you ask these questions, clients describe, not service lines but experiences, outcomes and improvements they want to feel.
And through your professional experience, you’ll know exactly what service lines or solutions those translate to.
This creates mutual improvement, the upward spiral where helping them helps you.
That’s why I used to call my ventures Upward Spiral because that’s the point of being in professional services:
The true professional advisor exists to create improvement for themselves by creating it for their clients.
The Challenge
If you see yourself purely as a compliance agent or government tax agent, you may be reading the wrong newsletter.
The BISSETT Bullet and what follows in the year ahead is for those who want to:
- Create improvement in their own lives
- Create improvement in their own firms
- Create improvement in their clients’ firms
Because those three things are inseparably linked.
The Bullet
Ask yourself:
- What type of practice do you need to have the life you want?
- What type of business must you create for your clients so they can have the life they want?
To your success
Martin Bissett
