Helping your Professionals Decide What’s Right for Them
Professionals need to clearly understand your firm’s areas of strength, its chosen industries and service specialties. If everyone understands the depth and breadth of the firm’s capabilities, they’re better able to draw upon the right expertise for each client. They are better equipped to assist industry clients in choosing the right array of services to help them achieve their business goals. The result will be enhanced cross-selling and deeper client relationships, yielding a truly differentiated client experience.
While some professionals may choose to become technical specialists, for example, in internal audit, SEC public company filings, or R&D tax credits, most will maintain and periodically update their baseline technical skills with a strong but general set of technical tools. As they begin concentrating on engagements in a specific industry, the nuances of providing the right mix of technical service offerings to clients in that industry becomes more and more evident. This means your professionals can achieve industry specialization with little additional technical skill development. They create focus by building depth in one target industry. Building knowledge surrounding the nontechnical issues and trends in almost any industry is a highly achievable goal.
As an industry specialist, a professional becomes better equipped to recognize when a client needs nuanced technical expertise. Then, the professional’s job as a client relationship manager is to offer the client that technical expertise, either from colleagues within your firm or, if necessary, outside your firm. The goal is to help your professionals quickly build their reputations as industry experts who view clients holistically and bring the right mix of services to meet each client’s business needs.
Encourage your professionals to follow their passions and joys when choosing an industry or sector focus. Maybe their interest in an industry is based on enjoying or being committed to that industry’s products or services. Or maybe they’re drawn to the culture, mindset or personalities that make up an industry’s marketplace. Regardless, they’ll be working to become entrenched in an industry community they enjoy and want to support. They will derive satisfaction from becoming a part of its success. As industry-focused professionals, they can then bring their technical skills as an accountant, tax advisor or consultant to help contribute to their clients’ successes. A client’s satisfaction with your professionals as their trusted advisors will also provide the professionals with career satisfaction. Success breeds more success and deeper involvement with existing and potential clients in that focus industry. This in turn, enhances the individual’s reputation and the firm’s reputation, based on their specialized industry knowledge, and the cycle continues …
