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Bringing Your Team Into Client Conversations · 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.
• 0:25
  Let's get started.
• 0:30
  In the last episode, we talked about building confidence within your advisory team.
• 0:34
  And there's a point where that confidence needs somewhere to go.
• 0:38
  Because if you want clients to trust your team, your team needs the opportunity to become visible to them.
• 0:45
  Which brings us to a really simple question.
• 0:47
  Who should actually be in the client meeting?
• 0:51
  In many firms, the answer is automatically the business owner, or perhaps the partner or most senior person in the practice.
• 0:58
  They're the trusted advisor.
• 1:00
  They have the relationship, they know the client.
• 1:03
  So naturally they lead the important conversations.
• 1:06
  But there's a problem with that.
• 1:08
  If you're always the person in the meeting, you continue reinforcing the idea that you are the advisor.
• 1:15
  Your team may do an enormous amount of work behind the scenes.
• 1:18
  They might prepare the reports, analyze the numbers, speak to the client throughout the month.
• 1:24
  They may even know certain areas of that client's finances better than you do.
• 1:28
  But when it comes to the important conversation, they disappear and the owner steps in.
• 1:33
  So what does the client learn?
• 1:36
  That when something really matters, they need you.
• 1:39
  And that's exactly the dependency we're trying to move away from.
• 1:43
  Building an advisory team means deliberately creating opportunities for clients to experience the knowledge and capability that exists across your firm.
• 1:54
  That doesn't mean suddenly disappearing from meetings and telling somebody else to take over.
• 1:59
  It can happen gradually.
• 2:00
  You might start by bringing a team member into a meeting with you.
• 2:04
  But don't just have them sitting quietly in the background.
• 2:07
  Give them a purpose.
• 2:08
  Perhaps they prepared the management information so they talk the client through something they've noticed.
• 2:14
  And perhaps they have the closest day to day relationship with the client.
• 2:19
  So they lead part of the conversation around cash flow.
• 2:22
  Perhaps they've been looking at a particular issue, so they explain what they found.
• 2:27
  Now the client begins to see them differently.
• 2:29
  They're no longer simply the person who does the bookkeeping or prepares the accounts.
• 2:34
  They're someone who understands their business and has something valuable to contribute.
• 2:41
  And that's an important shift.
• 2:42
  Over time, you can increase that responsibility.
• 2:45
  Instead of contributing five minutes to the meeting, perhaps they lead one section, then perhaps they lead the meeting with you there to support them.
• 2:53
  And eventually there may be meetings where you don't need to be there at all.
• 2:57
  That's how trust begins to expand.
• 2:59
  Across the team.
• 3:01
  But there's another reason I like having more than one person involved in advisory conversations.
• 3:08
  Different people notice different things.
• 3:10
  The person doing the bookkeeping may have spotted a pattern in spending.
• 3:15
  The accountant might see something in the margins.
• 3:17
  Someone who speaks to the client regularly might know they're struggling with capacity.
• 3:23
  Another team member may have experience of a similar situation with another business.
• 3:29
  Bring those perspectives together and you can often create a much richer conversation.
• 3:34
  Because advisory doesn't have to be one expert sitting opposite one client providing all the answers.
• 3:42
  It can be collaborative, and that can actually improve the quality of the advice.
• 3:47
  There's also a development opportunity here.
• 3:50
  Your less experienced team members get to hear how more experienced advisors ask questions.
• 3:55
  They hear how difficult subjects are introduced.
• 3:58
  They they see what happens when a conversation goes in an unexpected direction.
• 4:03
  And eventually they start contributing themselves.
• 4:06
  That's incredibly difficult to learn from theory alone.
• 4:10
  Sometimes you need to be in the room.
• 4:11
  There is one thing we need to be careful about, though.
• 4:14
  If you bring a team member into a meeting and then answer every question yourself, interrupt them, or immediately add your own version of everything they've said, you're probably not building their credibility.
• 4:26
  You're reinforcing yours.
• 4:28
  Sometimes leadership means deliberately making space.
• 4:31
  Let them answer, let the client look to them, let them have the conversation, and resist the temptation to jump in unless they actually need you.
• 4:40
  That can be uncomfortable for the owner, too, especially if you're used to being the person clients rely on.
• 4:46
  But remember what we're trying to build.
• 4:48
  Not one brilliant advisor with a support team behind them.
• 4:52
  A genuinely capable advisory team.
• 4:55
  So here's the question I'd like you to think about after this episode.
• 4:59
  When your clients think about advice from your firm, whose face do they see?
• 5:03
  If it's only yours?
• 5:04
  Perhaps it's time to start widening the picture.
• 5:07
  Because clients can't build trust in people they never get to experience.
• 5:11
  And your team can't develop advisory capability if all the valuable conversations happen without them.
• 5:19
  In the next episode, we're going to look at something that can make a huge difference to how quickly your team develops.
• 5:27
  And it may require you as the business owner, to do something that feels surprisingly difficult.
• 5:33
  Stop being the person with all the answers.
• 5:38
  Thanks for listening to Advisory Secrets with Deb Halliday.
• 5:41
  If you're ready to develop advisory capability across your team, visit APXTraining Co to explore our evergreen elearning and live implementation cohorts starting in September, February and May.
• 5:58
  You can also join our free Advisory Teams community on facebook@facebook.com groups advisoryteams and if you'd like more podcast content, listen to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday, available on all major podcast platforms.
• 6:17
  I'll see you next time for another advisory secret.