Part Two: Why a Lack of Marketing Skills Holds Back the Growth of Australian Accounting Firms

Tiffany Carter - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink

Following is an excerpt from an article written by Michael 'MC' Carter for the accounting benchmarking publication ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly® of the Accounting Profession’, 2010 edition. The online report will be available for purchase in the coming weeks on this page of the businessfitness™ website.

This is Part Two of a Three Part series. Click here to read Part One.

3 ‘Blind Spots’ Holding Back the Growth of Australian Accounting Firms, and the Obvious Solution Many Firms Fear - continued...


Industry surveys and statistics

In our free online survey on our practiceparadox.com.au website called ‘How Do You Rate As a Rainmaker?’, we score respondents out of 100 based on their answers to 20 questions. The first two questions are:

• When did you last undergo formal training in marketing skills?
• When did you last undergo formal training in face-to-face selling skills?

Each of these skill-sets have been proven as accelerators to business growth. It is well known that the ‘B-class Product’ with the ‘A-class Marketing’ will beat the ‘A-class Product’ with the ‘B-class Marketing’, every time.

So what do accounting industry practitioners invest in developing these skills?

Very little.

Marketing training statistics:

• 41% of respondents have never been trained in marketing
• 14% haven’t received training in marketing for over 5 years
• 6% haven’t received training within the past 2 years
• That’s 61% of respondents who are unaware of, or out-of-date in, marketing know-how

It’s even worse for selling skills:

• 48% of respondents have never been trained in selling skills
• 16% haven’t received training in selling skills for over 5 years
• 13% haven’t received training within the past 2 years
• That’s 77% of respondents who are unaware of, or out-of-date in, selling skills

Keeping in mind that the above statistics are already biased upwards due to the fact the respondents have had the initiative to seek out information on marketing and selling skills for accounting firms by visiting our website in the first place, it’s clear that two-thirds to three-quarters of the Australian accounting industry are uneducated in the latest marketing and selling skills and technologies.

That is an indictment on the profession, but for those who realise and accept this skill gap in their firm, it is a wonderful opportunity to grow.

The low attendance at ‘soft skills’ sessions at industry conferences

I speak at various industry conferences each year for The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and the National Institute of Accountants. The professional bodies have long identified ‘soft skills’ training in areas such as communication and leadership as a key focus for professional development of their members, and they provide these sessions at the conferences.

But guess what happens?

The technical sessions on core technical accounting and compliance topics pull very large numbers of attendees, whilst the sessions on soft skills attract a handful of only the most progressively-minded practitioners.

The profession continues to “vote with its feet” (to quote Prime Minister Julia Gillard of late), and there couldn’t be any clearer indication of Unconscious Incompetence being endemic in the Australian accounting industry, than poor attendance at these conference sessions.

The opportunity here for you, is that once your firm starts to develop stronger communication skills in the areas of marketing, selling and client relationship management, your firm grows. Growth is the predictable flow-on effect.

The structure of most small and medium accounting firms

Think about your business clients. A generic structure for a business might be something like this:



Yet the typical accounting firm looks more like this:



In other words, there are the ‘Fee Producers’ (the professional staff) and everyone else! A “them and us” culture is not uncommon, based on this typical division.

There’s an important box missing from that organisation chart, isn’t there?

If an accounting firm considers itself to be a ‘business’ and not a ‘practice’, it must treat Sales & Marketing as an important business function and look to develop it as a core competence.

Does this mean that adding a box to the firm’s organisation chart will fix the problem? Obviously not. The Sales & Marketing ‘box’ signifies 3 things:

1. The leadership of the firm acknowledges marketing as a core function,
2. Team members have been designated selling and marketing roles, and
3. The firm allocates resources to the function, both internal resources and external tools and resources.

So if developing marketing a selling skills is an antidote for firms who want to achieve higher growth rates, what is holding firms back from doing this?

Assuming a firm has progressed from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence, and is therefore aware and ready to learn, the main thing holding firms back is fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of looking bad. Fear of rejection.

One of the strengths of the accounting industry has also led to its current weakness and main challenge—that is, firms haven’t HAD TO market. Growth was happening by default, and firms have inherently ‘sticky’ clients who keep coming back each year. They are wonderful business conditions in which to operate, but they have led to firms having ‘flabby marketing muscles’.

...

Stay tuned for Part Three of this article excerpt, which comes out next week.