Implementing Strategy Into Your Firm By Jason M. Blumer, CPA

A great time was had by all in attendance at Right Network’s first C4 Conference last month.  Attendees were engaged and networking with smart people doing innovative things.  I had the pleasure of attending the event Sunday afternoon to speak in a session with Jennifer Katrulya and Becky Livingston, two of the smartest and most challenging colleagues in the industry.

My first topic, The Strategic Firm, was one of great importance to the accounting world. Ask yourself these questions:

• How can we change our profession to become more intentional in all of our work?
• How can we implement new services that our customers are not yet asking for, because we haven’t created them yet? 
• What should we be doing that is best for our customers that we are NOT doing? 
• Who is keeping us accountable to become more strategic, or intentional, in our firms?

 

After founding the THRIVEal +CPA Network in November of 2010, a community of younger, hip cloud-based professional accounting firms around the world, I’ve seen huge growth in our Network of innovative and strategic firms.  They are inspiring and are pushing envelopes I didn’t even know existed.

Here are four things I’ve noted about these kinds of firms in their goal to be strategic in everything they do.

1.  SALY has been fired.  SALY, or Same As Last Year, is no longer the mantra for the strategic firms in the THRIVEal +CPA Network.  They know it’s good to question ‘why.’  It keeps you on your toes and ensures you aren’t doing things because you’ve always done them a certain way; it also ensure you work intention into what you are doing.  There needs to be an end result or something you are trying to achieve before you institute new processes or take certain actions.  Why are you doing the things you’re are doing?  Will you answer ‘because we’ve always done it that way’?

2.  We don’t bill by the hour.  Billing by the hour is not strategic.  Billing by the hour has nothing to do with the outcomes you deliver to your customers.  Billing by the hour has nothing to do with the value that you deliver to your customers.  Billing by the hour doesn’t let you think and dream as to how you can make your customer’s lives better (because there is no time code for thinking and dreaming).  Traditional firms fail to capture the great benefits they can really deliver to their customers because their time sheets keep their head’s down billing and keeping SALY busy.  And our customers are suffering because they are getting the same things they’ve always gotten from our profession.  Billing by the hour keeps our profession at bay forcing us to deliver the same services we’ve always delivered, and that is not best for the customer.  Do you work in time to dig deeply into what your customers really need, even if it’s not billable?  Are you managing the people in your firm with Excel spreadsheets that speak to their realization rates and billable percentages?  How is that working for you, or for your team?

3.  Niche deeply.  With the ability to work anywhere at anytime (by using products like Right Networks), the world has become our new customer base.  Strategic firms see the great benefit to offer deep niches to the world, not just locally.  You don’t have to work locally anymore.  And when your customer base expands (to the freakin’ world) then you get to niche deeply and only serve in the industries you want to serve in.  Strategic firms know this is best for the customer and you enjoy your work more!  It’s a win win!  Are you doing what you want to do?  Are you serving the right customers doing what you are really good at?

4.  You can’t serve everyone.  Strategic firms place a HUGE emphasis on taking in the right customers.  We just can’t take everyone that shows up on our door step when we are trying to change lives!  We want believers of our ‘why', not just any old client.  Strategic firms are building internal processes to make sure they take the right customer.  The right customer is the one that will let you do your magic and deliver a solution that will change the customer’s life.  Some customers will not give you that freedom, and a strategic firm will not take those customers.  What are you doing to make sure you do NOT take the wrong customers?  Do you love all of the customers you work with?

So what will it be?  Will you continue down the same path that all traditional firms have decided to walk?  Do you look the same as your traditional neighbor?  Are you blazing a new trail into new forms of service that can really change the lives of your customers?

The ball is in your court.  What will you do?