Call it advisory, call it growth solutions, call it profit improvement services.

Whatever you call it, in the age of AI it’s increasingly important to shift away from compliance-only services to work that clients value more highly.

I know that many accountants are wary of making that transition. And the most common reason for avoiding it is that they think they don’t know enough.

‘Why would they listen to me? I’m an accountant, not a builder/web designer/restaurant owner/dentist.’

Of course, you’ll never be as knowledgeable as the owner is about their business.

But the truth is that your value lies in the fact that you don’t know everything.

Business owners are often so involved in the day-to-day running of their business that they miss the bigger picture.

Which is where you come in.

Know the question, not the answer

When you stop thinking of advisory as knowing all the answers and telling your clients what to do, it becomes a lot less scary.

So, think of yourself as a facilitator.

You’re helping your client to make the right decisions, not making those decisions for them.

And you do that by asking questions.

Business owners often have blind spots – areas where they struggle to see inefficiencies, risks or opportunities. Your questions can help them to see what they’re missing. They start to tap into their own business knowledge, so they can make more informed decisions.

And because you’re looking at things from an external perspective, you’ll have questions that they won’t have thought of or that they’ve dismissed as not relevant to their sector.

Those can be the most effective questions of all. Never be afraid to ask what seems like a stupid question!

Is asking questions really adding value?

Running a business can be lonely, with few opportunities for the owner to share their ambitions or their worries.

When you sit down with them to listen (which is what you should mostly be doing rather than talking), that’s valuable in itself.

And when you ask those thought-provoking questions that get them thinking about how to improve their business, that’s even more valuable.

But the key to making this kind of discussion invaluable is to hold your client accountable for actually taking action.

The right questions will help them to decide what they need to do. Just the fact of sharing this with an outsider makes it much more likely that they’ll do what they say they’ll do.

It’s a powerful incentive when they know you’ll be following up with them. So wherever your discussion goes, you need to clarify what they’ll do next.

Where to start

I know that this can be daunting, even when you’re just asking questions.

But remember, you may not know everything about your client’s business, but you do know everything about their numbers.

Numbers are your comfort zone – and your superpower.

You can see the risks and the potential weak spots much better than most business owners.

So start with the numbers. Look at where they are now, then ask where they’d like to be in one, three or five years’ time, and the obstacles that are in the way of getting there.

That’s your jumping off point for a highly valuable discussion.

At AVN, we train the accountants we work with to follow a structured process in their conversations with clients.

It means that they always have a framework to follow and to refer back to, no matter where the discussion leads.

So whether you’re delivering advisory, growth solutions or profit improvement services, it doesn’t have to be scary!

We also teach this process in the Profit Improvement Certification Workshop – do take a look if you want to find out more.

Shane Lukas: AVN – The Accountant’s Network