Once upon a time there was a software vendor who served the accounting profession.
Their software was easy to use, strongly backed in terms of finance and personnel but was in direct competition to another software vendor who’d had years of a head start to work with accountants.
The thing is, this newer software not only possessed important features that the main competitor didn’t, but it was also a better solution for many of the clients that an accounting firm served.
Yet, when the software vendor asked the accountant to consider their solution as an OPTION not a REPLACEMENT; the accountant told them that they would never consider using anyone other than their existing solution.
“Is that what’s best for your clients?”, asked the software vendor to the accountant.
“What’s best for our clients hasn’t factored into our decision making”, came the depressing but entirely predictable reply from the accountant.
Please remember this week’s anecdote. The next time a business won’t change to your firm, won’t pay your price, won’t think what might be their best solution, and cling purely out of loyalty to an existing firm of accountants who may or may not be the best fit for them. This is what you do too.
Never be the firm, so blinded by process, routine or marketing indoctrination; that you’re ever guilty of saying ‘what’s best for the client hasn’t factored into our decision making’.
That outlook is the reason why business owners come to think of you as a ‘necessary evil’ rather than an asset to their businesses and it’s been going on too long.
To your success
Martin Bissett
