If you have been considering adding advisory services to your accounting practice, the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb would like to help you decide if the time is right for this to happen. However, many accounting firms might be surprised at how close they are to already being considered financial advisors. It is just natural for accountants to offer financial advice to their clients. So why not make this service official and start getting paid for the financial advice you offer?
To get your accounting firm started on the road to officially becoming a financial advisor, we are going to turn to some other experts and share their opinions on how to do this effectively:
The Firm of the Future has some great input on adding advisory services to your accounting firm's offering in this blog post.
They list these 4 attributes of a successful advisory service:
Moving up the value chain from delivering Hindsight,
To providing technology-enabled, real-time Oversight,
So they can deliver value-added Insight,
As well as, mission-critical Foresight.
The Journal of Accountancy has a great blog post titled Add Value With Planning Advisory Services. Here is a quote from that blog post, "I encourage tax practitioners to embrace financial planning," said Mike Velazquez, CPA/PFS, CGMA, a senior partner at The Accountancy in Glendale, Calif. "Clients benefit because they have a trusted adviser counseling them. If you take the time to demystify and understand what's involved in providing financial guidance, you might embrace it because it's a natural outgrowth of your tax practice."
Accountex Report offers some sage advice to accounting firms that are considering adding financial advisory services to their list of services in this article titled, Ways to Diversify Your Accounting Practice. Below is a quote from the beginning of the article:
"Diversifying your accounting practice is a matter of growth and, within years, possibly a matter of survival. New technologies are freeing up accountants to spend less time tied up in data entry and details. Many of the most time-intensive tasks CPAs once faced are gradually having their difficulty trivialized. Times are changing.
Fortunately, your accounting practice has far more to offer clients than bookkeeping and tax preparation. As new technology creates new opportunities, investigating a variety of different ways to diversify your practice is essential to being proactive about adapting to the changing market."
Tripp Braden is a growth strategist and internationally recognized Sage Global Business Expert and IBM Futurist who turns strategy into implementable business development activities for increasing market share, revenue, and profits. He has proven success in seeing the big picture and creating new market opportunities. In this article titled Are Advisory Services in the Future for Your Accounting Firm? Mr. Braden offers the following 8 pillars to a successful client advisory service:
The 8 Pillars to a Successful Client Advisory Services include:
- Industry Verticals
- Key Performance Indicators
- Packaging and Pricing
- Talent Recruitment & Development
- Client Engagement
- Business Development
- Service Agreements
- Business Planning
Last but certainly not least is this free, downloadable PDF white paper from Sage titled 7 Questions to Help Grow Your Advisory Services. Below is a list of some of the information contained in that white paper.
"This whitepaper breaks down the seven questions you need to ask yourselves and your team to kickstart the process of adding advisory services to your firm. Including:
- Defining your story - How do you blend the needs of your client with your skill set to build a relevant service stack
- Understanding the value you offer - and how to articulate that to your clients
- What new internal processes do you need? And how do you define those to reduce disruption
- How do you price and package any new services to make them understandable and buyable?"
Of course, we would be remiss if we didn't mention another great way to add value to your accounting firm by using the best PDF financial file converters on the market. As you journey into the world of financial advising, the tools from MoneyThumb will help make your job so much easier.
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