Dear Friend Interested In More Clients,

   An admirable goal. But is it really attainable?   

   Listen up: upfront-- CPAs can be a weird breed. Especially if you're trying to cozy up to their super-rich clients. And that is just what this issue of The Rants is all about.

   No way I can reveal every artifice, tactic, slant, or modus operandi in this issue. A shame, I know.

   Fact is, a lot of pros have grown tired of doing the CPA-referral-shuffle -- specifically when trying to hook up with U.S.-based Certified Public Accountants.

   Face it: CPAs are golden gatekeepers holding the keys to a rich treasure trove of client referrals. Which, can be either good or bad -- depending on where you are now with your approach.

  That's why this issue deals with understanding them and the heir-apparent pressures living in their world now.

  So if you're gonna play the Game, you better be schooled at cultivating referrals. And that ain't gonna happen until you understand the business pressures lurking in their all-too-real world, friend.

  Let me say that no way I'll solve all those problems nor create all those answers with this go-round. But you've gotta start somewhere.

  And that somewhere is understanding their challenges especially if you have no skin in the game. (Which you don't, of course, perhaps indeed why you are reading this.)

  Anyhow...

  I say "understanding" because today -- in 2007 -- we're all just one step away from a frickin' mental breakdown -- especially CPAs.

  Commit this point to memory:

This isn't a game of "age" or "experience" or "thinking." It's an approach that requires mano-a-mano, which means understanding, adapting and a boatload of flexibility.

  Translation: it requires some chops on your part. Not some weasel-faced, excused-ridden attitude.

  I recently ran across a study from a company called Breakthrough Performance. Not sure who they are... and I usually ignore things from 'no-names'... but one question in their "survey" caught my eye...

• "In order to achieve more happiness in work and life, what do you most need to learn?"

   The results?

   A Pharmaceutical company's poster-child:

63-percent of people said they were battling stress and did not have enough time during the day to accomplish everything.

   They went on to say that their work/home life was totally screwed up ("out of balance," to be correct) and they needed to learn how to squeeze more time into their day.

   Sort of like a fat woman who rocks back and forth to squeeze her pork chop legs into a pair of panty hose.

   All this leads me to point numero uno amgio. I want you to commit it to memory while you're stargazing after CPAs with dollar signs in your eyes:

   You can't multiply zeros, and you need to recognize that...

CPAs Are Facing
Intense Growing Pressure.

   You see, on the occasion when a few (underline few) bold and courageous managing partner's of a CPA firm actually grew some cajones and asked why one of their 'prized' clients decided to up and quit 'em... exiting the tax practice with sounds of sayonara... that Managing Partner typically heard a refrain fthat went something like this...

"I'm leaving your firm because of your fees; they kept going up and it just got expensive..."

   Well, I've got news for you friend: that's a hair-brained excuse. I know it. You know it.

   You also know that the client used fees as an excuse, because as they say it ain't NEVER about the money.

   It's sort of like an active, sports-loving 4th grader...

   Take this 9 year old kid, for example. He runs outside every day after school and hooks up with the other snot-nosed neighborhood kids to toss around the football.

   They tackle each other, roll around in the St. Augustine grass... and get hot, sweaty and itchy until Mom comes home.

   Then all of a sudden, about a week later, one night after the kid takes a bath he starts reaching around his thin pencil-neck to scratch his back. Right above his right wing-bone.

   Itch. Scratch.

   Itch. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Ut oh! 

   Red Mark.

   The kid's Mom discovers he's got this funny looking flat, red patch forming right smack dab in the middle of his scrawny shoulder blades.

   So the next morning while Junior is scarfing down a bowl of Lucky Charms, Mom calls up the kid's doctor for an appointment. Hauls him down in her SUV after lunch and waits 45 minutes in the lobby before getting called in.

   The kid jumps up on the examining table... takes off his shirt... and in walks the Pediatrician -- with clean scrubbed hands -- who instantly sees the red mark and turns to Mom and says,

"Yep, Looks Like He's Got
A Case of Ringworm."

   In other words, for some time that kid had a symptom underneath the surface to a much larger problem.

   Kind of like today's CPAs have symptoms underneath the surface to much larger problems. (Go figure.)

   For example, in the case of the CPA having clients who bail-out and leave, there is a symptom to much a bigger issue.

   I assure you, the primary reason the client quit (the person, mind you, who votes with their wallet) goes something like this:

   "Well, the real reason I left my CPA was because...

• Slow response time; Lack of follow-up; Otherwise overall poor, crappy, consistent communication with me. And I just got tired of it all."

   Now if you think for a one frickin' second that active, ongoing free-exchange of communication, say, between a CPA and his or her client is happening in a consistent manner, you're skylarking yourself.

   In fact, in most CPA firms it's not really even encouraged.

   At least not within the sense of the typical operating confines of a CPA's, quote "business model"... let alone other shareholders of the firm and their 'silent' approval.

   Think about this: In the CPA business model, every point of contact needs to be accounted for, commoditized, and charged for. It's a nickel and dime philosophy with real dollars at stake. Per hour.

   Billable hours.

   So freely spending time with a client just chin wagging and gum flapping... "communicating"... to further strengthen the CPA/Client bond well, it just... plain old sucks in the CPA's eyes.

   It's fat billable hours lost that they could be racking up for doing something else.

   They know it. And their Partners know it.

   Listen, I'm not ripping on CPAs for a lack of commitment to client service. Many are good at it. But you can't argue facts.

   And the facts are client after client, after client who severs a relationship with their accountant often does so because of lack of consistent communication.

   Listen: I don't know about you... but people -- you, me, and yes even the clients we work for -- have gotten more and more demanding today.

   They want more time. They want more answers. They want more emotional involvement. They want to feel empathy, care and concern. And yes, they even want more for less.

   And all of this takes time. Time that so-called surveys and studies (like above) commissioned by pansy shrinks of the world (Organizational Behavioralist Therapy PhD Candidates, to be correct) say we simply don't have.

   Not even the CPA.

   And that leads me to Point Number 2, which is this muchacho...

Math Problem:
Value Received vs.Value Delivered.

   In other words, there is an underlying perception problem as the nub symptom here.

   Think about this: The CPA bombastically believes value is being delivered at or above the cost of the fees they detail and invoice for. In fact, most any CPA is quick to say they feel underpaid relative to services provided by other professionals.

   Yet on the flip side we have Joe Senior Client. He believes that the services he's receiving for what he strokes out of his CitiGold Prime Money Marketing account is worth a whole helluva lot less.

   And he also believes he was "forced" to pay those fees at his current CPA firm, IGot, Hosed, Again LLC. Which means anytime you have that scenario between two people, no matter what the relationship in life-- business, personal, et cetera, well...

It's Like An Anna Nicole Smith
Marriage Gone Bad.

   It just ain't sustainable once you get past the niceties.

   Like the saying goes, "When it's low tide you know who's swimming naked." And as the Good Book says, it's a foundation built on sand not rock.

   In other words, you would have better luck trying to round up Pepe and his Clan of Illegals between Douglas, Arizona and the Mexican city of Agua Prieta than trying to salvage any form of this relationship.

  Listen up: I don't know about you, but the CPA industry in general has done a HORRIBLE job focusing on anyone else but... themselves!

  Sure, that statement might riff a few CPAs reading this. But let's pull up our pants, okay. The truth hurts.

  Can I be even more direct?

• Attention CPAs and Accounting Industry: Don't show clients your file cabinet full of color-coded Ames End Tab Folder with Easiclip 1040 Forms. Or a neatly organized Fiscal Year Trial Balance or red-written Audit Trail with stapled adding machine tape. Or a detailed business valuation with six different fair-market value estimates.

  Those are FINISHED results of your relationship people.

  If you keep focusing on these details as a means of justifying the work, services and fees, you'll be driving nails into your own professional coffin.

  The reality is that too often in a CPA's eyes, results like tax returns, or a completed audit, or that detailed business valuation are considered end deliverables -- work or services for hire, that have now culminated and ended at a certain point-in-time for this particular relationship, point-in-time (now).

  And END is the key word here. As in end... and death to the relationship.

  Hire. Work. Bill. Receive payment. See ya next year client. (Hammer, nail, hammer, hammer, coffin).

  Yet, in the client's eyes (again I say, the person who votes with their wallet), that's where the relationship actually is expected to begin. In the work prepared and delivered.

  And the successive ongoing communication during the course of the year.

   Yet you hear it all the time... A client or friend who has said to you...

"I Never Hear From My Accountant.
I Always Call Him."

  So is it any wonder, then, that there is a huge disconnect about value received versus value delivered?

   I began this issue with a rhetorical question: Interested in generating more referrals from today's CPA, right?

  Yes. It is an admirable goal. And yes, it really is attainable.

  But NOT how you're currently going about it.

  And not until you start embracing the real-life challenges living in their world.

   If you were hoping for me to give you specific "Action Steps" in this issue... or the proverbial "Instant Referral Generating Trick-In-A-Box," you aren't gonna find it here.

   This ain't like that little Spider Monkey on a leash who runs around after a penny. And quit looking in the P.S., too.

   You can't solve all the world's problems. And you're surely not gonna change someone's behavior, including a CPAs.

   Like the old saying goes, "Never wrestle with a PIG. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

   Here's a concept: Try fostering relationships with these people by understanding and embracing what's living in their world now.

   That's called building relationships.