The Unstoppable Advisor: Role-Play Your Way to Advisory Services

How we use Advisory Services with our Law Firm Clients

As mentioned in the earlier posts, I am winding down the road of the courses I will be teaching or co-teaching at the Scaling New Heights accounting conference in Ft. Worth, Texas, on October 24 - 27th.  This week its all about advisory services and how to add them to your accounting or bookkeeping firm.

Advisory services have been such a buzzword in the accounting industry for many years. With commoditized bookkeeping, we are told to move our accounting practices to include high-level advisory-type offerings to the repertoire of services.  And quite frankly, it may be the only way to stay relevant in the future as technology is improving every day.

Advisory Services are Easy to Sell When You are a Niched Accounting Practice

When working with attorneys and law firms, which is my specialty, it’s been an easy avenue to add advisory services to our selection of services we can provide to our clients. Attorneys need us for help with compensation packages and the way they pay themselves. They also need us for firm growth and tracking the other important key performance indicators (KPI). Since we specialize, we have that unique place where we are deeply invested in the legal industry. We eat and breathe it.

Solo or Mid-Market Firm?

When we stepped into the realm of working with mid-market law firms (with multiple partners running the firm), they were equal in their need for advisory services as a solo law firm.  It’s just that it’s easier to sell these advisory services to the larger firms.  They are more focused with working towards a pathway to strong firm-wide growth.  And the funding is there to do so.

The solo attorney typically is invested in wearing all the business hats, whether it is the marketing hat, the social media hat, running the law firm, doing the work, handling the clients, and accounts receivable. The solo lawyer has little energy and/or funding to direct towards outsourcing their bookkeeping or even finding the time to create specialize reporting or tracking KPI's.  In my experience, the solo practitioners I meet are so busy, it is difficult to take the time to do the analysis necessary.  

IT’S JUST AS IMPORTANT TO THE SOLO, BUT THEY DON’T TYPICALLY HAVE THE FUNDING TO PAY FOR IT.”

Learn Advisory Services Options in a Fun Way!

So, are you ready to learn how I have implemented this into my practice?  Join us to learn the fun way!

I’m co-teaching the course, Role Play your Way to Advisory, with my good friend and colleague, Matthew Fulton of Parkway Business Solutions. We will guide you through some tips and tricks that will have you thinking about advisory services in a whole new way.  We will do a little role-playing as client and accountant or bookkeeper. We come at this topic from different  backgrounds and different approaches, and if you can join us at Scaling New Heights, I guarantee you all will walk out of that class feeling confident and have the initiative and the information to add these services and expand your reach with your accounting practice.

I hope to see you Scaling New Heights in Fort Worth, Texas, from October 24th through the 28th.