Clients think about their businesses much more than accountants do about them. For the client, their business is a major commitment and the source of their livelihood, wealth and possibly their eventual financial security. As their accountant, we sometimes judge them by the way they treat their relationship with us, and in some cases, that has us selling them short.
The mindset of a small business owner is to get through the day, juggle cash flow, balance orders and deliveries to clients with inventory and shipments from vendors, continuously testing quality, managing employees and worrying about marketing. Because of the manifold pressures and actions, many times the accounting relationship is denigrated, downplayed or pushed aside, causing a lot of last minute rushes. And that is how we form our opinion about our client — and it is not a positive one. We then tend to sell the client short.
Selling the client short then puts us in a position where we try less to wow or impress the client. I don’t mean we work less or not as carefully, but we relax on the extras. In my opinion, that starts a deterioration of the relationship. I contend that a major reason for a client’s laxity is the accountant’s inability to impress upon the client the importance of the financial data and the benefits in being able to use that data to manage better with better controls. There is a value to effective use of the right financial data and it is our job to convey that value. When we fail, we do not do the best we could for the client.
An unresponsive client is caused by the accountant selling the client short. If you have such clients, change their mindset. If you can’t, then perhaps they are right in selling you short.
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Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at
