Trending
All of your #accounting firms clients are being trained 24/7, by Amazon and every other business to conduct their entire process of buying ANYTHING online...up until they are forced to talk to a salesperson (or, in your case possibly a #businessdevelopment rep?).
Every time they buy something online for themselves or their home...they are learning to shop that way for their business. All the research shows that consumers for business or personal are online and over 50% of the way (very conservative) through their decision making process already. (If you would like research on this send me a message)
Do you understand, strategically and immediately, what this fact means to your firm's success going forward? Probably not and it is because of your past success. Lets get real:
Your business stands at a a digital crossroads.
Right in front of you is a volatile mix of your greatest opportunity to grow and the most dangerous threat of your firm's existence, perhaps in its entire existence.
In many ways, all businesses are facing a crisis very similar, if you will forgive me, as when the automobile was invented. Initially, the car wasn't faster or more convenient...it was a 'luxury' item and the horse was viewed as more efficient and reliable. That quickly changed and nothing was ever the same.
There are points in history where everything changes for good...and history doesn't care about your feelings and your future. You have remember the businesses that didn't adapt and have been discarded to the trash can of failure and decide that you will follow a new path.
The reason you have been successful, to this point, is the one thing that is always the secret ingredient of any great professional services firm: relationships. Accounting firms live and die based on the relationships with their clients and their community. You get #referrals all the time from them and from other professionals that trust and know you and your team. We can do that online via strategic #socialmedia if we have the right strategy and mindset.
The great news is that relationships are still the most important factor, if the buyer is aware of you online and believes you are trustworthy and a valuable source of information about how they should make decisions about what to purchase.
You can compete for your clients and prospects online by playing off your strength at building and deepening relationships through strategy and your authenticity. Your current and future clients want to buy from you...we just need to learn how to take what made you great offline to the online space in a way that you will be willing to execute upon consistently without the pain of selling badly as so many do on and offline.
The first step is to understand what is actually going on and there are only two ways to do it:
- Spend an incredible amount of time and resources within your firm trying to figure out what and how to do this on your own. Possible, but, expensive and risky as you will be the experiment. I suspect that is not how you run your business.
- Start a conversation with a company that understand that you aren't a typical #sales company. You are a group of dedicated professionals that don't want to feel like you are selling. I understand and have been teaching companies just like yours for decades how to be the vendor of choice offline (referrals and community service) and now I help them to transition and transform this mindset online.
The second step is to commit to a strategy that you and your team believe in and that you are confident you can consistently do. One stop trainings and slick presentations will not help you. The process of change takes time, repetition and coaching.
This type of transformation requires time and multiple educational strategies to be worth your investment.
We offer a 12 week program because that allows us to provide the essential mentoring and coaching during the program and sets you up for retention and execution of learning. Every one of our client relationships starts just like yours: with a conversation about what matters to you and where you want to go.
If this article was of benefit please share it out to your network. Please react and/or comment below and if you want to discuss this further go ahead and send me a message.
Remember, what makes you great right now is the secret ingredient for your greatness in the future.
Related: The Future For Successful Firms Is Being Forged On Digital Right Now!