Remember when you were a child? I know… it’s vague isn’t it .. but seriously, how did you learn things? How did you get things done? That’s right, one step at a time.
What does this have to do with Advisory success? Quite a lot really.
You could seriously add a thousand cliches to this post …. How do you eat an elephant … eat the big frogs first … and many more. The thing is though, chunking is so powerful when you get it right, that it should be a basic business principle. Alas , however, many business owners including those of Accounting Firms fail to adopt a chunking strategy.
Let’s go back to the childhood analogy. Now even if you can’t remember your childhood, your phone a friend answer is you learnt things one step, or crawling movement, at a time. and if you were anything like me , you probably squeezed those little steps together more quickly as you went along … sometimes even impatiently .. sometimes falling and getting back up, tweaking things along the way.
Now advisory, do you approach it in small chunks, or big bites?
Many firms jump in with out much planning. They know they need to do advisory work, but quite often haven’t taken the time to even work out what that means to them.
The next step is to normally appoint a partner to manage that area. And they jump in boots and all.
The stories i hear are typically then about lack of success due to inadequate systems and ad hoc delivery.
Why then not break the process up. Small chunks. Milestones. To avoid a cliche, how long did it take to build Rome?
One example is when looking at your offering. Start with one area. In my opinion that is the front end conversation with the client. Don’t worry about the deliverables. You will know what to do when that time comes. But start with your first chunk, get some form of client needs review together and learn how to have deeper conversations with your clients. This is what a GREAT accountant should be doing, whether you call it advisory or not doesn’t matter.
I have spent a good part of the last 15 years testing what does and certainly what doesn’t work when it comes to engaging SME’s in advisory services. first through my accounting firm and now as part of SuperCoach and the SuperFirm platform. We even created our stepped Square One system to “Chunk” down some of the biggest things that stand in your way of advisory success.
Sure, I could list more chunking steps, but I’m curious, what are your barriers and how are you chunking the process down if at all?