Excerpt from Firm Forward - scripting to get you ready for your Level 5 Test Drive
Tuesday
I walked into Jack’s office, breakfast in hand.
“Good Morning, Jack! Thanks again for taking this meeting.”
“Hell, you know I can’t turn down a free breakfast. Seriously, I’m curious to hear what you have to say. My conversation with Tom was long on apologies, short on a fumble recovery plan. I’m not promising this will change my mind about moving my work, but I’m listening.”
Both our boys played football, and fumble recovery was the perfect metaphor, reminding me “we had dropped the ball.”
“Fair enough, I appreciate that, Jack. You told Tom, but tell me what was missing in the relationship.”
“Glad you didn’t ask what was wrong with the work, because there was nothing wrong with the work. You guys are as good as it gets as far as accounting services go. I just feel you could have done more to help us navigate through the recession. No one from the firm picked up the phone or stopped by just to see how we were doing. Any and all conversations were limited to tax and accounting work. I was always the one that initiated the conversation about margins, cash flow, et cetera. In fact, we had a few months when we had to stretch out our accounts payable. The only person from the firm I heard from was Margaret, wondering when we were going to pay. Polite, of course, but it rubbed me the wrong way.
“Once, Katie was here, meeting with our controller. She offered to help us look at our cash flow and do some kind of financial stress test. Then I never heard back.”
I cringed, and he saw it on my face.
Jack said, not unsympathetically, “Sometimes the truth hurts.”
“That was my fault. Katie asked me about doing that project for you, but I told her to hold off. Katie’s heart was in the right place, but we’ve been focused on the wrong things. I’m truly sorry for it.
“I appreciate that you still have confidence in our accounting services. I also agree that it isn’t enough anymore. A big part of my job for the next couple years is re-tooling our people and formalizing our advisory services to respond when clients need our help.”
Jack spoke emphatically, “Forgive me, but I’m calling you out on something. I don’t want you to respond when I call, I want you to watch over things, and come to me even before I know there’s a problem. For example, I knew my margins had been slipping for a few months, but it wasn’t until our year-end tax meeting that you even brought it up. Even then, you didn’t say much more than you’d noticed margins had slipped.
“Here’s the point: don’t tell me things I can obviously see in my own profit and loss statement, help me figure out how to fix the problem. Better yet, help me address the issue before it becomes a problem.”
“You’re right. We should be more proactive, and we will be.”
“You guys always sound so smart talking about what has already happened. Any accountant can read the numbers off the statements. Hindsight is 20/20. I don’t want hindsight. I want insight. I want you guys looking for the things I’m too busy to see. I want you to help me plan for the future and keep me on task, progressing toward my goals.
“My executive team regularly reviews our company dashboard – not just looking for what we need to do better. They are always trying to forecast the future performance of the company. I want some foresight, too!”
I made a mental note: hindsight – insight – foresight.
“I’m going to be really straight with you, Jack. What you’re describing is foreign territory for accountants. Most of us live in a world of certainty, where everything is black or white. The minute we cross over from talking about the past to forecasting the future we enter a world of uncertainty and run the risk of crossing the line of independence. If it sounds like an excuse, I don’t want it to. But it is a reality in the profession that I’m trying to deal with.
“The good news is I’m not the only managing partner with this issue on his plate. The entire profession is rethinking its role with clients for the very reasons you just talked about. Increasingly, our clients want us to act more like an outsourced CFO rather than a traditional accountant. Some would even argue that we need to be more like a CIO – a chief information officer – to offer up better business intelligence.”
“That sounds great to me. What’s wrong with that picture from your perspective?”
“Nothing, really, except the rules governing auditing and independence tend to make us very cautious about stepping over the line.”
“Are you saying that to maintain your status as a CPA firm, you can’t help me run my business? Sounds like you’re working for the banks or the IRS rather than doing what’s best for your clients. Remind me again, who’s paying your bill?”
“True enough.”
“Bennie, you’re not doing such a hot job wooing me back. But you’re also scaring me, because if that’s what every firm is like, I’m no better off moving my business. Maybe I’m trying to buy apples from the butcher, and it just isn’t going to happen.”
“No, I didn’t say that Jack. In fact, what I came to share with you might be just what you’re looking for. A couple years ago, a few of us attended a program on how to develop and deliver advisory services that don’t cross over that line. At the core of that training was what they called ‘Level 5 Service.’ Here, let me show you what it looks like.”
I pulled out the Level 5 graphic and laid it on the table.
Jack scanned the document and was quick to comment, “I like it already, Bennie, especially the part about decision support and accuracy vs. relevance. To me, that kind of says it all, right there.”
I dove right in, “Let’s look at the levels.
Level 1 - Technical Foundation
• Write-up
• Accounting
• Tax Return
• Audit - Review
“Level 1 is where every accounting firm lives. It’s our comfort zone. It’s something we’re really good at, so naturally we gravitate to it. At the same time, it’s difficult to differentiate our services at that level; being good at Level 1 is an assumed competency. Level 1 is the foundation for good decision-making, because if you don’t have the technical foundation right, every assumption you make thereafter is flawed.
“Once we’ve got Level 1 right, we can move on to Level 2.
Level 2a & 2b - Thorough Analysis
• Level 2a: Financial Fluency - Analyze & Educate clients about Critical Ratios
• Level 2b: Conduct What If scenarios
“Level 2 is broken into two phases. In fact, you nailed it when you talked about hindsight and insight. Level 1 is hindsight. Level 2 and beyond is where the insight and foresight kick in. Level 2a is all about financial fluency: helping clients better understand their businesses from a financial perspective. It’s more than just regurgitating the numbers. It’s about helping you really understand and gain insight as to what those numbers mean. We use the term ‘fluency’ because it accurately conveys what this step is all about. If you’ve ever traveled abroad, you know that the more fluent you are in the local language and customs, the more enriching the experience. The same is true of financial language.
“Clients shouldn’t have to have their accountant play interpreter with their own financial information. Our goal is to make sure our clients can fully comprehend the implications of what shows up on their financial statements.
“Level 2b takes that financial fluency skill and allows you to do some ‘what if’ calculations on the most critical ratios in your business. We have a piece of software that illuminates the cause/effect between seven key business drivers and what shows up on the financial statements. We can even test assumptions of growth and cash demands or stress-test key ratios to see where you’re most vulnerable.”
“I’m stopping you right there. That’s what Katie was talking about, right? Why you haven’t shown me this before?” Jack interrupted, looking mildly annoyed.
“There are plenty of reasons but, honestly, they’re mostly excuses that center on not wanting to look stupid. You see, this type of dialogue is new to most accountants. It moves us from the world of black and white, right and wrong compliance work to the ambiguity of what-ifs and unknowns.”
Jack seemed genuinely frustrated. “I don’t know whether to be mad at you for not showing me this sooner or to feel sorry for the accounting profession. Without something like this, there are a lot of clients like me that are going to be looking for other professionals to rely on. Do you want to be on the compliance side of things or someone I can rely on when times get tough?”
Talking to Jack was proving incredibly productive. I made another mental note: compliance to reliance. “That transition, from compliance to reliance, as you called it, is the journey a lot of accountants are starting to really focus on. I’d like to say our firm is at the forefront of that movement, but that would be a lie. We did the Level 5 Service training a couple years ago, came back excited about what it would mean for our clients. And yet –”
“And yet, what? Why weren’t you out pounding on doors during the recession, helping small businesses figure out all this stuff?”
“We should have been. I can’t fix the past, but part of the reason I’m so excited about being named managing partner is that so many of the obstacles holding us back two years ago are gone. Now, it’s on me to make sure we don’t drop the ball on this.”
“Okay, what happens at Level 3?”
Level 3 - Future Focus
• Business X-ray & Planning
• Help clients set goals and associated strategies for improvement
“Think of it this way, if Level 2 addresses the accuracy piece, Level 3 sets up a context of relevance. At Level 3, we take you through a Business X-ray to benchmark your company’s performance as compared with other successful companies of similar size. We also work with you from a strategic perspective, to understand your vision and make sure you have a clear plan for executing that vision. Borrowing from Stephen Covey, ‘Beginning with the end in mind,’ knowing where you want to go in the future helps us tailor information to support strategically focused decision-making. It’s the difference between managing the business day-to-day and managing toward a desired outcome.”
Jack was leaning forward, “Are you telling me that there are some predictable standards of business performance that you can compare my company to?”
“Yes. The Business X-ray looks at your company within the context of 7 Stages of Growth. At each of the stages, we can evaluate how your company is handling the critical issues at your current stage and predict the challenges you will face in the future. The X-ray tells us if you’re ahead of or behind your growth curve, and where you need to focus your energies to be more successful. It’s kind of like when you took your son to the pediatrician, and they could predict his adult height based on where he measured on the standard growth percentile. We can do the same for your business.
“Beyond the X-ray that evaluates where you are on the standard business growth percentile, we have a process for diagnosing issues, revealing underlying obstacles, and uncovering hidden opportunities that are specific to your company. Once we complete the X-ray and diagnostic process, we then help you and your management team map out your plan to address the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future.”
“Okay, now we have a plan, then what?”
Level 4 - Link to Performance
• Link financial goals with business activities
• Measure /report outcomes of business activities via dashboards
“Here’s where a lot of planning efforts seem to go sideways. Most companies are good at planning, but not so good at executing on their plans. Level 4 looks at the plan you come up with at Level 3 and translates the big picture goals into KPIs -- that’s key performance indicators. We establish a performance measurement system to monitor the KPIs. Those KPIs are designed to support management decisions. Equally important, we’re able to provide the team with strategically relevant feedback about how they are performing. We implement the feedback loop through the use of custom dashboards for team members.”
I paused for a moment for Jack to jump in but he didn’t. Either he was totally engrossed or I’d lost him.
“Is this making sense to you?”
“Absolutely. As soon as I finally get over being pissed off that you didn’t come to me sooner, I could really get excited.”
“Should I continue?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s do a quick re-cap:
“Level 1 is the technical foundation for precision decision-making. We have to get this part right. And not just from the IRS’ perspective, but within the context of your big picture goals.
“Level 2 is all about insight and financial fluency for you and your team. Then, we do those what-ifs to uncover hidden opportunities and create direct linkages between key business drivers and financial outcomes.
“Level 3 is the relevance piece. There’s this saying: People who aim at nothing, hit it with amazing accuracy. We have to have a clear vision of where you want to go and how you plan to get there. Knowing where you want to be in the future also helps us with tax planning at Level 1.
“Level 4 creates the links between behaviors and company outcomes. It’s about providing line of sight performance feedback for everyone on the team via custom dashboards and departmental P&Ls.
Level 5 -Continuous Improvement
• Help clients monitor critical activities and strategically manage business activities
“Level 5 is about ongoing review of measures and outcomes. Level 5 is all about monitoring if you’re on track to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. There’s a lot of adjusting of the measures in the first few months of this process. Some measures are truly predictive of outcomes. Others end up not being as useful as we would like, but we often don’t know this until we let the process run its course. Worse yet, dysfunctional measures can end up producing undesirable outcomes. So it’s critical that we continually review the measures, the measurement process, as well as the outcomes.
“As market conditions change or your goals and strategies get adjusted, we end up developing new measures or realigning the ones we have to provide the decision support you need to run the company more effectively.
“Remember when we talked about why the profession is uncomfortable outside of black and white? This is why. There are a lot of unknowns and a learning curve to master as we fine-tune the measurement process. We’re used to coming in with all the answers, being the experts. The Level 5 methodology demands that we not be the experts, but that we act as facilitators to help you and your team progress through each of the levels. It’s a different role than what we’re used to.”
“How many of these Level 5 engagements have you done?”
“Zero. We’re just getting started. When we got back from the Level 5 training, we learned Tom had cancer. I had to assume many of his responsibilities while he was out of the office for treatment. Bottom line, I dropped the ball. My mistake was not handing off the lead on launching the program. I should have let Mark, Katie, and Sharon run with it. As a result, we’ve continued to do what we’ve always done, ‘random acts of consulting’ that feel good in the short term but never get us any closer to a formalized consulting methodology we can roll out to all of our clients. Which is what you were asking for and, frankly, deserved.
“Now, it’s two years later and one of our best clients has fired us because we didn’t pay attention to his needs beyond the accounting side of things. I’m embarrassed to admit all this, but I can’t pretend we did everything possible to meet your needs. I didn’t want to look foolish in bringing this to you until we could do the process right. I was wrong. I should have.”
“I appreciate your honesty, Bennie. I wouldn’t have cared if you didn’t get it perfect. We were really struggling with the recession and would have welcomed any help you could have offered, perfect or not.”
“You’re right. Being perfect is a dangerous and slippery slope. I’ve come around to valuing ‘progress over perfection’ because what really matters is that we have to start somewhere.”
“Start here. Start now.”
My dad always said, “Once a client says yes, shut up and stop selling.” Jack’s response was the go ahead I was hoping for. I promised we would be calling him in the next couple days to set up a preliminary meeting to design the Level 5 Service engagement.
Tuesday
I walked into Jack’s office, breakfast in hand.
“Good Morning, Jack! Thanks again for taking this meeting.”
“Hell, you know I can’t turn down a free breakfast. Seriously, I’m curious to hear what you have to say. My conversation with Tom was long on apologies, short on a fumble recovery plan. I’m not promising this will change my mind about moving my work, but I’m listening.”
Both our boys played football, and fumble recovery was the perfect metaphor, reminding me “we had dropped the ball.”
“Fair enough, I appreciate that, Jack. You told Tom, but tell me what was missing in the relationship.”
“Glad you didn’t ask what was wrong with the work, because there was nothing wrong with the work. You guys are as good as it gets as far as accounting services go. I just feel you could have done more to help us navigate through the recession. No one from the firm picked up the phone or stopped by just to see how we were doing. Any and all conversations were limited to tax and accounting work. I was always the one that initiated the conversation about margins, cash flow, et cetera. In fact, we had a few months when we had to stretch out our accounts payable. The only person from the firm I heard from was Margaret, wondering when we were going to pay. Polite, of course, but it rubbed me the wrong way.
“Once, Katie was here, meeting with our controller. She offered to help us look at our cash flow and do some kind of financial stress test. Then I never heard back.”
I cringed, and he saw it on my face.
Jack said, not unsympathetically, “Sometimes the truth hurts.”
“That was my fault. Katie asked me about doing that project for you, but I told her to hold off. Katie’s heart was in the right place, but we’ve been focused on the wrong things. I’m truly sorry for it.
“I appreciate that you still have confidence in our accounting services. I also agree that it isn’t enough anymore. A big part of my job for the next couple years is re-tooling our people and formalizing our advisory services to respond when clients need our help.”
Jack spoke emphatically, “Forgive me, but I’m calling you out on something. I don’t want you to respond when I call, I want you to watch over things, and come to me even before I know there’s a problem. For example, I knew my margins had been slipping for a few months, but it wasn’t until our year-end tax meeting that you even brought it up. Even then, you didn’t say much more than you’d noticed margins had slipped.
“Here’s the point: don’t tell me things I can obviously see in my own profit and loss statement, help me figure out how to fix the problem. Better yet, help me address the issue before it becomes a problem.”
“You’re right. We should be more proactive, and we will be.”
“You guys always sound so smart talking about what has already happened. Any accountant can read the numbers off the statements. Hindsight is 20/20. I don’t want hindsight. I want insight. I want you guys looking for the things I’m too busy to see. I want you to help me plan for the future and keep me on task, progressing toward my goals.
“My executive team regularly reviews our company dashboard – not just looking for what we need to do better. They are always trying to forecast the future performance of the company. I want some foresight, too!”
I made a mental note: hindsight – insight – foresight.
“I’m going to be really straight with you, Jack. What you’re describing is foreign territory for accountants. Most of us live in a world of certainty, where everything is black or white. The minute we cross over from talking about the past to forecasting the future we enter a world of uncertainty and run the risk of crossing the line of independence. If it sounds like an excuse, I don’t want it to. But it is a reality in the profession that I’m trying to deal with.
“The good news is I’m not the only managing partner with this issue on his plate. The entire profession is rethinking its role with clients for the very reasons you just talked about. Increasingly, our clients want us to act more like an outsourced CFO rather than a traditional accountant. Some would even argue that we need to be more like a CIO – a chief information officer – to offer up better business intelligence.”
“That sounds great to me. What’s wrong with that picture from your perspective?”
“Nothing, really, except the rules governing auditing and independence tend to make us very cautious about stepping over the line.”
“Are you saying that to maintain your status as a CPA firm, you can’t help me run my business? Sounds like you’re working for the banks or the IRS rather than doing what’s best for your clients. Remind me again, who’s paying your bill?”
“True enough.”
“Bennie, you’re not doing such a hot job wooing me back. But you’re also scaring me, because if that’s what every firm is like, I’m no better off moving my business. Maybe I’m trying to buy apples from the butcher, and it just isn’t going to happen.”
“No, I didn’t say that Jack. In fact, what I came to share with you might be just what you’re looking for. A couple years ago, a few of us attended a program on how to develop and deliver advisory services that don’t cross over that line. At the core of that training was what they called ‘Level 5 Service.’ Here, let me show you what it looks like.”
I pulled out the Level 5 graphic and laid it on the table.
Jack scanned the document and was quick to comment, “I like it already, Bennie, especially the part about decision support and accuracy vs. relevance. To me, that kind of says it all, right there.”
I dove right in, “Let’s look at the levels.
Level 1 - Technical Foundation
• Write-up
• Accounting
• Tax Return
• Audit - Review
“Level 1 is where every accounting firm lives. It’s our comfort zone. It’s something we’re really good at, so naturally we gravitate to it. At the same time, it’s difficult to differentiate our services at that level; being good at Level 1 is an assumed competency. Level 1 is the foundation for good decision-making, because if you don’t have the technical foundation right, every assumption you make thereafter is flawed.
“Once we’ve got Level 1 right, we can move on to Level 2.
Level 2a & 2b - Thorough Analysis
• Level 2a: Financial Fluency - Analyze & Educate clients about Critical Ratios
• Level 2b: Conduct What If scenarios
“Level 2 is broken into two phases. In fact, you nailed it when you talked about hindsight and insight. Level 1 is hindsight. Level 2 and beyond is where the insight and foresight kick in. Level 2a is all about financial fluency: helping clients better understand their businesses from a financial perspective. It’s more than just regurgitating the numbers. It’s about helping you really understand and gain insight as to what those numbers mean. We use the term ‘fluency’ because it accurately conveys what this step is all about. If you’ve ever traveled abroad, you know that the more fluent you are in the local language and customs, the more enriching the experience. The same is true of financial language.
“Clients shouldn’t have to have their accountant play interpreter with their own financial information. Our goal is to make sure our clients can fully comprehend the implications of what shows up on their financial statements.
“Level 2b takes that financial fluency skill and allows you to do some ‘what if’ calculations on the most critical ratios in your business. We have a piece of software that illuminates the cause/effect between seven key business drivers and what shows up on the financial statements. We can even test assumptions of growth and cash demands or stress-test key ratios to see where you’re most vulnerable.”
“I’m stopping you right there. That’s what Katie was talking about, right? Why you haven’t shown me this before?” Jack interrupted, looking mildly annoyed.
“There are plenty of reasons but, honestly, they’re mostly excuses that center on not wanting to look stupid. You see, this type of dialogue is new to most accountants. It moves us from the world of black and white, right and wrong compliance work to the ambiguity of what-ifs and unknowns.”
Jack seemed genuinely frustrated. “I don’t know whether to be mad at you for not showing me this sooner or to feel sorry for the accounting profession. Without something like this, there are a lot of clients like me that are going to be looking for other professionals to rely on. Do you want to be on the compliance side of things or someone I can rely on when times get tough?”
Talking to Jack was proving incredibly productive. I made another mental note: compliance to reliance. “That transition, from compliance to reliance, as you called it, is the journey a lot of accountants are starting to really focus on. I’d like to say our firm is at the forefront of that movement, but that would be a lie. We did the Level 5 Service training a couple years ago, came back excited about what it would mean for our clients. And yet –”
“And yet, what? Why weren’t you out pounding on doors during the recession, helping small businesses figure out all this stuff?”
“We should have been. I can’t fix the past, but part of the reason I’m so excited about being named managing partner is that so many of the obstacles holding us back two years ago are gone. Now, it’s on me to make sure we don’t drop the ball on this.”
“Okay, what happens at Level 3?”
Level 3 - Future Focus
• Business X-ray & Planning
• Help clients set goals and associated strategies for improvement
“Think of it this way, if Level 2 addresses the accuracy piece, Level 3 sets up a context of relevance. At Level 3, we take you through a Business X-ray to benchmark your company’s performance as compared with other successful companies of similar size. We also work with you from a strategic perspective, to understand your vision and make sure you have a clear plan for executing that vision. Borrowing from Stephen Covey, ‘Beginning with the end in mind,’ knowing where you want to go in the future helps us tailor information to support strategically focused decision-making. It’s the difference between managing the business day-to-day and managing toward a desired outcome.”
Jack was leaning forward, “Are you telling me that there are some predictable standards of business performance that you can compare my company to?”
“Yes. The Business X-ray looks at your company within the context of 7 Stages of Growth. At each of the stages, we can evaluate how your company is handling the critical issues at your current stage and predict the challenges you will face in the future. The X-ray tells us if you’re ahead of or behind your growth curve, and where you need to focus your energies to be more successful. It’s kind of like when you took your son to the pediatrician, and they could predict his adult height based on where he measured on the standard growth percentile. We can do the same for your business.
“Beyond the X-ray that evaluates where you are on the standard business growth percentile, we have a process for diagnosing issues, revealing underlying obstacles, and uncovering hidden opportunities that are specific to your company. Once we complete the X-ray and diagnostic process, we then help you and your management team map out your plan to address the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future.”
“Okay, now we have a plan, then what?”
Level 4 - Link to Performance
• Link financial goals with business activities
• Measure /report outcomes of business activities via dashboards
“Here’s where a lot of planning efforts seem to go sideways. Most companies are good at planning, but not so good at executing on their plans. Level 4 looks at the plan you come up with at Level 3 and translates the big picture goals into KPIs -- that’s key performance indicators. We establish a performance measurement system to monitor the KPIs. Those KPIs are designed to support management decisions. Equally important, we’re able to provide the team with strategically relevant feedback about how they are performing. We implement the feedback loop through the use of custom dashboards for team members.”
I paused for a moment for Jack to jump in but he didn’t. Either he was totally engrossed or I’d lost him.
“Is this making sense to you?”
“Absolutely. As soon as I finally get over being pissed off that you didn’t come to me sooner, I could really get excited.”
“Should I continue?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s do a quick re-cap:
“Level 1 is the technical foundation for precision decision-making. We have to get this part right. And not just from the IRS’ perspective, but within the context of your big picture goals.
“Level 2 is all about insight and financial fluency for you and your team. Then, we do those what-ifs to uncover hidden opportunities and create direct linkages between key business drivers and financial outcomes.
“Level 3 is the relevance piece. There’s this saying: People who aim at nothing, hit it with amazing accuracy. We have to have a clear vision of where you want to go and how you plan to get there. Knowing where you want to be in the future also helps us with tax planning at Level 1.
“Level 4 creates the links between behaviors and company outcomes. It’s about providing line of sight performance feedback for everyone on the team via custom dashboards and departmental P&Ls.
Level 5 -Continuous Improvement
• Help clients monitor critical activities and strategically manage business activities
“Level 5 is about ongoing review of measures and outcomes. Level 5 is all about monitoring if you’re on track to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. There’s a lot of adjusting of the measures in the first few months of this process. Some measures are truly predictive of outcomes. Others end up not being as useful as we would like, but we often don’t know this until we let the process run its course. Worse yet, dysfunctional measures can end up producing undesirable outcomes. So it’s critical that we continually review the measures, the measurement process, as well as the outcomes.
“As market conditions change or your goals and strategies get adjusted, we end up developing new measures or realigning the ones we have to provide the decision support you need to run the company more effectively.
“Remember when we talked about why the profession is uncomfortable outside of black and white? This is why. There are a lot of unknowns and a learning curve to master as we fine-tune the measurement process. We’re used to coming in with all the answers, being the experts. The Level 5 methodology demands that we not be the experts, but that we act as facilitators to help you and your team progress through each of the levels. It’s a different role than what we’re used to.”
“How many of these Level 5 engagements have you done?”
“Zero. We’re just getting started. When we got back from the Level 5 training, we learned Tom had cancer. I had to assume many of his responsibilities while he was out of the office for treatment. Bottom line, I dropped the ball. My mistake was not handing off the lead on launching the program. I should have let Mark, Katie, and Sharon run with it. As a result, we’ve continued to do what we’ve always done, ‘random acts of consulting’ that feel good in the short term but never get us any closer to a formalized consulting methodology we can roll out to all of our clients. Which is what you were asking for and, frankly, deserved.
“Now, it’s two years later and one of our best clients has fired us because we didn’t pay attention to his needs beyond the accounting side of things. I’m embarrassed to admit all this, but I can’t pretend we did everything possible to meet your needs. I didn’t want to look foolish in bringing this to you until we could do the process right. I was wrong. I should have.”
“I appreciate your honesty, Bennie. I wouldn’t have cared if you didn’t get it perfect. We were really struggling with the recession and would have welcomed any help you could have offered, perfect or not.”
“You’re right. Being perfect is a dangerous and slippery slope. I’ve come around to valuing ‘progress over perfection’ because what really matters is that we have to start somewhere.”
“Start here. Start now.”
My dad always said, “Once a client says yes, shut up and stop selling.” Jack’s response was the go ahead I was hoping for. I promised we would be calling him in the next couple days to set up a preliminary meeting to design the Level 5 Service engagement.