Terrific lunch today at 1 Lombard with old friend @bookmarklee

It did seem as if we were old friends and yet we met originally in 2001 in a professional capacity and have simply said hello a few times at meetings of the APP over the years. I think this was actually our first substantive conversation lasting more than 5 minutes since 2001.

I mention it on this blog because Clare displayed so many positive attributes of a good networker – that I think it’s worth using the lunch as a textbook example of ‘how to do it’.  We’ve all had occasions where a business lunch has been a struggle. This one wasn’t – not for me, nor I think for her.

Let me tell you a little about Clare first. She’s the managing partner of a niche law practice based in Canary Wharf – CM Murray LLP. Earlier this year she had her first baby and took about 4 months off work. She lives close to the office, with her husband and evidently loves her work.  Prior to setting up her practice Clare qualified at a leading national law firm and was subsequently a partner in a City law firm particularly recognised for its employment and partnership law expertise.

So what did Clare do that so wowed me yesterday?

• Encouraged me to talk about me before I could get her to talk about her. Ok, I made it easy for her! But she seemed genuinely interested in the story of my career since we last talked properly in 2001. She asked open questions, expressed concern and interest and evidenced her legal skill; friendly, professionally and easily.

• Responded openly when I asked about how she’d come to set up the practice a few years ago.  She avoided the trap we sometimes fall into – she gave me no sales spiel.  This was casual chat between ‘old friends’ who were catching up.

• Even though Clare had invited ME to lunch (actually her PA had emailed me to find a good date), when we moved to business issues her first question was about what she could do for me. She didn’t start by asking me how I could help her.

• When I asked Clare about her practice she told me about it in a really positive, enthusiastic and engaging way.  I learned about her lateral hires, the team spirit, the extra talent and spark she looks for in potential recruits and the types of clients they act for.  All very matter of fact. I was genuinely interested as it sounded different to many other employment lawyers I’ve spoken with. Let’s see what I can remember 6 hours later (when I’m typing this):
  • A focus on high level executives in the city banks based in and around Canary Wharf. CM Murray were the first niche practice in the area (it’s why they located there);
  • Expertise and a focus on advising the UK subsidiaries of US corporations on employment related matters; and
  • Specialist knowledge and expertise in partnerships and LLPs

• Of course CM Murray has expertise in more areas than this but Clare seemed to know, instinctively I think, that there is little point in talking about everything you can do over lunch. The same is true at networking events. How much can one person remember – especially about someone they’ve just met?  So far as i can recall,  Clare focused on just 3 key memorable niches and added that the firm also does a lot of work with SMEs too.  As I explained though – everyone works with SMEs. That acronym describes 99.9% of all businesses in the UK.

• When I asked what I could do to help her, Clare picked up on something I’d said earlier in the conversation (so she had been listening) and asked if I could think of any niche accountancy firms based in or near to Canary Wharf, City or central London who also have a focus on the same sort of clients as her – especially the UK subsidiaries of US corporations. Maybe they could collaborate and travel to the US to promote their practices together. We also joked about finding a way for her to expand her practice into her home town of Newcastle where her parents still live. But that’s more of a long term dream.

• We also talked about social media for professional advisers, my paid for talks on the subject, twitter (see @BookMarkLee @CMMurrayLLP and @ClareMary), blogging and holidays in Italy. Oh, and she inspired an amusing thought which will shortly appear on the Accountant jokes and fun blog.

Our lunch lasted almost two hours. The time flew by. It did feel as if we were old friends. I have a couple of things I promised to do by way of follow up. This blog post was NOT one of them. But as the day wore on I was reflecting on how enjoyable our lunch had been. I decided to share my positive feelings and, hopefully, in so doing, help others who may struggle with business lunches.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt inspired to do this before. And I doubt I’ll do it again.

By the way I’ve now checked back to CM Murray’s website.  My recollection wasn’t bad. In fact I now realise that during our conversation Clare spoke about the firm’s experience in dealing with the following as well as partnership issues and business immigration law:

• Board room disputes
• Executive bonus and departure issues
• Senior executive appointments and service agreements
• Expatriate and international secondment arrangements and disputes
• Large scale redundancy programmes

There’s another lesson. It’s unwise to expect the people with whom we network to remember all we say to them at meetings or over lunch. Despite my best intentions I still could not recall accurately the specialisations that Clare mentioned over lunch – or maybe I did and her descriptions were more focused than the wording on the website. Reading it now I do recall Clare mentioned them all. But I think she wisely summed them up into pretty much what I sumnmarised earlier.

It occurs to me that many accountants in practice cope very well despite putting off changes until the last possible minute. Accountants managed with the switchover to self assessment in 1997, the introduction of online filing, of quarterly instalment payments for corporation tax and so on. Indeed there have been 3 Companies Acts during my career, numerous accounting and auditing standards, Budgets and Finance Acts every year as well as pronoucements from (what is now) HMRC and so on.

And maybe that tells us why many accountants tend not to spend loads of time planning ahead in their practice. The rules and environment are constantly changing every year. Consciously or unconsciously accountants know that there are always more changes to come. Accountants are typically NOT early adopters. They know that they can adapt, learn and evolve their services to cope with anything. They always do. C’est la vie.

Agree? Disagree?  I’d love to know what you think.

I’ve just found the sentence below which I had set up as a draft blog post. I don’t recall if I read it or made it up myself during a seminar perhaps. It’s possible. But, in case not, my apologies if I should credit someone else. It’s worth sharing though.

I think that this or something like this would go down really well with many clients – assuming it’s true of course. Remember clients won’t know that you’re helping them to pay less tax unless you tell them you do it. And given it’s the service that most clients typically value more than any other……

How about including the following sentiment in your letters  and emails when you write to clients each year?

We’ve taken all the steps we can to reduce your tax liability – this is all the tax you will now have to pay.

If you have any similar ideas or related thoughts please share them as comments below.

“I’m not surprised” he said. “Few people actually go ahead and implement the schemes.”

“So why do you promote them so heavily?” I asked.

“Simple. It gets people through the door. We tell them what they could do and then when we explain the risks they just don’t have the appetite. But they like our approach and become clients anyway.”

This reply reminded me of the conversation I had in the Spring with the head of tax at a reputable tax consultancy. After he has explained the detail of a tax scheme to his clients they invariably say:

“Now I understand it properly, why would I want to go into a scheme like that?”

I explained this further in a post on the TaxBuzz blog: “Have a look at this scheme and tell me what you think”

Coming back to my tax advising IFA. Would you feel comfortable leading with a superficially attractive service offering if experience tells you that most prospects will reject it – albeit they may choose a different service?

Clients will only agree to paying additional fees if they perceive that additional work is being done and that this benefits them in some way.

Tagging company accounts for the taxman, using iXBRL tags, is going to be obligatory from 2011.

It seems that plenty of accountants have yet to determine exactly what they will be doing to ensure that their clients’ accounts are  compliant. I’m not sure how late you can realistically leave it before you find out what is going to be involved here. You’ll want to do this both to ensure that you are able to comply with the new obligations AND to manage your clients’ expectations.

Most importantly is the need, from a commercial perspective, to ensure that you only devote extra time and effort to tagging each client company’s accounts etc if you are sure you will be paid for doing so.  Asking for additional fees only after the event is unlikely to be very remunerative! Is it ever?

For now, here are three more ways accountants can benefit from using LinkedIn:

Be the Conductor – Your client wants to raise finance, perhaps through Venture Capital. Maybe you could do with better contacts in this area? LinkedIn can provide those contacts and introductions.  The same applies for buying and selling businesses, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures etc.  On the tax side of course there’s no need as you can simply use the Tax Advice Network to access relevant and vetted specialist tax advisers.

Practice mergers and expansion - There are a number of highly regarded service providers who can help ensure you get the best deal here. If however you want to go the DIY route, then LinkedIn can help you find suitable practices and practitioners. Your profile will also enable them to check you out – using the information you have chosen to share.

Accessing knowledge – A surprising number of people are willing to share their knowledge and advice on LinkedIn. They do so by answering questions in a public forum. You can pose your questions on any subject and benefit from this free sharing of information.

If you’d like to be notified when the ebook is available do make sure you’ve subscribed to my newsletter using the link on the right about half way down this page. I only send it out about once a month. There’ll be no charge for the ebook by the way.

If you’re in a hurry to learn more about LinkedIn, do signup for Phil Richard’s free Effective LinkedIn Starter Course.

Established in 2007 the Tax Advice Network is a resource and facility for accountants in practice. There’s no charge for sourcing an independent vetted tax adviser through the Network. You can do this whenever you hit a tax problem, challenge or situation that’s outside your comfort zone. Every accountant has such situations – occasionally at least.And the Network website enables you to quickly access a tax adviser with the relevant expertise and in the right area.

Perhaps even more relevant to readers of this blog is the weekly newsletter published by the Tax Advice Network. It’s free to register for this: Every Thursday you will receive the newsletter containing 3 practical, timely and commercial tax tips with advice and relevant links – written specifically for general practice accountants.  It’s unique and highly regarded by those who receive it.

Ok. Adverblog over. Back to conventional blog posts tomorrow.

There is little prospect of accountants asking clients to pay extra – or of them securing additional fees if they did ask!

Equally, accountants will not willingly pay extra for updates of their software if these simply enable them to ensure that clients comply with their legal obligations. Thus suppliers will have a hard job on their hands to persuade existing accountancy users to pay extra.

In practice the only community who can seriously be expected to bear the development costs, if not the developers themselves, will have to be new users; – perhaps those who migrate away from competitors , as well as those who are computerising for the first time.  This is unusual as normally it is the pioneers who pay a premium for the privilege of being the pioneers and at the forefront of new developments. Have newer users in recent years been paying as much as those pioneers for their accounting and tax software? I guess not. So can those who have been putting off their move to online filing be expected to pay more so that the software developers can recoup their investment? Or will the only losers be the shareholders and owners of the developers? They have no choice but to invest in the new developments.

I said earlier that few accountants will successfully persuade clients to pay a surcharge to cover the costs of introducing new software. Some firms tried that in 1997 when self assessment was introduced. In most cases clients rebelled and accountants had to absorb the cost of introducing new software. This time round it is likely to be the software suppliers who bear the costs. Sorry guys!

What do you think?

One reader and contributor is Phil Richards. We’ve been talking about jointly authoring an ebook on the subject of LinkedIn for accountants. In this vein Phil has some further ideas as to how accountants can benefit from LinkedIn. Rather than add them as comments on earlier posts, I’ve extended the blog series. So here are three more:

Central point – LinkedIn enables you to connect one to one with people on a mutual platform. When you connect to one person you become visible to the people they connect with. This works in all sorts of ways that happen without you having to do anything.

Research suppliers – Whilst it’s not yet ubiquitous, LinkedIn is increasingly popular. I’m now surprised and disappointed if someone who approaches me isn’t on LinkedIn. I’ve often found that I know someone who has already dealt with them and can then call or email for an objective view before agreeing to engage with them.

Recommendations – LinkedIn provides a facility for clients and colleagues, past and present, to post recommendations against your profile. These are only visible to others if you accept them. I’m rather proud and humbled by the large number attached to my profile. I’d like to think that such recommendations add to your credibility. And this can be helpful in giving the right impression when new contacts first check out your online profile.

(The fifth and final part of this series will follow on Friday – love the alliteration!)