What Your Accounting Clients Want from Business Advisory Services

The challenge to building your advisory service portfolio is that there isn’t always a burning problem/solution set from your client. From the outset, most of your clients aren’t going to ask you if they can pay you to consult and grow their business so it’s up to you to understand where you can add value and present this value at the best possible time.

Like anything in sales, you must identify what your client needs and how you’re uniquely positioned to fulfill those needs.

What are their business goals? What do they require to reach those goals? Why is your team the one to enable them to accomplish these goals?

After answering these questions, lean on the following attributes you have at your firm to land new business.

Niche Expertise

Is there a particular industry you feel you understand better than most of your peers?  Do your partners have specific expertise in their own niche industries? Your clients know this and can see it, no matter the reason they engage. Don’t try and be something you’re not, steer into your field of expertise and gobble up that vertical.

In almost every fast-growing accounting and consulting firm we speak to, their client base is made up of a handful of niche industries. The more narrow you can focus particular services, the better.

Think about it from the client’s perspective: if I’m choosing between two different firms with seemingly similar services, am I going to go with the one who has 20 years experience in working and advising my exact type of business? Or the one who’s just offering a better price?

You don’t want to compete on price, you want to compete on fit. Leveraging deep expertise in a given field will enable you to win business based on fit, time and again.