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FROM: MAY-JUN 2009 ISSUE | BY MARK WARDELL
As an accountant, you are an important and trusted advisor. Your clients look to you for the critical business information and expertise that will lead them forward in their decision making, and ultimately, in their success.
But no matter how knowledgeable you are, you can’t be an expert in everything. And in these times of economic uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to make sure your clients have access to all of the information and resources they require.
With a little research, you can solve this problem by helping surround your clients with a trusted circle of the experts they need to navigate their business challenges, such as financial planners, lenders, SR&ED tax specialists, lawyers, business coaches, and so forth. By doing this, you’ll position yourself as an influential resource for your clients, strengthening your client relationships in the process.
An often unintended bonus of working cooperatively with other professionals is that your colleagues will also recognize the value of such a strategy and begin including you in similar arrangements with their clients.
Of course it is likely that your clients already have many of these professional relationships in place. On the other hand, it is equally likely that these individuals work in isolation from each other. Typically, the only thing that brings these professionals together on behalf of a client is a specific project or transaction, and that’s a shame. Because by working together strategically, your clients can benefit in ways they might never have imagined.
For example, we recently met with the owner of a distribution business along with his accountant and primary banker. Our goal was to help our client prepare for the eventual sale of his business, and by sharing the details of our progress with his other key advisors, a variety of tax saving and investment strategies emerged that otherwise might have not been explored until it was too late.
As their accountant, you are in a unique position to quarterback these relationships on your clients’ behalf; to transform them from a group of independent professionals into a cohesive team working together to help your clients achieve their “big picture” objectives.
For example, you may have a client who needs cash, but isn’t aware that their business is eligible for a significant refund through the SR&ED tax incentive program. Or you may have a client in need of financing who is unaware of their borrowing options. Or, as we see all the time at Wardell, you may have a client who wants to sell their business sometime in the next few years, but has a limited understanding of how to grow that value. Whatever your clients’ goals are, they will always benefit when the information is shared and discussed freely among the professionals who advise them.
If you can bring the right experts to the table at the right time, they can work together to resolve these and other challenges quickly and efficiently, in the best interest of the client. When the client wins, everybody wins.
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