Are you a ‘trusted advisor’?
Richard Brewin, FCA
Mentor to accountants who deserve more. Helping accountants to drive change for themselves, their firms and their clients
How much do your clients trust you and is it enough for them to always take your advice? We hear the phrase ‘trusted advisor’ banded around a lot but is it representative of client-accountant relationships?
Trust is a sliding scale.
For a start, just because a client asks you to do their tax return, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they trust you, simply that you are the most convenient solution for them.
They may trust you as an accountant to do your job and look after the compliance work but not necessarily trust your opinion, your advice or even your motives.
Clients will trust you up to a point. The challenge experienced by accountants is that this point is far too often set to low. Clients will act on your advice up to a point but not far enough for you to achieve the ‘trusted advisor’ status that you strive to be. We want clients to trust us more so that they become more willing to accept our advice and recommendations, good for their business and for ours.
Trust builds over time if we consistently demonstrate that we can be trusted, but frustration builds if there are results we want to achieve in the meantime that take the client beyond their trust point.
Can we accelerate the process?
Trust is built on three things:
- You being true to yourself. Through this comes an honesty, belief and integrity that buys trust from the client.
- You having robust solutions. Your advice and solutions should be able to firmly withstand questioning. Through this comes confidence that buys trust from the client.
- You show empathy. Demonstrating that you understand the client and have their position at heart buys trust from the client.
We can therefore accelerate the process of building trust by consistently demonstrating these three traits. Our behaviour and environment need to reflect these. Our points of client contact need to promote these. Our conversations need to be planned to demonstrate these.
Our marketing too needs to be built with these values at its heart. Take a look at your website, your newsletters and your marketing tools. Do these reflect the trust-building assets?
Don’t leave trust to Father Time. Demonstrate to clients your ‘trusted advisor’ status.