Client Service

Anticipate the Market – Today’s Trends Affecting You Tomorrow

The market is dynamic and fast-moving, and it’s our job as leaders to stay abreast of the changes that will have the biggest impact on our firm, team and clients. When we anticipate the hard and soft trends ahead, we can develop strategies to lead our team to capitalize on those changes. Which trends should you plan to address in the current year and beyond? Join us to explore:

• The most important trends in three areas – Talent, Technology and Client Experience – paired with insight on how firms are anticipating and addressing them
• Strategies for prioritizing your firm’s efforts in each of the three areas to facilitate real change and prevent overwhelm
• Methods for staying current on trends going forward

Leave this session with ideas for anticipating and maximizing market trends as you plan for the future!

Capacity Issues? Rightsize Your Client Base

Across the profession, firms are facing tremendous opportunity yet have limited capacity to capitalize on it. Capacity-building strategies are available but take precious time and resources to plan and implement. There is, however, one strategy that everyone can implement immediately to significantly improve capacity before their next busy season - reducing your firm’s client load. Together, we’ll explore the reasons to take this on and share tried and true strategies to support a more successful client reduction initiative. The learning objectives for this course are to:

• List the six reasons why culling is the right strategy for your firm, your leaders, your team members, and even your clients
• Recognize how to get started quickly and impactfully with timing and an approach that honors relationships with long-standing clients
• Identify strategic communication strategies and consistent position statements to protect your brand and reputation in your communities
• Recognize potential barriers that might get in the way of a culling initiative and how to proactively overcome them

A client reduction strategy isn’t easy yet it’s the fastest way to create capacity while demonstrating your commitment to improve the work life of your increasingly weary team members. Leave this session prepared to expand your capacity immediately!

Client Advisor Program™ (CAP)

Duration: Five remote roundtables over 4 months

Format: REMOTE

Who Should Participate: Experienced managers, senior managers and partners who control and manage client relationships and have some business development experience

CPE: Up to 12 credit hours in the areas of Personal Development and Communications & Marketing

Class Size: 14 participants

In this dynamic and uncertain market, clients require a different level of service to support their business continuity and financial well-being. Their needs demand more than our compliance deliverables, providing information and guidance to help them make swift decisions as they manage cash, pivot their business models, and navigate staffing, technology and other infrastructure changes. To make the shift to a truly strategic client advisor, you’ll have to shed old ideas and habits and develop both your advisory skills and an advisory approach to engagements.

The ConvergenceCoaching Client Advisor Program™ (CAP) is an entirely remote, modular program designed to teach experienced CPAs and consultants advisory skills and strategies to deepen their client relationships, broaden the support they provide clients beyond compliance services and ultimately make a bigger difference in the lives and businesses of their clients.

The program seeks to teach CPAs and consultants how to identify their ideal clients for advisory and coaching services and implement various strategies and frameworks to develop deep rapport with clients, engage in query to uncover needs and to develop, scope, and price solutions, too. CAP participants will partake in five, web-based video roundtables covering a range of client-centric topics. After each roundtable, participants will complete specific homework assignments related to the ideas covered and will report back on their outcomes to experienced coaches who will provide them feedback. The result is participants become more indispensable to clients and drive growth with every module mastered.

Click here to learn more about the CAP.

Consulting Services vs. Compliance Services: Managing the Difference

CPAs have worked hard to become not just historians (dutifully ensuring clients are in compliance) but trusted advisors (regularly offering fresh ideas, proactively identifying needs, and consistently recommending innovative solutions to client challenges).  You know you can’t continue to market, grow and manage your consulting practice like a traditional compliance practice – but what’s the difference?  In this session, we’ll explore strategies to feed and grow your consulting practice where you will:

• Understand where, how and why consulting fits
• List the differences between consulting and compliance services in your:
  • Business model
  • Staffing
  • Marketing and sales approach
• Recall ways to manage your consulting practice to drive sustainability and profitability

Leave this session with an understanding about the differences you need to apply to gain momentum and growth of the consulting services in your firm.

Creative Ways to Deepen Your Client Relationships

Nothing is more important to firm growth and stability than retaining key clients. Attend this session to explore creative programs that firms are using to deepen their client relationships and become an indispensable asset. In this session you will:

• Learn ideas to position yourself as a true trusted advisor and consultant
• Identify methods for ensuring you introduce the right firm services to clients at the right time
• List ways to run client service team meetings that allow you to assess client relationships and strategize to improve them
• Discover easy ideas for staying in touch with clients

Leave this session with practical and innovative client service ideas that will ensure your clients look to you and your firm for services for years to come!

Deepening Your Client Relationships to Enhance Your Value (1-day workshop)

If asked, most of us would say that we’re committed to 100% client referenceability and client relationships that last a lifetime. Yet few of us really measure how we’re doing in this area or what else we can do to better serve our clients. Great client relationship managers learn how to maximize the value of their client relationships, beginning with the first meeting with a prospect during the sales process. In this session you will:

• Understand approaches to build rapport with prospects and clients by:
  • Asking the right questions
  • Applying real listening techniques
  • Uncovering common goals or elements that develop relatedness
  • Discovering your client’s goals, values, and work-style
• Discover strategies to learn about your client’s business by understanding their industry and the unique challenges, cycles, and other impacts on their success
• Identify methods to become indispensable to your clients by being a trusted advisor – or coach – rather than just a “reporter” of historical information or deliverer of goods
• Define processes to proactively understand what issues or challenges your client is facing and how you can help, including:
  • Client surveys
  • Meeting with your clients
  • Client management systems or databases
  • Cross-selling processes
• Identify communications mechanisms that would enhance your client relationship
• Recall internal communications strategies to keep others in your firm informed and current on your clients

Leave this session empowered to deepen – and secure – your client relationships while helping them achieve their goals!

Delivering Exceptional Client Service

In a professional services firm, our people make or break the quality our clients perceive. Still, we seem to take for granted that everyone knows the foundational elements of exceptional client service and may not spend enough time training or communicating on this critical subject. Attend this session to explore the most important elements of exceptional client service including:

• Ensuring that you and your team have a client-centered mindset
• Methods for building rapport and trust
• Developing a problem-solving culture and toolset
• Developing a consistent project management approach
• Follow through and internal communication techniques
• Tips and ideas to enhance your firm’s client service

Leave this session with a more thorough understanding of the “art” of client service and enhance your firm’s ability to make your clients feel valued.

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Delivering Exceptional Client Service (1-day workshop)

In a professional services firm, our people make or break the quality our clients perceive. Still, we seem to take for granted that everyone knows the foundational elements of exceptional client As a result, we may not spend enough time training or communicating on this critical subject to explore the most important elements of exceptional client service. In this session, we will explore critical elements of client service and project management concepts where you will:

• Learn strategies to understand and confirm the needs of your client
• Identify approaches to manage your clients’ expectations effectively, including:
  • Scoping services and developing a budget to address those needs
  • Identifying milestones and managing progress against them using effective meeting and communication strategies
  • Managing budget against the original scope and milestones, including billing and relieving WIP
  • Managing and communicating scope changes when needed
  • Learning how to say no, or propose alternatives to what the client seems to be asking
• Recall how to maintain a high level of internal team communications so that all of your service providers are unified in the approach to service for each client
• Discover methods to manage client upsets and disappointments when they occur and take responsibility and learn client from service failures. Learn how to ask for constructive feedback and take it, too

Leave this session with a more thorough understanding of the “art” of client service to genuinely differentiate your firm in the way you serve your clients and deliver value!

Developing Innovative Client Solutions to Make a Bigger Difference

Nothing is more important to firm growth and stability than retaining key clients. In this highly interactive session with facilitated group and table-top discussion, we will explore creative ideas to truly be proactive and consultative to expand the value you deliver to clients. In this session, you will:

• Analyze the mindset shifts and behavioral changes needed to shift from compliance to consultant
• List ways to run client service team meetings that allow you to assess client relationships and strategize to deliver more
• Identify methods for understanding the needs and drivers within clients and match those with your firm’s services
• Discover differentiating your firm by solving clients’ problems and making a bigger difference in their organization and in their lives

Leave this session with practical and innovative client service ideas that will ensure your clients look to you and your firm for services for years to come!