Trent McLaren: Shall the geek inherit the earth?
What does the accountant of the future look like? Work winner? Tech specialist? Accounting genius? Selling machine?
This question and other ideas were the focus of a recent exchange between UK business development expert and Accountex 2018 speaker Rob Brown and Australian accountancy thought leader Trent McLaren.
The good news is that Rob has shared the interview with me. And the even better news is that I'm going to share some of the highlights of their conversation with you...
Thoughts on business development
One of the first questions Rob had for Trent, who is head of accounting at Practice Ignition, was about his thoughts on business development.
Trent says: "Business development, for me, is, what are you generating? What are you generating for sales?
"Marketing, for me, is, what is your brand, and what are you communicating to the market about who you are? It's your messaging and your communications.
"Business development incorporates more of your strategy to generate sales, in which, obviously, marketing plays a key role, because it's the communication part of that, and then, sales is just a process."
Bringing in new clients
Back to Rob... "What would you say to accountants who say, 'Well, business development, growing stuff, bringing on new clients is great, but I don't have the time for that. I'm too busy servicing my existing client base.'?"
"I think if you're servicing your existing client base, then look for other revenue opportunities with your existing client base. You're always going to be busy, and that's never going to change, whether that's to your own detriment, or whatever it may be," Trent replies.
One of the difficulties, of course, is the transfer of skills needed to take on the brake new world for accountants. As Trent observes: "You're dealing with accountants that generally are the more introverted, that like working with numbers.
Experts at communicating
"They're not experts at communicating with clients as effectively or as efficiently as more of an extroverted salesperson type of person.
"So therein there kind of lies a challenge, because you think, 'OK, I want to talk to them about their compliance. I want to talk to them about what we've done, and the opportunities we've got there, but now, I need to see, what else can we do to help offer them other services?'
Ands how does this happen? "I think there has be a coaching phase. There has to be a new skill reset come into play, at this point, and people, accountants, will need to learn how to do other things, outside of what they've always been doing, and that's the reality," says Trent.
Watch out for Part 2 of this fascinating conversation between Rob and Trent. Coming soon!.
If you would like to listen to the full conversation click here. Or watch a video of the exchange here.
