The Better Way to Approach Advisory Conversations from the “Advisory Guy”

Podcast

Summary

• Start with Your Clients
• Don’t Limit Yourself
• Advisory Maximizes Your Firm

Connect with John

• Send John an email
• Connect with John on LinkedIn
• Visit https://www.completeadvisorysolution.com/

Meet John Thompson

John Thompson, also known as The Advisory Guy, is the MB of CAS UK in Ireland, which provides firms who want to get serious about advisory with software and training they need to leverage advisory in their practices. 

His experience has shown him that on some level, every firm is already providing advisory to their clients. They just need three things to help it come to fruition: 

• Software tools
• Structure and processes
• The belief they can scale

John’s goal is to provide firm owners with these three things. 

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John says your clients will give you all the information you need to provide them with advisory services. Because you already have the desire to help them be successful and support them to do better, you are already moving in the right direction. 

To do this, you need to know what they want and then provide them with what they need to get what they want. 

John outlines two levels of service when it comes to providing advisory to your clients: primary and secondary. At the primary level, you’ll attempt to understand their business and personal goals by creating a plan to help them reach those goals. At the secondary level, you’ll outline the services you offer that can help them reach their goals and introduce them to other people who can help them as well. 

John’s advice is to talk with your clients to see what level of service they are most interested in and provide it.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Many accountants are holding back from providing advisory services. John believes this is because of the common misconception that comes with the title. Many accountants believe you have to be a business guru to be an advisor, however, that is not the case. 

Growing Your Firm Podcast host, David Cristello, suggested that maybe accounts don’t know how to approach their clients about advisory services or they aren’t sure how to properly price as reasons why they avoid the jump. 

John agreed and followed up by saying the best way to get around these potential roadblocks is to have a structure and process in place.

Advisory Maximizes Your Firm

John and David agree the best way to scale your firm, right now, is to add advisory services. If knowing how to price is an issue, start with a basic service package and include additional services that come at an additional cost. One thing that should be included in every advisory package is planning meetings, John suggests quarterly. 

Again, John goes back to putting clients at the center. Clients want to:

• Stay in control
• Be proud of their business
• Be successful

If your services can help them do that, then you are providing them with the value they will be happy to pay. 

As a testament to advisory services being the best way to scale your firm, John shared that in most cases firms that implement advisory services can expect 20% of clients to make the transition and a double to triple increase in revenue. 

John’s experience in helping firms implement advisory makes his advice valuable to any firm owner looking to scale. Listen to the full podcast above to learn more about best practices for implementing advisory services into your firm!