What value does your accountant provide?
Without even thinking about it, you should be able to give me several reasons why your account is great. If you have to think about it, you may have some problems. Everyone that you work with from employees, to clients to vendors and other service professional should provide value to you. In other words, surround yourself with great people if you want to really succeed at everything you do. However, I know some people that, while successful, have difficulty getting to the next level because they accept mediocrity from those they work with.
My friend has a horrible accountant. This accountant crunches the numbers, process the necessary paperwork and spit out a few hard to read reports once every quarter. You might even excuse this lack of service if the person I am referencing ran a very small business and paid next to nothing for this service. However, the person I know has sales that are over $1 million and pays out the nose for this accountant. Why? Because he has forever and probably doesn’t think to expect anything better.
As I am never one to accept this level of service, I sought out three top accountants from around the country to uncover the ways they provide value to their clients.
1. Personalized service
Paul Brush, former Mayor of Toms River, NJ and sole practitioner specializes in personalized service for his clients. According to Paul, he finds this to be quite valuable to his clients who don’t feel they are getting such service from the larger accounting firms. In fact, he prefers to meet with clients at their site because it is important for him to understand their business. Paul makes sure that his clients know they can easily contact him via email, phone or fax and that he will respond quickly. He offers accounting, payroll and tax services and if he can’t help them, he’ll refer them to someone I trust. Since they already trust him due to the personal service he provides, the referal he provides is made more valuable. According to Paul, his clients want that personal touch and he provides it. Is your account providing you with personal service?
For more information on Paul Brush, visit http://www.pcbcpa.com/
2. Communication
As I said earlier, my friend’s account provides data without any explanation or advice. Couldn’t a computer do that for less money? In order to understand this data and how to apply it to your business, your accountant should communicate with you. Dee Parsons, who specializes in working with small business owners, strives to help clients decrease taxes, increase profits, and manage cash flow. Dee’s philosophy is that the language of business is accounting and that his role is to translate that language to the business owner. This allows the business owner make decisions based upon wisdom rather than on data, i.e. how much money is in the bank. Dee meets with the business owner, at least once a month, to learn from the numbers and gain direction for future decisions. Dee has found that the success of a businesses he works with is accentuated because he not only frequently evaluates compares the data to the business owner, but he communicates it in a language that makes sense.
For more information on Dee Parsons, check out http://www.nerd-rific.com
3. A trusted resource
Marilea Campomizzi, Senior Staff Accountant at Skoda Minotti, believes that a good public accounting firm or an individual CPA should be a resource for all of their clients needs. Her firm adds value to their clients by being able to answer any questions they have or being able to connect them to someone who can by drawing upon the resources of the entire firm. If she cannot personally answer all of a client’s tax questions because she mainly does accounting and auditing work, she can rely on her co-worker down the hall and the two of them working together allows their clients to call one number for all of their business needs.
However, her opinion of a resource is not someone that just answers questions. She tries to get to know her clients in depth so that she can be proactive. The more she learns about a company or a client, the more proactive she can be. The goal of her firm is to help develop and grow her client’s business and not just prepare tax returns and issue audited financials (although she points out that she’s happy to do that if that’s all the client really wants or needs). Her company wants to be able to help their clients with their marketing questions, let them know whether their 401(k) plan needs to be audited, or whether their current accounting software is adequate for the size of their company. In other words, she adds value by being the person they turn to whenever they have a question. In fact, she notes that one of her co-workers jokes that their clients will call them to find out what color they should paint their living room. That’s how much they trust the guidance that their accountant gives.
For more information on Skoda Minotti, visit http://skodaminotti.com/
Conclusion
These three people come from diverse backgrounds and are in different areas of the country. However, one thing is clear, they bring value to their clients and their clients are quite thankful for it. If my friend dumped his expensive number cruncher for someone that provides better service, I am sure he would increase sales, cut costs, run a better business and have more fun doing it. If your account simply crunches numbers, it might be time to find an account that will do more to create value for you. If you don’t start looking now, it will be tough to take your business to the next level tomorrow.
