In case you missed last week: Book Review: How Clients Buy. A must-read if you are looking for a better perspective to understand how clients buy professional services – particularly if you are hoping to improve the odds of making that happen for your BVFLS services.

On to this week: Don’t wait for the impending New Year to inspire you to make powerful changes to your practice. Even if you just start thinking about how to refine your goals, strategies, and tactics this month, you’ll be way ahead of your competition.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

We all have shrinking attention spans. To combat that in your audience of leads and prospects, create one short sentence that communicates your value … and invites “How do you do that?” follow up questions.

Examples:
I assist savvy business owners successfully transition their companies.
I reduce uncertainty in complex matters for business owners and their trusted advisors.
I help you turn the practice you have into the practice you want.

Stop hiding.

Your 20

As in your location … where are you?

1. How long have you been practicing?
2. What stage of your practice’s life cycle are you in?
3. How many more years do you intend to work?
4. What do your services (and your pricing) say about you?
5. What is your most favorite project to sell and perform?
6. What is your most profitable project to sell and perform?
7. Are they the same thing? If not, why not?
8. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best, what is your energy level for your practice today?

Your 20/20

As in your vision … do you have one for your practice?

9. Why did you start your practice? What was the original goal/mission?
10. What is the goal today? What do you most want to accomplish now?
11. How do you measure/define success in your practice?
12. What kind of practice do you want to have 1 year from now?
13. Do you have a unique point of view that will get you there? What is it based on?
14. What will you bring to the table that your competitors don’t … or won’t … or can’t?
15. What is your biggest challenge in taking your practice to its next level of evolution?
16. What are the roadblocks between where you are now and where you want to be?

Your 2020

As in next year … your best year ever!

17. What is your most favorite thing to do in your practice? What charges you?
18. How do you do more of that?
19. What is your least favorite thing to do in your practice? What drains you?
20. How do you do less of that?

So what

The mark of a successful organization isn’t whether or not it has problems; it’s whether it has the same problems it had last year.
~ John Foster Dulles

Every practice has problems, including mine. But if we plan on ATTRACTING leads and prospects, CONVERTING them into clients and referral sources, and DELIVERING our services the same way as last year, our practices will have the same contingent of problems as last year.

What is going to change if we don’t change?

In real life

In one way, shape, or form we are all solo practitioners … whether we are single shingles who work for ourselves at one end of the spectrum or whether we work in a large BVFLS firm at the other end of the spectrum.

And we are judged on our efficiency and effectiveness of attracting new prospects, converting them into clients, and delivering our services.

That judgment is more direct and immediate if we are a single shingle … because, there, we eat what we kill. That judgment may be more indirect and delayed in a large firm depending on our position in the hierarchy … because, there, we may have some degree of cover.

But eventually, we are all judged.

For this reason, we all need to take stock of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it so that we can get better at it. Each year.

And December 2019 is a great time to get started on your 2020.

Cheers!

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.

In case you missed last week: Are you outsourcing? If not, should you be looking into it? I believe the answer is yes … especially if you are in a small firm that has not built a protective moat (Warren Buffet speak) around a specific practice area or industry niche.

On to this week: For years, we’ve all had our relatively staid, predictable practices. Change has been mostly related to progress in valuation approaches, methods, and procedures. But I see changes looming that will uproot the landscape of what we do and how we do it.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

If you are struggling to keep your marketing costs down, you are likely only reaching the kind of prospects who are struggling to keep their service costs down.

Ok, maybe blowing up your practice mushroom-cloud style is a bit of hyperbole. But we can get consumed by putting out today’s fires – so we can fight tomorrow’s fight – that we forget there is a tomorrow after tomorrow.

So we need to be forward-looking … and be prepared for a time when the past is not a proxy for what we can expect in the future. I think we are coming up on such a period of time.

Look, what we can achieve in our practices, and how we achieve it, will always be affected by the forces that influence the need for and delivery of our BVFLS services. Past changes have, frankly, not been all that tumultuous … notwithstanding the big increase in the exemption that has affected estate/gift valuations.

But the future changes I see will have a more turbulent impact.

So are you prepared for the changes our profession will see in, say, the next three years? Changes directly caused,  or indirectly influenced, by:

• Accounting firm (and BV department) mergers
• Big data valuation solutions making greater inroads
• Fee compression
• Global (or at least more national) competition
• Increasing importance of IP valuation
• Long-tailed keyword search requests for experts like us on devices like Alexa
• Millennials (you struggle with them as employees … wait till they become clients)
• Outsourcing
• Prospects with companies having international operations (and international risk)
• Report commoditization (not the service, the report)
• Retirement of baby boomer industry icons and thought leaders
• Specialization of services
• Unified valuation standards (ok, maybe this one is a reach!)

Yeah, three years is a long time down the road.
Until it’s not … until it’s here.

So what

Do not conflate change only with risk.
Change also creates opportunity for those who prepare for it.

Of course, not all of the things on my list will affect you … but some are bound to.
And how soon?
And will the practice you have now exist in three years?

We encourage business owners to take the time to work on their companies.
Are you taking the time to work on your practice?
When is the last time you held a strategic planning retreat for your firm?

In real life

Want some guidance? Follow other professional service firms, e.g., in accounting and law, to see how they identify and adapt to change. (I frequently see articles addressing this subject in Accounting Today.) Then answer these questions:

• What is the 3-year vision for your practice?
• What are the 1-year goals you need to complete to achieve your vision?
• What are the quarterly projects you need to complete to achieve your annual goals?
• What are the weekly tasks you need to complete to achieve your quarterly projects?

Cheers!

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.

In case you missed last week: Thinking of hosting your own webinars? Here are 7 things you must consider. If you have a group you want to educate and market to or a product or service you want to promote and sell to, webinars are the best way to reach them. But there are some things you need to know to get started.

On to this week: So I am back from the AICPA FVS Conference in Las Vegas where I spoke about scaling your business model. More than a few colleagues told me (privately) about how they were outsourcing work to places like India and the Philippines. They gushed about the quality of the work, the quick turnaround, and of course, the extraordinary pricing.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

I set a goal to read 26 books in 2019. I reached that goal at the end of September. I did it by watching less television.

Not all that long ago, I recall when “outsourcing” was considered a four-letter word. Traditional service providers were adamantly against it. I remember an outsourcing discussion that caused quite a ruckus in a LinkedIn group that I managed.

That was then; this is now.

I recall outsourcing starting primarily with the advent of 409A work … then with fair value valuation work. In both cases, the pricing became commoditized more quickly than expected … hence the need to lower costs to maintain profitability.

Today, based on my conversations, all sorts of work is being outsourced. For example, practitioners are providing their Excel valuation and Word report templates to the outsourcing parties who then complete the necessary work to those specs.

I was told the quality of the work is high. Also, a plus is the time zone difference between the US and the outsourcing parties: work can be handed off at the end of our day, continued during their day, and be available for review our next morning.

But of course, a big factor is the pricing advantage. One person told me some divorce-related work he was billing out at $20,000 was only costing him $2,500 to produce. So even if that work becomes commoditized, there’s a lot of margin to play with.

And just to be clear, I am not judging anyone who outsources. And while I don’t think outsourcing is mainstream among practitioners yet, I expect it will become a lot more common as fee compression hits more of our BV service tiers.

What a difference a few years make.

So what

Are you outsourcing your valuation work? If not, should you be looking into it?

I believe the answer is yes … especially if you are in a small firm that has not built a protective moat (Warren Buffet speak) around a specific practice area or industry niche you serve.

In real life

I know, anecdotes are not data. But I don’t think we’re going to get the data that supports the outsourcing trend – unless BVR adds an outsourcing question that can be answered anonymously on its best practices survey.

Also, we live in a digitally connected world where outsourcing is a growing trend in all kinds of businesses. Did we think BV services would be immune to outsourcing? And the real value we bring to the table, the intellectual property built into the templates and the delivery of the work product to the client, remains “at home.” The in-between stuff is just details.

Cheers!

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.