Building a more Rewarding Practice Means Overcoming the Three Barriers to Specialization

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For years, decades even, accountants have talked about specialization. Building a niche practice has been the subject of articles, conference agendas, podcasts, and discussion among practitioners since what seems like forever. But the discussion is coming to a head as firms continue to struggle with capacity and staying on top of all the changes affecting the profession. A combined strategy of focusing on specific types of clients along with transitioning clients that don’t fit (we call it right-sizing your client base) is the key to solving some of the profession’s greatest current challenges ensuring its future health.

There are three common barriers practitioners and firms must overcome to embrace the opportunities specialization affords. In this post we identify and offer strategies to overcome them.

Barrier 1: perception of boredom

There’s a paradigm accountants must unlearn which is when you specialize it means you only do the same thing over and over. One of the most frequent objections I hear from practitioners at every stage their careers is “I like the variety of (or the idea of) working with lots of different types of clients.” Or put another way “I would get bored only working with one type of client.” The implication is that when you choose to serve only a certain types of clients that every engagement will be the same.

The first step in overcoming this barrier is to acknowledge a fallacy that two businesses, even competitors or those in the same industry, can be the same. The fact is every client is different because you serve people. And people have different views, experiences, personalities, stories, priorities, communication styles and thousands of other attributes that make us unique. The challenges and opportunities they face may be similar, but your approach to solving the issues and your relationships will be different.

The second step to overcoming this barrier is shifting your mindset. What if instead of doing the same thing for every client, becoming a deeply experienced professional means more creative flex? When you start to see a client’s operating environment from different angles because you spend a LOT of time in that space your experience lends itself to more inventive and innovative solutions. Focusing on fewer clients also creates time for deep thinking vs being so bogged down with work that you focus primarily on tasks and keeping you head above water. What if all this enables you to solve more issues and offer more proactive ideas to your clients?

Saying no to the clients and projects that don’t fit frees you to say yes to more challenging, interesting and inspiring work. It creates opportunities to provide solutions to challenges your clients may never have thought you could solve.

In summary: focus is the key to a more diverse practice.

Barrier 2: anticipated negative effect on revenue

It feels counterintuitive that fewer clients leads to more revenue, and that carving off and transitioning a chunk of our practice will ultimately increase top-line revenue and bottom line profits. First, as we already discussed, freeing time and space to do more for our existing clients enables us to bill our clients more. Second, specializing creates an opportunity to market yourself and your firms in a way that makes you more relevant to those prospects that need you than other firms. As you increase your relevance you decrease (or possibly eliminate) your competitors—which means winning a higher percentage of engagements.

Not only that, when prospects recognize the lack of alternatives to your firm the balance of power in the proposal process shifts to you. Pricing is non-negotiable, without scope modifications. You don’t feel pressured to give away pieces of your service or knowledge in order to win the business. You can become more steadfast in your terms of service and timing. You can stop wasting time responding to RFPs that don’t make sense. The entire process becomes more straightforward, with less gamesmanship.

Think about how refreshing that would be. Not only do you win a higher percentage of engagements, you will win with higher fees, fewer write-offs and greater realization.

Simply put: specialization increases revenue and profitability.

Barrier 3: failing to define the specialty

There are two options when it comes to specializing: reactive specializing in which you see what others are doing and seize whatever segment is left or proactive specializing to make your own space. Often firms think about specialization in terms of industry, which has lots of advantages, but there are lots of ways to define it. Region or location can be a specialization if you’re very well connected and articulate the value your local roots and connections bring to clients. You can specialize in a service model, like remote/tech enabled. You could be the firm that only meets at the client’s site or that works with family-owned businesses.

Most people start to define their niche on the basis of where they are today. They look to where they have concentrations of clients or their existing skills. This can be a good approach if you have passion for serving those kinds of clients, but you should be be wary of being held captive to the opportunities you have already had. You may find greater joy and satisfaction from diving in to something completely new, as long as you have the patience to recognize that diversification like this is a longer-term strategy than expanding an existing area. There’s no right or wrong way to start—as long as you start. A lot of folks “dabble” in one area or another. Dabbling is the enemy of specialization and gets you nowhere.

Regardless of where you start, follow these steps:

  1. Choose a focus
  2. Articulate the expertise frequently, consistently among your target clients (both current and prospective)
  3. Continue to work to add the missing skills, capabilities and processes to support your positioning

Often accountants make the mistake of switching steps 2 and 3—feeling that they can’t start talking about their specialization until they know everything. Let’s unlearn the definition that “specialize” means you have to know all the answers. Instead re-frame the definition to mean being dedicated to and connected enough to help find all the answers. It’s the epitome of what it means to be an advisor to clients.

The takeaway: if you don’t decide, you won’t specialize.

If your professional goal is to do more for fewer clients, explore some level of specialization. Like most things, specialization is a continuous learning journey. Be ready to not have all the answers. However if you’re committed to finding them, limitless possibilities await.

Your Future Firm Starts Now: Success Strategies for Launching New Services – Part 3

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We are taking a closer look at a process firms can use to evaluate and develop new services to meet clients’ needs and create new sources of revenue by building a more consulting-based practice. On Sept. 21st we introduced steps 1 and 2 – Research Market Needs and Evaluate and Prioritize.  Oct. 3rd we examined steps 3 and 4 – Define the Scope and Go to Market with Your Service. This week we conclude with step 5 – Tracking Results and Measuring Success (including a downloadable guide for the whole process).

Step 5: Measure your results

What gets measured (and reported)…gets done.  When you analyzed the costs of building this service capability in step 2, you likely got a feel for the level of revenue you need to reach profitability.  Set a specific sales goal for the new service, allowing for ramp-up time to go to market appropriately. Services with high levels of opportunity within your existing client base will become profitable more quickly than those for which you must go outside of the existing client base to find opportunities. Develop a pipeline report to track opportunities associated with the new service – including the stage of the sales cycle, value of the opportunity and probability of closing.

It’s helpful to assign responsibility to an individual or team to be held accountable for reaching the goal, and measure their results regularly throughout the year.  Hold regular meetings to evaluate results and discuss what, if anything, is getting in the way of success.  As these success barriers are identified, discuss how to resolve or work around the issue and provide support to the service champion/team.

Establish accountability for sales results for your new service by incorporating the goal and results into the individual/team’s annual goal setting, evaluation and compensation discussions.

Conclusion

This series has discussed a 5-step process for successfully introducing new services:

  1. Research market needs
  2. Evaluate and prioritize new service ideas
  3. Define scope and communicate
  4. Go to market
  5. Measure results

Addressing each of these steps with the discussed approach will improve your ability to continue meeting your clients’ evolving needs, attract new clients, and sustain profitable growth for your firm.

We’ve summarized the approach described the past few weeks in our New Service Evaluation Checklist. To download the checklist click here.

If you are interested in learning more about how to implement these steps, or how new services fit into your firm’s overall approach to topline growth contact us at info@thewhetstonegroup.com or 319.447.6400 for a no-cost, no-obligation meeting.

Your Future Firm Starts Now: Success Strategies for Launching New Services – Part 2

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We’re continuing our look at a process firms can use to evaluate and develop new services to meet clients’ needs and create new sources of revenue by building a more consulting-based practice. September 21st we introduced steps 1 and 2 – Research Market Needs and Evaluate and Prioritize.  In this post we introduce steps 3 and 4 – Define the Scope and Go to Market with Your Service. Check back October 19th as we conclude with step 5 – Tracking Results and Measuring Success (including a downloadable guide for the whole process).

Step 3: Define the scope and “package” your service

Now that you’ve selected the service(s) you want to launch, help ensure your success by defining the scope of the service very specifically and communicating it to the appropriate people in your firm.  “Scope” includes the step-by-step process and tools your service providers will use to deliver the service, what participation is required from the client, the time it will require from both your service providers and the client, and the frequency of delivery of the service.

This step is important for a couple of reasons.  First, it ensures consistency in the quality of your service delivery, which protects your client relationships and helps maintain your brand.  Secondly, this specific scope definition goes a long way to familiarizing your staff with the service so they are comfortable having conversations about it with their clients.

Once that scope is defined, your last step before taking the service to the marketplace is packaging. Packaging includes:

  • The name of the service: Ideally, it’s a good idea to identify a name for the service that will communicate benefit(s) and at the same time be attention-getting and memorable. This isn’t always easy – or even possible – but is worth putting in the time brainstorming and even testing with a client or two.  Many times your opportunity to catch someone’s attention and hold it is fleeting – a good name could really help when you’re trying to generate interest in your new service.
  • The deliverables and benefits: Make sure all your people know what the key deliverables of the service are – what tangible take-aways the client receives.  Clients will want to know this; but even more importantly, define the key benefits of the service – the tangible and intangible improvements for the client.  Communicate these benefits internally so your people can effectively promote the service, and make sure they are incorporated into your web site and marketing materials for the service.  Clients and prospective clients will not take action until they understand “what’s in it for them” – the potential benefits of engaging you for this service.
  • Pricing: Hopefully you have a feel for what clients will be willing to pay for the service from your earlier research.  People prefer to pay a flat fee for a service rather than being quoted an hourly rate and paying for time, so be sure to estimate the time investment and identify a recommended flat fee that  pays you profitably but reasonably given the benefits and value proposition to the client.  It’s not necessary or even recommended that everyone in the firm understand the fee for the service; it’s always a better idea to quote each client individually based on the scope of their needs; the service experts will have the best understanding to do that.

Step 4: Go to market

Patience will be important for your go-to-market strategy as there are important steps to follow to ensure success:

  1. Beta test
  2. Define target market
  3. Develop messages
  4. Communicate messages to target market
  5. Proactively follow up to generate new business leads

Beta test

If possible, beta test the service with one or two clients to work out delivery issues, identify and resolve problems, make sure the deliverables are on point, and discover if the service works in reality the way it works in theory.  Be candid with your client(s) up front and explain they will be doing you a favor but also receiving service benefits for no or greatly reduced fees.  During the project, check in with the client(s) to find out what questions and concerns they have and incorporate these into the way you deliver the service going forward.  Make sure your clients understand the benefit they received and when it’s over, ask them if they are willing to go on record with a testimonial you can use in future marketing and/or serve as a reference for future clients.

Target market

Based on what you learned in your initial research and your beta test(s), think about who the best targets are for the service.  It’s actually better to focus on a narrow, very specific target market:

  • you can tailor your messages more directly to them;
  • it’s easier to determine the right channels through which to communicate with them;
  • you can communicate to a smaller number of targets more frequently with a given budget.

Think about what type of companies have most need for the service based on industry and even sub-group within industry (e.g. sub-contractors within the construction industry), size (annual revenue, number of employees), ownership (private vs. public, closely-held/family-owned, etc), geographic location (where you can profitably serve them and they will recognize you as a viable provider), situation/circumstances (own vs. lease building, profitability, stage in growth cycle, etc).

For almost every target market, there are sources available to acquire a list of companies that matches your criteria.  If there are variables for which you can’t filter when you purchase it, consider having someone call the companies to ask the appropriate questions to further segment your list.  This can be a good task for an intern or new staff who aren’t yet busy, or you may choose to outsource to companies who provide this service.

Messages and communication

Now that you have a clear picture of who you’re talking to, develop the messages that will get their attention about your new service.  Focus on the benefits of the service as it relates directly to their business, and the potential value proposition of engaging you to provide it.  Make sure you address what differentiates your from competitors providing the same or a similar solution. Answer the question: why are you the best alternative to resolve this issue and/or deliver these benefits?

Below is a list of ways you can get your message to your targets, in the recommended chronological order of implementation:

  • Have face-to-face conversations, starting with your current clients in the target market
  • Incorporate on your web site, in blogs, social media profiles/groups
  • Send direct mail/email
  • Hold seminars and/or webinars
  • Promote the topic to industry groups via speaking engagements and articles

This will require you to develop a variety of materials.  Whenever possible, incorporate the testimonial from your beta test client(s) and continue to add testimonials as you grow the practice and have more satisfied clients.  It is always more powerful to have your clients state the benefits and value proposition.  Tie the materials together with similar content and graphic elements so you build a “brand” for the service that fits with the overall brand for your firm.

Frequency of communication is vital.  We’ve all heard the concept that people need to hear a message multiple times before it resonates.  The number required keeps going up because of the increasing number of competing messages to which people are exposed, through traditional media, social media, email, etc.  Don’t be afraid to make at least quarterly “touches” with your target market regarding your service and the benefits it delivers.  If you’re varying the method of communication (direct mail, invitation to seminar, promotion at industry conference, newsletter article, etc.) it won’t feel like too much to your clients and prospects.

Follow-up

It isn’t enough to simply put your messages out there; we’d all love to believe if we build it they will come, but that’s movie fantasy.  Proactive follow-up is a necessary component of any successful go-to-market effort.  The goal with your follow-up is to get face-to-face with each client or prospect so you can have a needs-based conversation, present the benefits of your service, and move the sales cycle forward. The table below gives you some tips on how to follow-up to each of your communication tactics:

tactic_follow-up_approach

What’s Next?

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Perhaps one of the most telling characteristics of a successful business owner is the “what’s next” attitude. The understanding that you can’t just sit back and enjoy the spurt of growth you happen to be experiencing right now; the knowledge that unless you’re always moving forward, you’ll soon be moving backward.

So how to move forward? Well certainly one important step is understanding how your clients’ needs are changing and figuring out what you can do to help them. Developing the right services and knowing how to take them to the market is a challenge many firms struggle with; consider the following concrete action steps to make this challenge a little less daunting.
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