Facilitative/Advisory/Sales Workshop

Now and for the next 18 months, there is an unprecedented window of opportunity for CPA firms to leverage the current marketplace climate. Clients of all sizes of business are re-evaluating their relationships with their CPA firms, and many are considering splitting the Audit (and other compliance work) and non-traditional work among more than one firm. This creates exciting opportunities for CPA firms to work together, and for many firms to rapidly extend their non-traditional services. To leverage this opportunity, all CPAs having client contact will have to become more skilled at selling; become keenly aware of the line between selling and delivering services; be better at presenting their organization's value-proposition and differentiation; and adept at transitioning between providing expert versus facilitative services.

There are many people and companies that provide training in the areas outlined above. However, the real hurdle in developing/enhancing these competencies is being able to move from the intellectual understanding of the process to the instinctive delivery of it. My first point here is that training CPAs to move from being an Expert (as with tax, audit, & financial statement preparation) into being an Advisor ("we are here to help you solve business, not just financial problems") and be comfortable transitioning between these two roles, is not an easy journey to make. If you sent 15 people through 4 days of Bill's training, you should expect 3 of them to really catch on, 4 to consistently improve their ability to engage the client in a broader conversation about their business than they do today, 5 to occasionally do this, and 3 to not embrace any of the techniques at all. This is understandable. You are asking people to develop skills in an area that is outside their comfort zone. This is not a transition you make with a workshop … it is a transition you begin to make with your first workshop. Then, you continue to build from there.

The question really is … "If your people are not trained to engage in broader conversations with their clients than they currently do now, how are you going to continue to grow your business?" Many have tried using outside salespeople, acquisition of other firms, various mass marketing approaches, focused on developing a few rainmakers within the firm, and many other techniques only to find that to consistently close new business, the person that has account management responsibility (has the regular contact with the client) ultimately is the one best suited to motivating the client to subscribe to additional services. So, while the results of sales/advisory training don't happen across the firm overnight, any incremental change in your people's ability to identify and close new opportunities with their clients is far less expensive and more rewarding than most of the other currently utilized techniques.

So, why would you hire Bill? Here is his response.

Based on working with CPAs for over 15 years, being a CPA, and doing exactly what I teach, I have developed a set of workshops that have been fine-tuned to accomplish the following objectives:

Objective 1:
We need to intellectualize the selling, communication and facilitation process and become familiar with the skills required.

Objective 2:
Those skills and processes need to be practiced in a safe environment with individual consistent coaching support throughout. The key here is that people need to practice what they hear. My experience is that almost everyone that hears a lecture on advisory/sales skills feels they already utilize most of the techniques presented. However, when I put these same people (including the firm's rainmakers) in the front of the room with me role-playing so they can demonstrate those capabilities, there is a clear disconnect between what they do and what they think they do. Being an effective advisor, or using the same skills to identify and close new business opportunities, is all about the subtleties of the conversations you are having with your clients. Because of this, you can not help people make the necessary transformations unless they 1) practice (role-play) the techniques and 2) practice them in front of the same coach so there is consistency in the advice given as well as targeted advice based on the skill level of the participant being coached. Too many times important role play exercises are done in small groups and the coaching is not only inconsistent, but often wrong, making the experience almost more damaging than helpful.

Additionally, we want the safe environment practice to be a little more stressful than the client experience, so we add the element of peer collaboration and observation. This not only helps develop improved advisory/selling responses because repetition helps drive home key learning points, but it provides a positive reinforcement mechanism because the real client experience is far easier and more enjoyable (due to the lack of a peer audience).

Proposed Solution to Objectives 1 and 2:
A two-day workshop reviewing advisory, facilitation, sales, communications, creativity, and change management materials, with one-on-one role play exercises focused at on critical developmental areas. This workshop, to be effective, should include no more than 15 people or the exercise/role-play process becomes too tedious and compromised.

Objective 3:
Everyone needs to practice their interpretation of what they have learned. Inevitably, there are circumstances that are not discussed in the workshop, situations that are unique, and misinterpretations of the process. Each participant will find certain techniques very easy to embrace, and others more difficult, and responses will vary based on the personality of the individual. By creating a time-specific practice period, learning is dramatically enhanced.

Proposed Solution to Objective 3:
One-on-one telephone coaching during a 30-day practice period between the first workshop and the second. During this period, I will talk with each participant, identify a situation with him or her to experience what we have covered, and be available to discuss pre-and-post meeting strategy. Also, I will be available to debrief with all those that desire, after their experience, to enhance the skill development process.

Objective 4:
To refine the skills practiced and augment the overall learning experience. Additionally, the participants need to develop their small group presentation skills because many projects are won/lost not because of perceived technical ability, but because of perceived quality and confidence. A large influence as to whether these attributes are attributed to a firm is based on how well the CPAs handle themselves delivering their proposal plan.

Proposed Solution to Objective 4:
This is best accomplished by spending two more days together. The first day is primarily focusing on refining and augmenting what we worked on during the first workshop, with the 2nd day centered around developing each person's presentation capability.

Without all of these steps, people will take note of the process and skills, but rather than incorporate and change the way they conduct themselves, they will espouse reasons why what they learned doesn't apply to them. The goal is to keep the development of the necessary skills top-of-mind for a period of about a month so that incorporating them is easier than ignoring them. Additionally, because in my approach we spend more of our time role-playing the skills we are trying to develop than listening to lectures about them, more personal change results (for many, the change is almost transparent to them, but the results are clearly not transparent to the firm).

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Winters and Reeb, PLLC
2603 Pearce Road, Austin, TX   78730 :: phone (512) 338-1006 :: fax (512) 338-1023 :: Contact Bill