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with seth fineberg
卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
geni whitehouse, cpa.citp, the “countess of communication” for brotemarkle, davis & co., llp (bdco), says you must meet your clients where they are and understand their personalities to better communicate with them.
doing so, she says, will provide the ultimate value for your clients.
more whitehouse: geni whitehouse: unlock your accountant super powers
in this episode of tax chat, whitehouse discusses strategies for improving client communication and efficiency in tax preparation, emphasizing the importance of productivity tools, workflows, and shared files. whitehouse highlights the need to tailor communication methods to meet client preferences and leverage new tools and technologies to provide interactive and insightful financial information. she also explores the crucial role of communication in tax consulting and accounting, emphasizing the need for empathy, understanding, and adaptability in addressing clients’ needs.
6 more takeaways:
- try asking one different question to each client per month to shift conversations to more strategic topics.
- consider a new communication tool to facilitate file sharing and collaborative discussions between accountants and clients.
- attend a conference to see demonstrations of the productivity tools mentioned.
- understand clients’ perspectives and use simple language to communicate.
- accountants must break down barriers to learning and understanding to be valued by clients. don’t try to be the smartest guy in the room; be the most understanding and empathetic.
- understand clients’ concerns and provide personalized solutions to raise value and avoid billing concerns.
more about geni whitehouse, cpa.citp
geni whitehouse is a consulting team member with brotemarkle, davis & co., llp (bdco). she is the author of “how to make a boring subject interesting: 52 ways even a nerd can be heard,” which is available on amazon.com. whitehouse has been named one of the 25 most powerful women in accounting by cpa practice advisor, one of the top 100 influencers by accounting today magazine, and one of the top 25 thought leaders in accounting. her primary area of focus is expanding bdco’s strategic management services. geni is an instructor at the wise academy,where she teaches accounting concepts to winery staff and is a former board member of the napa/sonoma chapter of women for winesense where she served as education director.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
seth fineberg 00:00
geni and i’ve been talking about since we’ve known each other, we’ve really been talking about this core issue of how things tend to go wrong, particularly at the busiest times like, and i said, here’s your the perfect example, man, i sent my organizers out in december, it has everything on it. and these days, the organizers that a lot of tax pros use their electronic least io. so please don’t tell me you’re sticking stuff back in the mail, and expecting people to fill it out. back to you.
geni whitehouse 00:31
it is still happening.
seth fineberg 00:34
i know, it’s still happening. i just don’t like hearing about it. i know it’s happening less than like when i first started, but you know, you’re sending these things out, you’re sending out very detailed instructions on how you want things done. right, and what you’re going to need, you know, year in and year out, and for a lot of for a lot of your clients, we know this doesn’t really change. but at the same time, you know, there’s always enough that frustrate you, because they’re not paying attention to it. they’re trying to call you, right, or email you. and it’s february in the middle of february. and you’re just, you know, you’re just trying to get things done. and you’re like, i sent this to you. so how you know, you know, genie, what are some of the top you know, i wanted to get to some of the top frustration that you hear about this is this is one i hear about, quite often have i sent this i sent x to my client, and they’re still trying to call an email. how do you manage that? you’re just you know, because from your point of view, you’re like, i’m working on 10 different things right now. i just don’t have the time to, to answer you right away.
geni whitehouse 01:40
so i was in the taps, i was in public accounting for 15 years, i started and i left the dam, a tax partner. the reason one of the main reasons i realized as a partner that i am a partner is like this is not going to get better. and i’m not making a big difference in clients, i was frustrated with my lack of ability to do things that mattered to my client. i also wasn’t very good at what i was doing very and wasn’t detail oriented enough. it’s i worked very hard to be not very good. but and i saw the people around me were excellent at what they were doing. but they were in the back office not getting the recognition they deserve. so i went in search of technology to make things better for the profession. at the time, the technology wasn’t that great. but there were calls coming out that facilitated better dialogue between us and our clients,
seth fineberg 02:24
right.
geni whitehouse 02:25
and so the opportunities today are amazing, but we’re still not embracing those tools. so the challenge is shift our focus from what we need to be doing what we do faster, which is what ed class likes to say, is efficiency, not effectiveness, doing the wrong things faster to what is it that we do that matters to the client? how can we display information in a way that makes it easier for them? how can make it easier for them to give us stuff. and that’s why there are tools, all kinds of productivity tools, workflow, tools, share files, got stuff, there are all kinds of things. i mean, there communities of folks doing things, there’s jetpack workflow, there’s all kinds of stuff we can leverage. and still, we’re not doing it to make the dialogue better. because we’re not thinking about them. we’re focused on internal navel gazing and thinking about what can i do to make this stuff go faster? and that isn’t the answer, because we’re doing some of the wrong thing. so it’s the perspective shift. and it’s one of the things that we talked about in the training i do for advisors, the first thing you got to do is shift your mindset to think about what do i do that matters to the client or the customer? and this is one things by the way that kaizen talks about a production methodology is what are you doing that’s adding value to the customer? they’re not paying for us to screw around and do timesheets, or look at how we can automate do the same wrong things faster? i mean, we sent out and i’m in a firm now i’m doing part time, 16 years working with a cpa firm in napa valley. and no, i did not grow up here, y’all. i’m from south carolina, and people in napa are not talking like me. so i want to i want to remove any confusion spheres. so but really, i mean, it’s the dialogue, it’s the shift, it’s what is the customer care about? and when we think about it that way, it’s it’s very different. so we send out, you know, we’ve got winery clients, there’s a whole bunch of complex stuff that we need them to send it, we send them a 14 times spreadsheet, and wonder why it takes them so long to complete it. and i mean, have we gotten a lot better with that in our firm, and we’re trying to work on that, but then we think it’s bad clients, and then we just beat them up, and you send it in and you’ve done it yet. and we think it’s that
seth fineberg 04:09
it’s only 14 pages, why haven’t you done it?
geni whitehouse 04:36
and all this stuff? and you know, and then we wonder why they don’t send it back in our timeframe. well, first of all, they have no idea what much of it is or why it matters. and second of all, is sent them in a way that’s cumbersome. and so i mean, it’s also based on their communication style, if i’m sending that to an owner of a winery. if you look at my disc handout, on the screen, there are a high d which is a d ominous behavioral wiring, that means they are entrepreneurial, they move fast on their feet, they’re not going to pay attention to detail. and they are highly emotional. if i send that owner a document with an attachment, first of all, they’re not going to look at the attachment, they’ll never open it. and they’re, they’re not going to get it done. if i send it on the other hand to their accountant who’s in detail person, a high c, as we call it in this, they’re going to be detail oriented, and they’re probably going to love that spreadsheet. but but beating up on the owner to get that document is never going to get through to that behavioral styles, we never find a way to simplify the communication to meet the requirements of the recipient on the other end, versus replying, communicate in high detail mode, which is how most of us accountants are wired. so it’s that it’s a big disconnect between the way we want and need information, and the way our customers or clients are going to be receiving it and communicating with us. so that’s the first thing. and again, i found that way late in my career about this whole thing about different people communicate in a different way than i do and learning that and understanding i communicate this way they need it this way, how can i modify what i do to be more successful. and that is a huge thing. and i wish everybody got trained like that in college as part of your accounting curriculum. your clients need information this way, here are some tools you can use to take what we know is right the financial statement and turn it into a visual or turn it into an executive summary or turning to something else. and now finally, seth, we’ve got ai to help us do that. a lot of these cool tool documents bring that data in a way that resonates with these different recipients on the other end of those emails were sending out.
seth fineberg 06:39
yeah, i definitely want to get to the the things that can fix it. but it sounds like and this is what i’ve been hearing for a while to. it’s almost like the old book men are from mars and venus. sorry, women are from venus, men are from mars, countenance are from this planet. clients are from this planet. but you all can kind of get together and see each other where each other are like i hear this year in and year out. and the crux of you are, what you’ve just explained, is why aren’t they doing things the way that i’ve told them to do it? now, if any of you are parents, you understand?
geni whitehouse 07:19
yeah, because it’s easier for me. i mean, we used to go in and set up a standard chart of accounts.
seth fineberg 07:24
i’m working for you. what do you yeah,
geni whitehouse 07:27
yeah, we used to set up a standard chartered require all of our clients to conform to that, because we could get it into our systems easier, right? well, what’s the value to somebody trying to manage the business off of the financial statements structured for us. so one of the things our firm tries to do is create financials that provide the insights that then owner needs to make decisions, we pull it out of the financials, we put it in dashboard tools, like fathom, we bring it up so that they can see it. we make it interactive using the what if capabilities and tools like that there are a ton of products that are doing that. and we are not leveraging them enough. and you know why? because we’re afraid to get questions we’ve never had to answer before, like, how do i improve my cash flow?
seth fineberg 08:05
yeah
geni whitehouse 08:06
how do i reduce inventory, i wish i knew about pricing, and are my margins high enough and stuff like that, that we’ve been able to avoid by focusing on the general ledger forever. and so it’s the clients are pushing us in a direction that we aren’t comfortable? can we got to acquire new ways to apply the skills that we already have?
seth fineberg 08:24
let’s let’s dive into like one of those ways. so you’re talking about the desk methodology and where people are at on that. and this, this, this speaks directly to that to the handout that we that we have in the in the chat. so if you go, if you all go to the chat, you can kind of see this, and you can register for it and download it at your convenience. but i want to talk a little bit about this particular tool that basically could help with client communication, which is what we’re all here about. and you know, by the way, any questions you all have, during our time together here, please throw it in the q&a, geni and i will absolutely get to it or do our best to answer this is why we’re here. this is an open discussion. this isn’t for cpe or anything, there’s no, you know, questions you’re gonna have to answer. this is, you know, we’re all here for the next, you know, whatever, 45 minutes or so. so let’s go into what disc is, and how you discovered it and how you’re working it.
geni whitehouse 09:20
i discovered it through the training that i myself took when i realized that i needed to learn new skills that if i wanted to really communicate better, i was going to have to get trained and how to do that. because i attacks person, i was very uncomfortable and having any kind of dialogue and i knew that i needed to learn something else. but i also had an interactive dashboard tool that i was trying to sell to accountants, and they would not buy the tool because they were afraid to have conversations. so i went out in search of advisory training and i found it as this was a long time ago and i’ve been speaking about it ever since. but one of the first things we learned was this, and it is four dimensions and it’s behavioral styles. it’s not personality, and we actually do jus training with clients and you know, we’re cpas. right? we’re not psychologists. and what we like about this is it is how we behave. what does it stand for? what is this? this? might not have heard about it before. four components of behavioral styles, which is the bay for dominance, eye for influence s for steadiness, et cie, for conscientious, conscientious or compliance, which is a balance, right? we all know that. let me should i bring up the document?
seth fineberg 10:30
if you want to share it, please feel free. so we know what we’re talking about. but you know, you all but by participating here today, you all get a free copy. and we’re going to be we’re going to be talking, we’re going to be talking through it. but, you know, in addition to some of the…
geni whitehouse 10:47
its dominance, if your dominance wiring here is i said, high emotion, you want short and sweet, short attention span, this is the majority of ceos. they are wired for, you know, these are the people you send them a three question email, and they answer question number one, it is so frustrating for us detailed people, because we can’t figure out why don’t they ever answer question two, three and four? well, we got to send them a one question at a time. so again, modifying them
seth fineberg 11:13
or they’ll be like, why i answered everything. it’s like, that’s not how i asked you to do it.
geni whitehouse 11:19
they don’t say hi, they don’t sign off. they write back and you’ve got these clients and they drive me nuts. if you’re an icy wiry yeah, they write back with just a middle answer, and no greeting, no ending. no, you know, and they might hit one of the things that you needed to find out.
seth fineberg 11:34
right, they saw one thing that you wrote and the answer to that, but it’s not no, that’s not what i was saying.
geni whitehouse 11:40
exactly. so i mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a very frustrating thing for us, especially if we take it personally, right, we’re gonna go this is a personal thing, they just don’t like may or, you know, whatever the whatever the concern is, but it’s really not. so this takes the friction out of the conversation, when you understand, well, these guys are just wired or gals are wired differently than, than me. and i need to figure out how to communicate effectively with them. again, it’s why visual tools are so valuable for us to communicate with an owner of a company because they have to be risk takers, again, moving fast. they want things in a they always have their own report, they design a flash report, no more than a paragraph. and meanwhile, we’re sending them a 40 page spreadsheet to look at
seth fineberg 12:24
so know who you’re talking. so if you’re if you’re beer d and the disc, you are top level, you are just give me the fact this is why the d level love what dashboards, this is why dashboards were created for them. just give it to me that i can see it all in one place. i don’t want all of the details to give me what i need to know. otherwise, i’m going to pass it on to somebody else, or i’m not going to give you what you want. i’m going to just tell you what i’m going to tell you, right,
geni whitehouse 12:59
it’s rough. but if you’re wired is indeed then you understand it. the thing you gotta be afraid of worried about is that these folks are not afraid of confrontation. i found i found the graphic, i can share my screen. all right. so here’s the disabled participant.
seth fineberg 13:16
oh, my goodness. here we go. try again.
geni whitehouse 13:20
lair is the cpa firm that i work with in napa valley brook markel davidson company, and you’ll see the logo on my screen. and so we do a lot of this training. but this is the graphic. and if you see this compliance, this is the c and this is the i s and c and it goes around in a circle like that. but these two are the most opposite the dominance versus the compliance, and it describes what you might experience.
seth fineberg 13:42
so everyone go clockwise, you’ll see
geni whitehouse 13:44
d i, if you can see my mouse, s and then c. but if you look at it, the d and the c are typically coming at things differently from exactly the opposite perspective. and their frustration arises on both sides, these other two are less likely to show up in your interactions. although we have a lot of the green steadiness component in the accounting profession, which makes us good at what we do. they’re motivated by security. they like repetitive work, obviously, that’s part of what we have. so in accounting, you see mostly compliance and steadiness behavioral styles showing up
seth fineberg 14:18
what about on the client side who would who would represent this because we’re talking about you know, outbound like you’re trying to get information from
geni whitehouse 14:27
you’re talking about in the steadiness realm, you’re gonna see hr folks, you’re gonna see
seth fineberg 14:31
admin hr,
geni whitehouse 14:33
anybody who’s gotten detailed work is going to hire hopefully, who’s happy at it. it’s going to have ifc compliance component of their behavioral style and the steadiness factor. you’re going to see this ai behavioral style show up and sales folks and marketing people and speakers, people that are out and about, i’m talking about things these are people driving behavior and trying to motivate and inspire other people. you’re gonna see this dominance on those owners, those entrepreneurial people who took a risk to create something, have a bunch of this drive, what you see is as companies evolve and grow this dominance banger think of steve jobs, high emotion, just get it done, i don’t care, deliver,
seth fineberg 15:13
tell me what i need to tell me what i need to know,
geni whitehouse 15:16
those people tend to not be as effective as companies grow. and then you need somebody with a different style, more of a steadiness operational focus that comes in as the company grows. and so you see higher seas getting into seats, and you see what happened at apple, they brought in a more detail oriented, more steady, less flashy ceo to run the company and take it to the next day. at one point, though, they had to bring the dominant risk taker back in order to do some more innovation. so those are the kinds of things you can see if you start to understand how this fits, and how different we’re each wired. so this kind of thing, we need to understand if we can alleviate the frustration on both sides by trying to figure out how we can break down barriers to learning.
seth fineberg 15:58
so this is, you know, get a lot of this, folks, it’s this about your outbound communication about why you’re not maybe sometimes getting what you want, or you’re meeting with some pushback, you’re just not getting the right answers. know, who you were talking to. i know, as all my years as a journalist where, you know, no offense, there’s some great pr people out there. but in a lot of cases, asking the pr person is not the right route, they are not going to they’re not they’re going to route you around to a few different people, or they’re not going to get you the answer that you want. in some cases, i would have to go to someone who was maybe in marketing, or in internal communications, you know, like, perfect example is when i would, you know, have to talk to someone add into it into it has external pr people who are very highly trained, and great at what they do. but ultimately, i would go to the person that i got to know, add into it, because i’m going to get that answer. so if you’re working, so it’s same thing with a small business client that you’re working with, if that ceo or that head of the company is you know, and they’re also you know, they’re trying to get you it’s in their best interest to to get you what you need in a timely manner. but you don’t know what’s going on in their world, necessarily. so maybe they’re not always the best one to get what you need. i mean, am i on the right page here, geni?
geni whitehouse 17:17
you’re on the right page. and if you think about how people are wired and motivated, a high c is motivated by accuracy. so if we hire everybody in the accounting firm whose main motivation is accuracy, what’s going to happen around deadline time.
seth fineberg 17:32
i’m glad you brought that up, because i wanted to switch to you know, because the under theme of this chat is really like at the busiest time, this is when things get most amplified, because you are literally under a time crunch, to get information to the irs or to you know, get it in the books get things reported in a certain amount of time. and a lot of times i’ve found that accountants kind of rely more on on external deadlines than maybe their own, you know, maybe start leaning into setting some of your own and say, well, i need this by this time. otherwise, you know, you are oprah, you get an extension, you get an extension, you get an extension. and i know that that’s starting to happen. more so prop bravo to the firm’s who are finally going, you get me this by whatever, march 31, or, you know, april bath or whatever it is. otherwise, we’re moving on. but please, you know, let you let me know, i, you know, i haven’t sat in that seat before, i’ve only had the conversations over the years,
geni whitehouse 18:40
for way too many years. and by the way, in the firm, i don’t do any tax or traditional accounting stuff. i just do
seth fineberg 18:45
but you did. and you know, you remember, there’s some folks here that
geni whitehouse 18:49
i also have an external tax preparer that i’ve been working with for 10 years, and they asked me what my birthday was on the on the latest communication, i’m good. i’ve been with you for 10 years. and you don’t have that data and your stuff.
seth fineberg 19:02
perfect, perfect example, like
geni whitehouse 19:05
it starts with birthday and you know, stuff, i’m going to have that in a bomb somewhere. why the heck do i have to fill anything in and other stuff that i’ve done every year since i’ve worked with them? and you know, been one of the reasons i have an external firm or so i can see what it feels like to be a client, but also because i hate doing my own taxes. but but i mean, that’s the kind of stuff that we do. but if you think about first of all, how we hire as accountants, if you’re if you’re a traditional high c high detail mechanic, you’re going to hire people like you, which means all of a sudden, if you ship to advisory, nobody’s going to want to talk to clients, they’re going to want to be focused on perfection in the work that they deliver, which we need, but you can’t expect somebody to change who they are. right? because you decided that you’re going to shift into different modes.
seth fineberg 19:49
now why does that? why does that shift sorry to interrupt but why does that shift with with advisory obviously, you have a lot more firms now that are leaning more into that. yeah, okay, i’m not gonna be so much as a task person so much as you’re going to do enough, that is going to get me the information that i need to really help your business.
geni whitehouse 20:09
i’m going to show you another graphic.
seth fineberg 20:11
ooh i like this.
geni whitehouse 20:12
so if we look at how these behavioral styles are wired, your ds and c’s are oriented versus on tasks versus people so they get er done, get er done get er done is one of the comedians, get it done, right. so it has to be right the d is get it done, you can see the conflict there. because if i have to be 100%, perfect, it’s gonna take me longer than the deewan. so you see conflict between this d and the c, get it done, get it out, get it off, to play and see has to be right. so those are task orientations, but the d is extroverted. and the c is introverted, which means they derive energy from different things, the d gets energy from engagement, from external from talking from people, the eye that see gets energy from solitude. so i’ve got this person who’s focused on perfection and like solid didn’t or ask them to get out and sell stuff or to ask questions they don’t feel comfortable answering, you’re putting on the seat that they don’t have skills for traditionally, that doesn’t mean they can’t do it. but you have to guide them through that process in order to get them to change the way they see and think about them. so we’ve got this d introvert, i mean, extrovert who’s like, just talk to me, i’m gonna get it done, move it, and you got the c and then on the eye and s side. and this is why accountants who have a blend of this steadiness and people orientation are going to be more successful in moving into advisory, the s is motivated by making sure everybody’s happy. their steadiness, they want to avoid conflict, both the cns is don’t want to have conflict. so the steadiness component, if you see that, plus that detail orientation, you’re going to have the people stuff and the task orientation, and they’re going to be easier to shift into more of a dialogue, or, you know, asking a question a month of the client. and then the eyes are people oriented, the problem you’re gonna have with a bunch of eyes running around is they’re not going to follow up set. so when you said the pr people don’t get anywhere, they form great relationships, they form great relationships and like to talk to people, but they don’t get back to following up, they don’t take good notes, or whatever. so if you hire for whatever you are, you’re going to be missing skill sets that you need to take you into the future. so one of the things you have to be very conscious of is looking to basically cover all of these bases to the extent possible in your hiring decisions. it’s one of the things we do clients, we map out where their teams are on the disk wheel. and we sort of say, well, there’s nobody in this sort of implementer mode. and so it really opens people’s eyes as to what you need in order to have an organization that functions effectively. so a lot of stuff in here, but i mean, this is a skill set. and there’s you can do free disc assessments online, we use these assessments, i do it as a base level for the adviser training that i teach, we use it in our firm for every hire, we train our team on what to look for, and how to modify behavioral communications. and it’s, it’s really something that, you know, most of us didn’t get anywhere else.
seth fineberg 23:08
yeah, it’s not something you’re there teaching, you know, young accountants coming in, and i love that i’m starting to get more of them reaching out to me, i’m glad they’re using, you know, linkedin and places like that, that are like, okay, you know, we see there’s different personalities in the accounting profession, we want to know, they’re very curious, because in a lot of cases, they’re not being taught really what it’s like. and i remember that even as a young journalist, there was a lot i didn’t learn in school, and i purposely went to work, you know, in a pretty junior position, i probably could have gotten a slightly higher position, and i had more education, but i wanted to work i wanted to learn in the field. but you know, these are essential things that, you know, maybe you should, at least, you know, on the education side, give a flavor of, so what we’re talking about with this is not just okay, these are the different personalities of your clients. this is also your staff, this is how you hire this is.
geni whitehouse 24:09
yeah, we traditionally hired for 100% detail orientation. that was mean, we had people in our firm, we did the staff 100%, and they do a graphic and the c is mapped is blue, 100% blue, detailed task oriented. i don’t want to talk to anybody to get out of my way. and don’t make me not have perfection. that doesn’t work now. and what you’re also finding though, is that we have generational communication preference differences. so the way old school folks and some of our clients are still the old school phone, want to communicate by phone, if they’re more of a people person. and most of us are trying now to do email or text. there’s a lot more text or using one of the tools that allow collaborative communication to happen. and we can’t get that client to do it right and then we’re frustrated again, use my tool which requires you to log in and memorize a password or whatever why aren’t they using these tools
seth fineberg 25:01
by portal? ats? usually, a lot of times it’s all i’ve given you, you know, i’m not i’m not accepting it any other way. and that’s something to that, you know, i think it’s, you know, it is going to make it easier. and also just, you know, in that in the case of document exchange more compliant, right, yeah, it can’t be storing it can’t be storing attachments on your email folks don’t. don’t do it, you know, and
geni whitehouse 25:28
i know. it’s really, it’s really frustrating for us, because we have all these compliance standards, we’ve got to conform to it. and we can offer them tools. but we really got to figure out how to make it as easy as possible for our clients to get info to us in the way that best works for them. that’s why you see a lot of phone app stuff, integration with that, and illicium as phone apps and many of the other providers that we all work with link from your phone and scan it, there we go, now we’re making it easier, but then you’ve got people who still don’t communicate with them. i mean, there’s all kinds of mixes, now young people are texts me on my phone and forget it. so we’ve got to find ways to put it in a format that really facilitates a dialogue. and we can’t complain about the bad clients, right? that stuff on our side that we’re doing that makes it hard for them. and that’s where our focus has to shift. and again, thankfully, the technology has really come a long way for that
seth fineberg 26:16
it has and i want to go into you know, everyone loves hearing about new tools, where we’re about to enter conferences in here. and by folks getting out live to conferences, you will see first and some of these tools that janie is mentioning, i want to type a few of them into the chat just so you can on your own, you can kind of look up some of these things that that that really are a little more modern ways of of just kind of stay more organized and and doing file sharing and communicating with staff and clients a bit better. and by the way, we’re a little past the halfway mark. now, folks, we can jeanne and i as as i said in some of my promotion, we can talk about some of this stuff for hours. and we have over the years. we want to hear from you too. if we’re not touching on something or we touched on something you’re like, i want to hear more about that. please throw it in the q&a. we have about 25 minutes left, right now i want to jump into some of the tools you mentioned lessio jetpack like what what are these things? but let’s so i’m gonna type a few of these. yeah, alright, so we got jetpack workflow, i know them all, but the folks who might not know jetpack workflow, yeah, i’m gonna see carbon who i throw carbon in there.
geni whitehouse 27:35
yeah, carbon in there. i mean, those are in these are, these are more of internal operational focus, but we got to have the operational support in order to do client facing stuff. so it behooves us to do that. there’s live flow that brings data in live from different applications, puts it into a google sheet, and all these all these solutions are there. but again, we can automate the full out of ourselves and our converse in our work. but if we can’t sit down and talk to a client, we’re not getting the benefit. and again, that’s when i went to a software company acc pack, i joined them because they had an interactive dashboard. and i went around to cpas. and i said, well, where’s the report, i just want to mail it and have a conversation, do an interactive discussion. and now fathom has that same capability, it has a gold seat screen that i just rave about, and use all the time of clients.
seth fineberg 28:24
and what what it’s fathom just for the folks who don’t know fathom?
geni whitehouse 28:28
fathom is dashboard tool that overlays quickbooks desktop, and online and creates this, there’s this one screen there. and it’s only a component of what they do. but this one gold six screen gives me a basis for translating what i’m talking about with the high v and honor a team about what levers they can push to improve any situation that they’re trying to improve. from a financial perspective. it’s just one of many tools they’re dragged that brings information forward in a visual way. there’s plan guru that helps you do forecasting in a visual way. there’s a sift, reporting, there’s reach reporting, there’s just a million things out there. there’s a click, which does some other stuff. i mean, there’s it’s been around for a while. but again, i can put it in a graph or spreadsheet or whatever. but if i can’t talk to the client about what to do about that data, and i’m wasting my time, i can show you that your numbers are bad in a picture and a word and a whatever. but i need to be able to tell you, what do i do to make it better next year. and that’s where we’re afraid to get in front of the client. and that’s what i went in search of tools that helped me do that. and now i can say, here’s what we can do. we can focus on accounts receivable, let’s process map, why it’s taken so hard to go from sale to cash. and let’s look at each component and see where it’s breaking down on your team. and then i know how to help you. but before i could just say, well, bad and i’ll see you next year, let you know what’s better or better. so using these tools and producing information in a pretty report is one thing but then what are you going to do with the client about those results, and that’s where it gets harder for us because of the water and i can have a perfect i can take six months to create the perfect balanced financial statement. and by the time i get in front of the owner, who cares six months later, what’s happening? i need to know today what i gotta do differently to make tomorrow better. and that’s where we struggle, as a profession. so we’ve got to learn things and find tools that make us comfortable in stepping into new areas, when it comes to client dialogue.
seth fineberg 30:22
so here’s a great question, how do we get and this is really with any any tools, i think that are available, and that we want to start kicking the tires on? or maybe maybe you did come back from a conference and you heard about something, you saw a demo? how do you get partner manager by in or investing in new tools where you know, something that’s, you know, going to, to help, and you know, mostly what you’re gonna get as well, we’re used to doing things this way. and you’re asking us to move to something else that we don’t know, especially at firms that have you know, zero culture of advisory, but maybe, are going to start to move in that direction. but even just to make things just just better, every firm could be a little more efficient. and a little more, you know, today we’re talking about communication, but it ties into, you know, where you’re getting information and how you’re getting it who you’re talking to. but back to the park partner manager by it. i know you’ve heard this before geni, but folks,
geni whitehouse 31:23
completely shocked by that somebody would even ask this question live. this is a challenge the way it starts. and typically, what i’m here to tell you is you’re already doing advisory, every firm is doing advisory, i haven’t been as a tax person, they’ve asked me to do something, i’d figure out how to do it take me forever, i wouldn’t build for half of my time because it was inefficient. and and then i would do something different for the next client asked for something unusual, like how do you help me figure out this or help me review the cost of this around construction clients, we manage the my projects better, all that stuff, i would help with technology, and i’d do all this stuff. but i didn’t have a systematic approach to doing it. so it was not driving me forward in the direction that i wanted. so what you do start looking at clients, you have to have capacity in order to think about what those clients really need, which is the first challenge we have in most firms, i got more tax work than i can do. and you’re asking me to do something different. on top of that, well, i want you to look at the revenue you’re getting from those services. and if i can double the revenue by delivering advisory, and not have to bring in any more clients or work any more hours, then i can free up the capacity to ask a couple of questions once a month. and that’s how it starts, you start showing success with your own client whom you’ve got, you’ve got people in every firm, i was doing this, i was doing training classes in the firm and small firm in atlanta, when a professional, i create a bound training classes, because i realized that my clients didn’t know what i was talking about when i was talking about financial statements. so i did a little training thing i put together, you can take initiative at any level in your firm and do a couple of things. and when they see the impact, they’ll start to get on board. yeah. yeah, and clients are getting smarter about what they should demand from their accounts. there’s a lot of good activity going on in our space right now, where firms are, are talking about what they’re doing in the advisory space. so firms are going to start getting requests from clients for additional services. i mean, they’re going to say things like, can you help me figure out what to do? i just met with a client a couple of days ago, and exactly what he said is, i don’t think me or my team is really understanding wine industry accounting. and i said, yeah, i teach a class, come join me, you
seth fineberg 33:24
i know, wine, i know accounting, but…
geni whitehouse 33:27
i don’t know wine yet. i know how to drink it and how to count it. that’s all.
seth fineberg 33:32
i know wine. and i know accounting, but wine industry accounting, that’s yeah,
geni whitehouse 33:36
lots of complexities. i mean, i’ve got this is a business owner who’s sold a big business, he’s coming to the minor incident going on, i don’t really understand all the weird stuff that goes on in this industry. it’d be really cool for you and your team member to be there because then the team member doesn’t feel bad that they don’t know all the accounting stuff. so you know, it really gets back to the fact that we like people in the technology space. and i’ve been in both are working in a very technical area. and anybody who’s not in our club, our nerd club is intimidated by what we’re talking about. so if we could take the mystery and intimidation out of the dialog that we have, our values gonna escalate. and the way we do that is by focusing on communication breakdowns with simple and clear for people, and then they’ll start responding to requests for info and things like that.
seth fineberg 34:25
meet people where they’re at, and i’ve seen this before, to where i’ve seen other accountants talking to other accountants saying, look, clients don’t always speak accountant. they just add you and chris, like, you know, like, you know, even like with lawyers, it’s like, yeah, okay, you know, you you have your language you have your way of, you know, what, you know, and it sounds simple to you, and you’re like, why don’t you understand this? it’s like, well, you might as well be from mars, because, you know, you know, maybe they understand a word or two but, you know, by and large people where they’re at so i’m a big proponent of that like you know, just internally also, you know, with dealing with clients, and we’ve got a great question i want to get to too, but sorry, you’re gonna say,
geni whitehouse 35:07
this is why i wrote a book called how to make a boring subject. interesting, because by association, people think accountants are boring. it’s because we’re sound, but it’s boring topic. and it’s not, it’s not true. it’s because, you know, they’re boring people who are deep into anything. i mean, you could be a real boring person and share everything you know about golf, it’s a technical sport, people can go on and on about golf. and because we’re not in on what they’re talking about, it bores us. well, that’s exactly what happens in what we’re doing. we think everybody is on the same page with the vocabulary we use and the concepts. and as a result, we leave them out of the dialog, and they get bored, and they don’t value the work that we deliver. so our job is to break down those barriers to learning and understanding.
seth fineberg 35:48
yeah, so question from our attendees, if clients are complaining about oh, i love this. if clients are complaining about standard billing rates, how do you sell them on advisory services that they need, but don’t necessarily want to pay for it now? genie happens to be part of the impactful advisor. and i’m sure you get this a lot from working with brokers who are just kind of getting going with alright, fine, fine advisory advisory? how do i get started?
geni whitehouse 36:20
so first of all, we got undefined and vibes to me, it’s i’m sorry, let’s do it. your client moves the needle forward in the direction of their dreams, yes, that means you got to know what the dream is, which we don’t ask. and then we got to figure out what to do to help them get their saaremaa decided to go wacko. and so that’s the first step. but if i am, if i’m billing by the hour, and i’m doing services like mandatory compliance that they don’t value. and to shift into advisory from that is a difficult leap, but it’s not an impossible one. you say, i’ve got some new skills, i’m looking at your tax stuff, it’s june, or it’s may, i’m looking at your tax stuff, i’m looking at your financials, i just met with a client again last week, and i said, i want to meet with you, i’ve got a couple of concerns, i sat down and said, you know, you’re selling your stuff for less than a cost to make you make it you’re selling a loss on these things. i’m worried about, you know, your team, if you got the right people in the right seats, let’s talk about this and some other stuff, i’m just want to make sure that you have confidence, here’s some stuff you need to be looking at doesn’t look like you are in your monthly financial statements, or wherever you going to look. and we had this amazing conversation for an hour and a half. he didn’t ask me how much it was gonna charge. the value question goes out the window, the billing question goes out the window when you’re doing stuff that they care about, instead of the fact that the bank was reconciled? do you think an owner is going into quickbooks to see if we reconciled the bank statement? yes, it matters. but i gotta go beyond that. and step back, take five minutes, look at what the client hasn’t said, you know, i just want to talk to you about this, i sort of look at it seven conversation about what’s going on here, i see you’re paying more for marketing and all of my other watery clients as a percentage of revenue. we do benchmarking that exposes that comparative data, that gives us a platform for conversation. that’s how you raise the value and get out of this, you’re charging too much per hour. yeah. which by the way, you’re not billing for all your time, because you’re writing off half of it like i did, and hopefully you’re not because you’re more effective and efficient. but i always thought i shouldn’t take this long to do this. this isn’t worth what i’m going to bill. yeah. and so we get into that whole trap where we’re really not villain by that we’re doing value billing, not pricing, value billing after the fact that we’re only writing down. and so it starts with the initial onboarding call, where you set the expectation that you’re not the cheapest, that you’re gonna ask them a bunch of different questions about what it is they’re trying to get to. and then you have tools that will help you get them there. and then the value is obvious. when you start doing that we have quite a, we have meetings with prospective clients, and we just ask them different questions. and at the end, they go, wait, are you accountants? and that’s when you know, that’s how different just sitting down and talking about them is for a potential client most don’t we just jump in? what’s your problem? what are you paying in tax me returns? i’ll give you a quote. that’s what i did. that’s why i’m so frustrated. yeah. and then i told them, they owed money, and i didn’t know how to help them, get the money, get the cash to pay the bill.
seth fineberg 36:35
so this all ties together. and this is another level of, of communicating, you know, it’s not just about you, it still gets to the point of getting what you want, and getting everyone on the same page. that’s the crux of communication. you know, whether it’s, you know, at just kind of a basic high level or basic level of, yeah, i just need this in the time that i need it. and the way that and the way that i want it, but yeah, with the question that that our attendee just asked it, it goes to okay, look, i’m trying to show my value. i’m trying to, you know, whether it’s always this question about, you know, moving to to a new tool set or particular tool that is going to help us with all this other stuff? or it’s, you know, yeah, i’d like to move more into advisory, i’m worried about the pushback from from clients, who don’t feel that they need it, show them, yeah.
geni whitehouse 40:15
they don’t need that other stuff much of it, they, they, they need it, they need to check the box, they need it, they don’t want, they want help and figuring out what to do differently tomorrow that we are not trying traditionally to do. and once we get the confidence that the number one thing that i’m teaching in my classes is competence. and i had the same problem, i’m gonna go ask a question i don’t want to have to answer. so i needed tools and things that could help me see this data and information in different way and new questions to ask, which is really the main thing that you need to think about, instead of asking, do you have your inventory balance, say, you know, what’s going on inventory? how’s it looking relatives? you know, how are your collections having i asked, i asked people in the wine industry this all the time, because to me, if receivables in the wine industry start to be a problem. that’s a leading indicator that we’re going to, we’re gonna have to get in there and help some clients figure out what to do about cash flow. so there are questions you can ask the in the clients, you’re like, yeah, i’ve been worrying about that. let’s talk about it. but we don’t get to those questions, especially during busy season, which is a time where we shouldn’t we’re in front of everybody. but i know i mean, i had stacks of returns pile up and call somebody and ask him, you know, what’s going on with your inventory. and that’s a good time to do it. and you’re right. tax season never ended. yeah, always a 15th of every single month. and i was always scrambling to get everything done. so i mean, i feel the pain, but that’s where we shift some of the work that we do take that low value stuff, those low paying customers that you work with, get rid of them and open up some extended services for the good clients that you really can make a difference for and you’ll start to change. right, and it’s way more fun.
seth fineberg 41:57
ooh, somebody actually has a question about wine industry. why y’all wine industry specific software? crm inventory?
geni whitehouse 42:08
yes. okay. so interesting. thank you for that. this is one of the benefits of being in the focus niche creation. some of y’all fancy people say but admit, i know all the products that my clients are the
seth fineberg 42:20
ones that can even apply to other you know, services,
geni whitehouse 42:23
the leading e-commerce solutions in our space, and they’re in napa valley, which is 500 wineries in a small geography so weird kind of thing, but they’re two leaders on the e commerce side wine direct and commerce seven commerce seven is a newer entrant seems to be picking up a lot of clients. this is the point of sale, wine sales online solution, they have some crm stuff built in. but it’s it’s not an ace really designed to generate the sales activity. some people are using flavors of salesforce to manage the crm, particularly if they have national sales versus direct to consumer sales, which is part of the mind machine. sorry, other people don’t know my lingo here. but we sell it to channels, we have tasting rooms, which are retail and online, which is retail and we sell to wholesale distributors in the mind and two different sales channels. and so there are different tools for each of those. the inventory management is one of the most complicated parts of the wine industry. because bulk line that free produce is in production for three to five years, depending on what kind of variety you have some cases you can get in and out in about a year if you’re doing why online, but tracking the flow of that stuff and the recipes for what you blend and all the reporting they have to do to government agencies is very complicated. so there are two two main tools they’re actually three is a product called ecos ek ios, which really started in the craft brewing space, it’s a newer one, not i don’t think it’s deep in terms of some of the tools there’s been traced and an event which both automate the production process and give us the count it’s a way to apply costing across both lines it moves to the production so yeah, give me an a send me an email happy to talk with you more about that and connect you with some of these folks in the industry jeanne yet even an org.com or jamie at the impactful advisor.com either one, i’ll put it in the cockpit in the fan.
seth fineberg 44:12
we’ve got a few minutes left here folks, i of course want to get to any other pressing questions that you all have. otherwise i’m going to start to put kind of a wrapper around today because we want to come away with just feeling like yeah, it’s not just fpga know what they’re talking about. but yeah, i could be doing more you know, of this and less of that. and again, it all seems to get around you know, you’re modifying some behavior understanding who you’re communicating with so that you can get exactly what you want from them and and maybe you know being a little less well i need this this way can we can we offer us any other tips jeanne other things that you might not have touched on in, in, in related to disk or otherwise. and by the way, i’m going to post it for everyone leaves, i’m going to post the link again, to you know, to download. so what is it that people are going to get from us is a is our our handout for the day.
geni whitehouse 44:17
so the handout is just going to give you some perspective on how different people communicate differently, which again, the understanding of that was shocking to me that people did not communicate design, why am i ignorant about that the fact that they didn’t all want it the way that i wanted to deliver it. but what it takes is first, a mindset shift, if you’re trying to serve your customers, and that’s why we all became accountants, because we were service people, i want to help you. absolutely, it’s finding my thing, the impact on me, by the end of the day, the only thing that matters to me is that i can make a difference in impact. the second thing is you need a different set of tools, we need to expand what we already know and leverage it in different ways. and then you need some different skills. so look for the tools that supplement what we have in these tools. some of these tools are a bunch of tools that you can leverage and having conversations in a different way to clients. and then you need just a few more skills, comfort and asking a bunch of different questions, or one or two different questions with every single client, if you would do that and ask a client, where do you go to see if your business is on track, you will find out that it is not accounting, and you need to understand whatever that thing is. so you can help them get data out of it faster and better. and then the more relevant way. so one different question a month to each client, you’ll start moving the needle in for yourself and your own business
seth fineberg 46:31
good question. and you’re not, you know, obviously, you know, you have to respond sort of in the moment and things like that. so maybe when you’re when maybe next time, you’re sort of gearing up for you know, for some folks, things start to get busy again, sort of end of the summer, so they’re getting things, you know, or you know, september, october, you know, ready for that, that’s kind of a second little crush, if you’re, if you’re tax focused, you know, maybe start, you know, getting some of these things, you know, ready to wear, you know, whether it’s you know, your staff, or, you know, maybe between now, and then maybe looking at a new tool that can that can that can help with, you know, how, you know, the communication exchange, you know, that’s out there. and, and the end of the day, this is about getting what you know, you want, but also your clients getting what they’re, you know, what they want to and obviously, what they want is, you know, staying compliant, and impossibly getting, you know, some some direction from new to, but as you’re moving into these more, you know, somewhat uncomfortable at first, you know, conversational type of roles versus just a sheer exchange of documents, or i’m going to hear from you a couple of times a year on a particular issue, you know, learning to be comfortable, you know, not just with communicating, yeah, you know, set up, set up a zoom or a team, you know, call and, you know, maybe have this live conversation, jeanne, any final thoughts about how things can be better from a communication perspective? now, again, this is just this is between staff, and also staff and clients?
geni whitehouse 48:03
well, i would say, do not try to enter a conversation with proving how smart you are, you will shift the focus to making the person that’s why you are hired, is the conversation to making the person across from you feel smarter, whether that’s a team member, or a client, you will be highly successful, and you will have more value when you can make them feel better about themselves. yeah.
seth fineberg 48:25
and thank you, liz, good point, it’s less about the answer clients want, but that the accountant shows that they care about the client’s business, and goals. and it’s not just, you know, it shouldn’t be like, you know, the busiest time shouldn’t be like, oh, i gotta go to the dentist. and i believe it or not, i do know some people who look forward to it. they’re like, yep, i’ve been taking care of things. i can’t wait to get that report, that, you know, i did a good job on my teeth. that’s about you want that from your accountant, too. but you know, it’s more, it’s more than that. and you want to be more than that. and they will, you know, to the question earlier, they will want to pay you more for those valuable things. because, you know, heck, when you show you care, you you, you know, you definitely are are worth it, and people are are who they are, and they’re going to see that, you know, as a business owner, for sure. you you’ve all sudden, you’ve you’ve saved them time, you’ve saved them money, you you’re taking care, you’re taking something off their plate, you know, but definitely, you know, you reach out maybe more often than you do, so that it’s not all this, i need this, i need this. i need this. that already puts people off doesn’t i don’t words, genie and where can people find you? i see you put your email in the chat. thank you very much.
geni whitehouse 49:43
i would just say that you’re doing great work. i mean, we all are we’re at we’re keeping the wheels on the bus for the economic engine. yes, you are proud of what you’re doing. you can do more. you can free up capacity so that you’re not in an overloaded stressed out mode. and believe me if i can do it, anybody can so take care. have yourself, have a great summer and appreciate everything that you do.
seth fineberg 49:44
and get out to a conference people. pick one. there’s fun. meet your people and talk about this stuff with them live. look at some of the tools that geni mentioned today. and i hope to see you out there too. you can reach me at seth at seth feinberg.com jeanne ad geni at even a nerd or the impactful advisor, definitely download, you know, go to the go to the link here, register, download your copy of disk and learn about how it can help you. thank you so so much. have a great rest of your day and a great weekend. bye.