Posts by marvin

Who doesn’t love a bit of Shakespeare? One of my favourite lines is from Hamlet: Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, Whatever your business, if you advance credit to customers you are a “lender” of sorts.  Clients are the equivalent of “friends” – often hard to…

Follow these steps and you can be one of the 20 per cent of accounting firms that successfully implement business advisory services in a reasonable time frame. Many accounting firms would like to offer business advisory services, and some make a tentative start in the right direction but in my experience only around 20 per…

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your clients went “wow” and went off and told their friends about the information or advice they have received from their adviser? In the accounting profession it is all too easy to repeat the same service year in, year out producing the same reports that are more often than not…

I have often heard from accountants that they are not particularly good sales people or that they do not enjoy selling. To be frank, when it comes to compliance selling is not really required. The service is a need based one that most clients cannot do themselves. In addition, the ATO does a great job…

Before your clients list their house on the market they generally go through it room by room and fix it up. They may paint, replace a stained carpet, clean up the garden etc. They make their house look loved and cared for and ensure that it is at its best when prospective buyers walk through…

Few are happy about the changes that are coming on 1 July next year. It certainly adds to the compliance burden and has the danger of making advice unaffordable or unprofitable. But what the changes are doing is making all firms consider their position with financial planning. My hope is that firms will take a…

In the 1980s some psychologist in the US conducted an experiment with immigrants from the old Soviet block. They took them to a supermarket and got them to buy basic items like bread, milk, toilet rolls. What do you think happened? They froze. They were incapable of making the purchase. Why? It was the confusion…

It’s the promise of the NBN. Beautiful high fidelity communications across the country. The challenge of course is whether we are young enough to eventually see it happen. Perhaps it’s a promise to those that are just a twinkle in mum & dad’s eye! Of course the promise for Australia has immense implications. Consider conferences.…

With a growing number of business advisory software tools on and entering the accounting market it is often difficult to know what to choose. At Smithink we recommend following our EnablerTM Seven Step to Success process using the best software at the critical steps. It is not as easy as having one tool for each step.…

What do your clients really think about the services that you are providing? How would they rate your services out of 10? Are you supplying all of the information that could be supplied to assist your SME clients build value in their businesses? Running a small/medium enterprise is a very lonely activity and, in most…