Survive, Revive and Thrive -- Utilizing Your Tax Pro To Help You Rebuild and Refocus

As a tax pro, there are an array of problems, questions, and struggles your clients will face on a daily basis. It’s important to understand each client’s needs so you can help guide them with your expert knowledge.

Introducing advisory services to your clients is a great way to give curated advice specifically designed for them, and help them reach their goals. But first, you have to learn where each client stands. Do they want to survive the way they are going and focus on reducing their own debt? Are they looking to revive their personal or business ventures and start fresh? Is their main goal to be forward thinking and thrive beyond the day to day? You can learn all of this and help them make informed decisions to match their expectations through advisory services.

Survive

Start by having a conversation with your clients to find out more about their priorities. If they are content with staying the course and focusing on one topic to continue surviving how they have in the past, have conversations with them about it. What are their priorities? Take the topic of debt for example. Are they focused on reducing it? Paying it down in a more affordable way? Consolidating it? As a tax pro, take it upon yourself to learn their aspirations and goals to help them survive this time.

This is also a great opportunity to introduce advisory services and help them think beyond just surviving, but take the next step to revive and thrive. How do they see their business growing in the next year, or five years down the line? A nudge may help them shift their mindset to help them work on thinking toward the future. Especially after the last two years, remind them how important it is to stay agile and think ahead. Being a sounding board for your client can earn you trust, which then can help both your business and their business grow.

Revive

Some clients are looking for an opportunity to revive aspects of their personal or business ventures. Once you implement advisory services and have consistent check-ins, you can help your clients reframe the way they see their finances. This can include helping them reset their business strategies and how they operate, pinpoint their long-term goals, what they are reaching for to be able to retire, and more. By doing so, you are learning more about their aspirations and are able to help map out a plan to ensure they have a pathway to reach their goals.

Start by walking through customers’ grievances with their current plans and asking them questions. How did they land on their current goals and agenda? Do they want to be saving more money? Are they interested in creating an entirely new strategy or mending the one they already have? By getting to the bottom of some of these questions, you are able to piece together the aspects of their strategy they don’t like – that way you and your clients can revive – or change – what is most important to lead to success.

Thrive

If your clients are looking to plan beyond the here and now, start long-term goal setting with them. This includes walking them through the right investments to make depending on their specific situations. As their tax pro, you understand their financial situation and goals. Use this time to further shareyour knowledge on where you think they should invest based on the goals they have shared.

Start by asking a lot of questions to help understand where their head is when it comes to investing. Are you interested in investing more? Less? Do you have an industry you are interested in investing in or a specific company? Once those questions are answered and you see more of their aspirations, work together to make the best decisions for them and help your clients plan for their futures.

Every client comes to tax pros for different needs. Whether that is helping them survive until tomorrow, revive their goals and ventures, or thrive for the rest of their lives. With advisory services you’ll have a better look into your client’s goals and are able to tailor recommendations specifically for them.

As you help your client’s move through these phases, this can also help you think about how your firm and business are moving through these same phases. Take a step back to think about how advisory services help you not just survive, but take the next steps to revive and thrive.

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Barry Pennett is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intuit ProConnect Group.