How do you serve your clients?

By preparing their tax returns? Auditing their financials? Diversifying their portfolios?

Don’t make me laugh. If those are your reasons for being, you’re not helping anybody.

“People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it,” Osborne, a business performance management thought leader and author of Strategic Benchmarking for Success, told a crowd of CPAs at Accounting Today’s Growth and Profitability Summit in Las Vegas. “What you do is the manifestation of what you are passionate about.”

Think about it. Is your passion selling tax or accounting services? Is that truly why you got into the business?

Of course not. You wanted to help people, right? You wanted to give your clients insight — to help them understand how the numbers impact their long-term goals.

Somewhere along the way, though, we all became salespeople. In Osborne’s words, we’re out there “committing random acts of consulting.” We’re trying to sell as much as we possibly can without really understanding what the client needs.

“A lot of folks have had a passion bypass,” said Osborne, pictured at right. “Often, the reasons they became an accountant are not the reasons why they remain an accountant.”

Here’s the thing: According to Osborne, the really good clients don’t want your services. They want your passion. They want to know that you care about their problems and are committed to finding a solution that’s right for them.

“Most firms take whatever comes through the door,” Osborne said. “Tax and accounting serivces should be a byproduct of an advisory relationship. They should not be the focus of that relationship. By focusing first on why you do what you do, you will attract like-minded clients and talent that appreciate and value your passion.”

I could swear I’ve heard that before. Here’s a taste;

• Ask yourself, “Why us?” Why should a client choose you and your firm over the competition? Do you have a good answer? Does everybody in your firm say same thing?
• Think benefits, not features. If your answer to “Why you?” is a feature (experience, age of firm, number of CPAs, industry expertise, dedication, commitment, number or type of clients, etc.), you’re missing the boat. What are the specific benefits the prospect is seeking? What’s in it for them?
• Question for needs. You won’t know the answer to the question “What’s in it for them?” unless you ask what they need.
• Listen. Regardless of what we think, almost all of us are pretty poor listeners. We hear what we want to hear. We talk too much.

The moral of this particular story? Forget about what you do. Focus instead on why you do it. Therein lies your future.

By Business Learning Institute

To help get the most out of yourself and become a better leader start with what you can do for yourself. Learn to take control of bad habits and turn them into good habits. If you can accumulate an abundance of good habits then you will be a better person, a better manager and ultimately a better leader.

Don’t Worry about Being the Best

Believe it or not, you just have to be better than the people around you. Instead of trying to be the absolute best, strive to be the best that you can be at whatever the task may be. It’s the experience of trying that really counts.

Make sure You Are The One Making The Choices

If you’re unsure about your choices, make the best possible choice given the information you have in front of you. Whether the decision is right or wrong, making your own decision will still be better than letting someone else make the decision for you. It’s part of the process of learning.

Don’t Wait for Someone Else to Teach You

No matter what the task, if you teach it to yourself, you’ll learn it better. This might require a bit of research on your part; you may need to end up asking a bunch of questions. Just keep in mind that the only “stupid” question is the one that you don’t ask.

Then the next thing that you have to do is to share the knowledge. Pass it along. Learn to be a mentor so that the next person gains the knowledge.

Always Follow Your Dreams

Every dreamer pays a price, but so does everyone who fears to dream. The price for not dreaming or ignoring dreams is much higher.

Every now and then, sit down and let yourself imagine. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. Let go and put no limits on yourself it is amazing what you can do.

Always Look For An Opportunity

We pass opportunities by every day. Be vigilant and take note of where you can help someone else. Always ask yourself the question “What can I offer that will be of benefit to that person or situation?”. Providing a solution to others’ problems can become a huge opportunity for you.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short – Ever

Don’t doubt your abilities, and don’t doubt your talents. Forget about what you’ve been led to believe by the media or people in your life. Recognize your strengths, and listen to your inner voice. Eliminate “I can’t” from your vocabulary.

Don’t Accept or Expect Mediocrity

Expect excellence of both yourself and of others. The minute you expect less of yourself is the same minute that your inner self will get the compromised message and start delivering less. Always push yourself to be the best you possibly can be.

Self Learning

Your happiness is in your hands.

We all have tremendous potential. Each of us has the ability to put our unique human potential into action and to acquire a desired result. But the one thing that determines the level of our potential, produces the intensity of our activity and predicts the quality of the result we receive is our attitude.

Attitude determines how much of the future we are allowed to see. It decides the size of our dreams and infl uences our determination when we are faced with new challenges. No other person on earth has dominion over our attitude. People can affect our attitude by teaching us poor thinking habits or unintentionally misinforming us, or providing us with negative sources of influence, but no one can control our attitude unless we voluntarily surrender that control.

No one else “makes us angry.” We make ourselves angry when we surrender control of our attitude. What someone else may have done is irrelevant. We choose; not they. They merely put our attitude to a test. If we select a volatile attitude by becoming hostile, angry, jealous or suspicious, then we have failed the test. If we condemn ourselves by believing that we are unworthy, then again, we have failed the test.

If we care at all about ourselves, then we must accept full responsibility for our own feelings. We must learn to guard against those feelings that have the capacity to lead our attitude down the wrong path, and to strengthen those feelings that can lead us confidently into a better future.

If we want to receive the rewards the future holds in trust for us, then we must exercise the most important choice given to us as members of the human race by maintaining total dominion over our attitude. Our attitude is an asset, a treasure of great value that must be protected accordingly.

When you have the right attitude, you can do the remarkable.

When you recognize your gifts, you can change anything for yourself that you wish to change. If you don’t like how something is going for you, change it. If something isn’t enough, change it. If something doesn’t suit you; change it. If something doesn’t please you, change it. You don’t ever have to be the same after today. If you don’t like your present address, change it—you’re not a tree!

Having the right attitude is an essential prerequisite for success and happiness. The right attitude is one of the fundamentals of the good life. That is why we must constantly examine our feelings about our role in the world and about our possibilities for achieving our dreams.

It is our emotional nature that governs most of our daily conduct in our personal and business world. It is the emotional aspect of our experiences that determines our behavior. How we feel about life’s events is a powerful force that can either freeze us in our tracks or inspire us to take immediate action on any given day. With the right attitude, human beings can move mountains. With the wrong attitude, they can be crushed by the smallest grain of sand.

Jim Rohn.

The other day my wife, daughter and I went out for my birthday dinner. It was the restaurant my 5 year old chose (of course…). Once we got seated the waitress came over and asked what we’d like to drink. My daughter said, “What do you have”? The waitress responded with all the major sodas (pop for us Michiganders), various lemonade flavors and then like a right hook and with a big smile she says and “root beer floats”. She pauses just for a second, looks at me and says, “oops, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that should I… ugg I am so sorry”. Well, my daughter wasn’t sorry. She was shouting “yes yes a rootbeer float sounds yummy”.

Now, I’ve never waited a table in my life but I can smell a ploy when it’s being dealt. She knew exactly what she was doing. Problem is, a five year old drinking a rootbeer float with a main course never gets to the main course.

I looked at my daughter and said if you eat all your meal (hey wait… now I’m running a game) you can have a rootbeer float or a dessert. She said, “ok dad”. I got off easy that time. Another night and we’d have had a pouting angry 5 year old.

Toward the end of the meal the waitress asks if we’d like a dessert. My wife and I declined but my daughter asked what they had on the menu. The waitress looks at me after my daughter decided and said, “let me get that for her, I’m not even going to charge you anything for it”. Beep beep, radar up. She already pulled one scam earlier what is she up to now? Well, I read my birthday coupon and it said my free meal included a sundae. Guess who got my “free sundae”? Yeah, she acted like she was doing a favor for us to improve her gratuity but in my eyes she dug a little deeper into her transparent repertoire of tricks.

You know, I’m not one to think the world is all out to scam me but sometimes you can just feel the game someone is playing on you. It makes you wonder if they really think the world isn’t up to their speed. Why do I share this? Well, young or old, people can often tell when someone is trying to bamboozle them. Most people are too polite to say a word. Most people however will vote with their dollars when it comes back to giving a business a second chance.

Think twice and always work from a place of integrity. It will come back to you many times in all that you do. It doesn’t mean you’ll never get taken advantage of but it does mean you can hold your head up high knowing you do the right things even when no one is looking.

Dan Nichols – Business Coach