Latest / Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday / Why Advisory Is Better as a Team Sport

Transcript

Why Advisory Is Better as a Team Sport · 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 creating consistency across your advisory team without expecting everybody to think, speak or work in exactly the same way.
• 0:42
  And that brings us to something I believe very strongly.
• 0:45
  Advisory is a team sport.
• 0:47
  There's a traditional image of the trusted advisor, one experienced person sitting opposite the client.
• 0:52
  They understand the numbers, they, they ask the questions, they provide the insight, they guide the client.
• 0:59
  And everyone else in the firm supports that relationship from behind the scenes.
• 1:04
  But what if we looked at advisory differently?
• 1:06
  What if the value didn't come from one person having all the knowledge?
• 1:12
  What if it came from bringing together the knowledge and experience that already exists across the team?
• 1:18
  Because different people see different things.
• 1:21
  Think about a typical client in an accounting firm.
• 1:24
  The bookkeeper may see the transactions every week.
• 1:27
  They may notice changes in spending patterns.
• 1:30
  They might see that a client is constantly moving money around to cover payments.
• 1:36
  Or perhaps they're seeing increasing use of an overdraft.
• 1:39
  The accountant may be looking at profitability margins, tax, or the wider financial picture.
• 1:45
  Another team member may deal with payroll and know that staffing costs are increasing.
• 1:51
  Someone else may speak to the client regularly and know that they're planning to recruit, move premises, launch a new service, or make a significant investment.
• 2:02
  Each person has a piece of the picture, and when those pieces remain, separate opportunities can be missed.
• 2:10
  But when we bring them together, something interesting happens.
• 2:14
  We begin to see the business more clearly.
• 2:17
  And that's why collaboration is such an important part of team delivered advisory.
• 2:21
  Instead of asking who is the advisor for this client, perhaps we should sometimes ask who has something valuable to contribute to this client's situation.
• 2:31
  And that doesn't mean everyone needs to attend every meeting.
• 2:34
  And it certainly doesn't mean every decision needs a committee.
• 2:38
  It's about creating a culture where information, observations and ideas are shared.
• 2:44
  For example, before an advisory meeting, you might have a quick conversation with the people who work most closely with that client.
• 2:53
  What have you noticed?
• 2:54
  Has anything changed?
• 2:55
  Has the client mentioned anything recently?
• 2:58
  Is there something in the numbers that deserves a closer look?
• 3:01
  Those conversations don't have to take hours.
• 3:03
  Sometimes 5 or 10 minutes can surface something incredibly valuable.
• 3:07
  And now the person leading the advisory meeting walks in with a much richer understanding of what's happening.
• 3:15
  This is also why I Don't think advisory should be seen as a hierarchy where one person is the expert and everybody else simply feeds information upwards.
• 3:26
  A good advisory team values different kinds of expertise.
• 3:30
  The person who works most closely with the day to day finances may see something the lead advisor doesn't.
• 3:37
  Someone with less seniority may ask a question nobody else has considered.
• 3:42
  And someone who has worked with a similar business before may bring experience that's particularly relevant.
• 3:50
  Job titles don't always determine who has the most useful insight in a particular situation.
• 3:57
  And as advisory leaders, we need to create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing what they're seeing.
• 4:06
  Because there's no point having all that knowledge across the team if nobody feels able to speak up.
• 4:12
  This is where some of the skills we talked about in the first series of Advisory Secrets become important.
• 4:18
  Again, curiosity, listening, questioning, communication, commercial awareness.
• 4:24
  Those aren't any skills for the person sitting in front of the client.
• 4:29
  They're skills we can develop across the whole team.
• 4:32
  And when we do, advisory becomes less dependent on one individual.
• 4:37
  It becomes part of how the firm thinks.
• 4:40
  There's another benefit to this approach.
• 4:42
  Your team starts learning from each other.
• 4:45
  Perhaps one person has experience in cash flow strategy.
• 4:49
  Another is particularly strong around pricing.
• 4:52
  Someone else understands systems and efficiency.
• 4:55
  Another may have worked with businesses going through rapid growth.
• 5:01
  When those people share their thinking, everybody develops.
• 5:04
  The knowledge doesn't stay trapped inside one person's head.
• 5:07
  And that's exactly what we're trying to achieve.
• 5:10
  Because if your advisory model relies on one person having all the knowledge, all the relationships and all the answers, you're always going to have a capacity problem.
• 5:21
  But when capability exists across the team, you create something much more scalable.
• 5:28
  You also create something potentially more valuable for the client.
• 5:33
  Instead of relying on the perspective of one person, they can benefit from the collective experience of the firm.
• 5:41
  And importantly, the client doesn't necessarily need to see everything happening behind the scenes.
• 5:48
  They simply experience better conversations, better questions, better insight and better support.
• 5:54
  That's what team delivered advisory should feel like.
• 5:58
  Not lots of people creating complexity, but the right people contributing at the right time.
• 6:06
  So here's the question I'd like you to think about after this episode.
• 6:10
  How much knowledge about your clients currently sits in separate pockets across your firm?
• 6:17
  And what might happen if you started bringing some of that knowledge together.
• 6:21
  Because your next great advisory insight may not come from the person with advisor in their job titles.
• 6:28
  It might come from the person who's been working with that client every week and has noticed something everybody else has missed.
• 6:35
  That's the power of an advisory team who.
• 6:37
  And in the next episode, we're going to build on that.
• 6:40
  Because one of the best ways to develop advisory capability across your team is to use something you already have access to every single day.
• 6:50
  Real client situations.
• 6:51
  We'll look at how everyday client experiences can become some of the most valuable advisory learning opportunities in your firm.
• 7:02
  Thanks for listening to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday.
• 7:06
  If you're ready to develop advisory capability across your team team, visit apxtraining.co.uk to explore our evergreen elearning and live implementation cohorts starting in September, February and May.
• 7:22
  You can also join our free Advisory Teams community on facebook@facebook.com groups advisoryteams.
• 7:32
  And if you'd like more podcast content, listen to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday, available on all major podcast platforms.
• 7:41
  I'll see you next time for another advisory secret.