six ways to create a millennial-friendly firm

your firm’s future depends on successfully engaging younger clients and younger staff. here’s how.

do you know why millennials can’t buy houses? avocado toast is expensive. how many millennials does it take to change a light bulb? none. they accept it for what it is. buy me a craft beer and i’ll tell you a half-dozen more.

more: do you know your turnaround time?
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now, here’s why you need millennials as clients and how they increase the efficiency of your firm.

in a previous post, i shared the secret equation to effective laziness:

turnaround time = wip (work in progress) / capacity

one reason to minimize unnecessary meetings, phone calls and emails is that all of those create needless wip, which increases turnaround time. now, consider this: what happens when you call a millennial on the phone? nothing. absolutely nothing. most of the time you don’t even get voice mail.

where do millennials go to meet? again, a trick question. they meet on social media. have you ever asked for the personal email of a millennial? they don’t have one. leave them a message on instagram.

millennials are ideal clients because they value effective communications. inefficient communications add to wip and thus increase turnaround time and decrease client satisfaction. additionally, millennial clients are more valuable than boomers because they’ll be alive longer. plus, they are just coming into the years when people typically start businesses. guess who’ll be buying boomer businesses over the next decade? guess who’s likely to buy your practice?

this leads to the inevitable conclusion that millennials will eventually become the largest demographic segment of your client base if you’re building a practice to survive the next decade. even if your time horizon is less than 10 years, if your retirement depends on selling your practice, you’d better have clients worth buying.

the fact is millennial clients are key to long-term success from an efficiency standpoint.

there are six basic ways to create a millennial-friendly firm:

hire millennials to serve millennials.
provide services that millennials can buy.
communicate with millennial clients.
deliver services for millennials.
market to millennials.
create a millennial-friendly office environment.

hire millennials to serve millennials.

assume you’re a boomer who has just hired a millennial staff member. your boomer clients just love getting advice from millennials, don’t they? seventy-year-olds love being lectured on financial planning by 30-year-old advisors. not in this universe. now, let’s flip this. do you think millennials enjoy being lectured on financial responsibility by 60-year-old advisors who joke about when “saturday night live” was still funny?

millennials absolutely hate being lectured by parent figure-like advisors. so, if you need more millennials as clients, and millennials don’t like old people as advisors, whom do millennials want as advisors?

they want other millennials.

to attract more millennial clients, you must hire millennials for your firm.

provide services that millennials can buy.

age conflict isn’t the only way millennials change your firm. they are in a different stage of life from boomer clients. with boomers, we talk about the final stages of financial and tax planning leading to imminent retirement. millennials have a much longer time horizon and a lot of financial hurdles in the way before retirement.

many are figuring out near age 40 how to afford a house. they are trying to get out of crushing student loan debt. they are worried about making more money and not how to pass on that ira to the kids.

financial planning with millennials is real financial planning and not just investment management, as it has become with boomers. with millennials, there are few investments to manage.

what you can do is redefine financial planning from managing investments to wealth accumulation. guess which millennials need more – wealth management or wealth accumulation? you must provide services that millennials can buy.

communicate with millennial clients.

do you enjoy calling a customer service number? on the irs line, they ask for tax id number. after navigating their ludicrous auto-attendant system for 10 minutes and spending an hour on hold, a person may answer. what do they ask for first? tax id number.

how much do you enjoy calling for computer tech support? they spend the first half-hour getting you to do the things you’ve already done. i have thrown out products rather than play the tech support lottery again.

so, it’s not just millennials who hate telephones. telephone communication has been rendered largely useless by companies trying to avoid customer service. that’s not going to change. this is not to suggest trashing your telephone system. it is suggesting trashing auto-attendant systems. if you truly want your client service to stand out, have someone answer calls live. even if no one is available to immediately talk with potential customers about their need, they get a live promise that a person will call them back.

where electronic options are concerned, portals are currently the trend. files can be posted for clients and clients can post files. some portals allow note capabilities.

how much of the tax return preparation process involves posting files? some, of course. however, there’s a lot more to the tax prep process besides files. there’s a lot of other communication required, and that communication takes place largely via telephone and email.

next, let’s dispense with email. how much fun is it to receive five emails from a client answering the three questions asked, only to learn that the client has only answered two questions and now there’s another fun round of emails to look forward to in order to get the last question answered?

email and telephone communications increase turnaround time.

deliver service to millennials.

what are we looking for in a millennial-friendly service delivery solution? we are looking for what pretty much every other 21st-century industry has – a comprehensive internet customer service solution that integrates with operations. consider what happens when you order from amazon.com. you place an order on the amazon website. the site feeds your order into their warehouse and shipping system (operations). then you get notifications as your order progresses from scheduling to shipping. you even get a notification when your product is delivered.

all throughout the process, you can log in to the amazon system to track the progress of your order if the automated notifications aren’t enough. if you have problems along the way, you can choose to resolve them either through the website or by telephone (more customer service). why does the process for tax returns, or any other accounting service, have to be different? a client creates a tax return project in the internet workflow software and loads his/her tax documents. when all the documents have been posted, he/she presses a button to notify you to get started with the tax return preparation.

you assign the return to staff and turn over the project for preparation. a staff member prepares the return and compiles a list of questions and missing information for the client. you review the list and send it to the client by pressing an approve button. your operations and client service systems are one and the same.

the client gets an email notification to log in to the site and answer the questions directly on the site. if the questions haven’t been answered, your system sends reminder notifications every few days. note that you have not yet initiated one email or phone call at this point. the client answers the questions. your site notifies all the staff associated with the project that the return is ready to move to the next step. in addition, the system sends a message to the client thanking him/her for answering. even if the client has questions, a note can be posted in the system and a dashboard notification can be sent that there’s a note there.

from the beginning of the project to the end, and even in the middle where there might be problems, a client portal that helps both parties avoid unnecessary phone calls and emails – without completely taking the options away – allows millennials to experience service the way they expect it. younger clients demand electronic solutions.

market to millennials.

how do you market to millennials? is it different from marketing to boomers? yes and no.

the similarity between marketing to millennials and boomers is that you must fish where the fish are. however, you’ll find millennials in different ponds. think about the age of affluent millennials. what were you doing in your 30s and 40s? you were raising a family, buying a house and starting a business. the same applies to millennials.

think about all the places millennials might see your marketing message. for example, we target three communities just west of our office. the houses in these developments start at $500,000+. yes, even for a townhouse. the median annual family income of these communities is $150,000+. the people are mostly professionals and federal government employees. there are many two-income households.

there are tons of business owners in these communities. the people in these communities are generally 35 to 50 years old, millennials and gen x. most of the homes in these communities are second purchases for families looking for larger houses and better schools.

how can you reach them? consider advertising in their hoa newsletters or sponsoring community events like happy hours, networking affairs and 5k runs. the basic message shouldn’t be to sell, but to ask, “how can we support you and your community?”

here’s the secret. be of service. don’t try to make a buck on every interaction. join social media groups you enjoy and become part of the core group.

how do you find time to do this marketing and still make a living? you probably don’t. you’ll be involved, but you need someone to be your boots on the ground. you make the high-level targeting decisions and hire a marketing person to carry out the day-to-day tasks.

create a millennial-friendly office environment.

what makes an office millennial-friendly? ask a millennial – seriously. if you’re hiring one, you can easily find out. do you have it firms as clients? what do their offices look like? they have standing desks, lots of open space, light and sparsely furnished offices. if you’re paperless, why do you need a lot of furniture? you need a desk, chair and a file cabinet – maybe a bookcase, but who keeps physical books anymore?

spend a grand on a consultation with a local interior designer – preferably one younger than 50. i expect that we’ll be doing this after this tax season. i have a look in mind. we are almost as much an it firm as we are a cpa firm. i want our offices to represent that. because i’m a numbers dude, i don’t know how to pull that off. but i’m certain we can find an office designer who can.

my new office has a standing desk with a small filing cabinet, an ergonomic chair and two chairs for clients. i also kept one bookcase, which mainly has family pictures and knickknacks accumulated over 30+ years. nothing else. when you have no place for paper, you get creative about avoiding it in the first place. scan and shred. so far, i love my new digs.

our long-term future is in the 30-50 age group, and we had better be prepared to have them as clients. we must adapt to them. they don’t have to adapt to us.