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Using Real Client Situations to Develop Your Team · Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday

• 0:03
  Welcome to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halladay, the bite sized podcast for accountants and bookkeepers developing their advisory skills.
• 0:12
  In this series, we're going beyond the individual advisor and exploring how to build advisory capability across your team.
• 0:21
  Because a scalable advisory service shouldn't depend on one person, let's get started.
• 0:30
  In the last episode, we talked about advisory being a team sport, about bringing together different perspectives, experiences and knowledge from across the firm.
• 0:41
  But if we want people to become genuinely capable advisors, there's something else they need.
• 0:47
  Experience.
• 0:48
  You can teach advisory skills.
• 0:50
  You can provide frameworks, you can give people tools, templates and resources.
• 0:56
  And all of those things are valuable.
• 0:58
  But there are some parts of advisory that can only really develop through experience.
• 1:04
  Because real clients don't follow a script.
• 1:07
  They don't always give you all the information you need.
• 1:10
  They change their minds.
• 1:11
  They make decisions based on emotion as well as logic.
• 1:15
  They sometimes say one thing and do another, and the conversation you thought you were going to have can suddenly go in a completely different direction.
• 1:23
  That's where judgment develops.
• 1:25
  And one of the best learning resources you already have in your firm is the real client situations happening around you every day.
• 1:36
  Think about how those situations are usually handled.
• 1:39
  A client has a problem, someone brings it to the business owner or senior advisor, they think about it, they decide what to do, they speak to the client, problem solved, and then everybody moves on.
• 1:50
  But there's a.
• 1:51
  A learning opportunity there that can easily be missed.
• 1:54
  Instead of simply solving the problem, what if you brought the team into the thinking?
• 2:00
  You might take a real client situation and ask, well, what do you think is happening here?
• 2:04
  What would you want to know before making a recommendation?
• 2:07
  What questions would you ask the client?
• 2:10
  What risks can you see?
• 2:11
  What options might they have?
• 2:13
  And what would you do next?
• 2:15
  Suddenly, one client situation becomes a development opportunity for several people.
• 2:21
  And importantly, you're not teaching advisory in theory.
• 2:25
  You're applying it to something real.
• 2:27
  This can be done very simply.
• 2:29
  You might spend 10 minutes discussing a client scenario during a team meeting.
• 2:34
  You could anonymize the details, if appropriate, and ask everyone to think about how they would approach it.
• 2:40
  You might discuss a recent advisory conversation.
• 2:43
  What happened?
• 2:44
  What questions worked particularly well?
• 2:46
  Was there a moment where the conversation changed direction?
• 2:49
  What did we learn?
• 2:50
  And perhaps most importantly, what would we do differently next time?
• 2:55
  That's a powerful question, because not every advisory conversation will go perfectly.
• 2:59
  And that's okay.
• 3:00
  Sometimes you'll leave a meeting and think, I should have asked another question there, I missed something.
• 3:06
  The client said we focused on the wrong issue.
• 3:09
  Or I gave an answer too quickly.
• 3:11
  Those moments aren't failures, they're learning opportunities, but only if we reflect on them.
• 3:17
  This is why I think debriefing client meetings can be incredibly valuable.
• 3:22
  When you're developing an advisory team, it doesn't have to be formal.
• 3:27
  Sometimes it's simply a five minute conversation.
• 3:29
  Afterwards, what did you notice?
• 3:31
  What did you think went well?
• 3:33
  Was there anything that surprised you?
• 3:34
  What would you follow up?
• 3:36
  What might you do differently next time?
• 3:38
  Over time, these conversations start building judgment.
• 3:41
  Your team begins recognizing patterns.
• 3:44
  They start connecting what they're learning with what they're seeing in real businesses.
• 3:50
  And gradually they become less dependent on you telling them what to do.
• 3:54
  There's another important benefit.
• 3:56
  Your experience becomes transferable.
• 3:59
  As a practice owner or experienced advisor, you've probably accumulated years of knowledge from working with clients.
• 4:08
  You've seen businesses grow.
• 4:09
  You've seen cash flow problems.
• 4:12
  You've seen difficult decisions.
• 4:14
  You've seen things go brilliantly.
• 4:17
  And you've probably seen things go badly wrong too.
• 4:19
  That experience is incredibly valuable.
• 4:22
  But if it stays inside your head, it leaves the business when you do.
• 4:27
  So.
• 4:27
  Don't just share your answers, share your thinking.
• 4:30
  Tell your team why you asked a particular question.
• 4:33
  Explain what made you notice something.
• 4:35
  Talk about the mistakes you've made and what you learned from them.
• 4:39
  Let them understand how you reach the conclusion, rather than simply giving them the conclusion.
• 4:44
  Because that's how we start transferring judgment.
• 4:46
  And that's a really important part of removing the owner bottleneck.
• 4:50
  We don't want a team that can only follow a process.
• 4:53
  We want people who can recognize when the process isn't enough.
• 4:58
  Who can think, who can question, who can adapt, and who can apply what they've learned to a new situation.
• 5:05
  That's what advisory capability looks like.
• 5:07
  Of course, training still matters.
• 5:10
  Structured learning gives people foundations.
• 5:12
  It gives them models, skills, tools, and a common language.
• 5:17
  But the real development happens when that learning's applied.
• 5:21
  When somebody takes something they've learned and uses it in a real client conversation, then reflects on what happened, then tries again.
• 5:29
  And that's where knowledge becomes capability.
• 5:32
  So here's the question I'd like you to think about after this episode.
• 5:37
  How much learning is currently hidden inside the client situations happening in your firm every day?
• 5:44
  And are you capturing it?
• 5:45
  Or does every piece of experience disappear once the problem has been solved?
• 5:50
  Because every client conversation has the potential to develop more than just the client relationship.
• 5:56
  It can develop your team too.
• 5:58
  And in the next episode, we're going to look at what happens to your role when that starts working because as your team becomes more capable, you no longer need to be the person delivering every piece of advisory.
• 6:11
  Your role begins to evolve from advisor to advisory leader.
• 6:18
  Thanks for listening to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday.
• 6:22
  If you're ready to develop advisory capability across your team, visit apxtraining.co.uk to explore our evergreen elearning and live implementation cohorts starting in September, February and May.
• 6:38
  You can also join our free Advisory Teams community on facebook@facebook.com groups advisoryteams.
• 6:48
  And if you'd like more podcast content, listen to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday, available on all major podcast platforms.
• 6:57
  I'll see you next time for another advisory secret.