“Keeping in touch with your clients with messages they understand and want to read… this is the right communication path to follow. Anything else is largely a waste of time and money” says Martin Pollins.

Paul Dunn the boot-camp guru founder of Results Accountant's Systems (now RAN ONE) famously once said, "Most clients don't want an accountant. What they want is someone to help them make their business more profitable and make their own lives more enjoyable".

Paul and I talked about this a lot.  He was absolutely right. When my firm advertised on British TV in January 1985, we were the first UK accounting firm to use that way to communicate with businesses. We found that thousands of businesses didn't understand the technical information coming at them from their accountants. They kept saying to me that they didn't want piles of technical stuff they couldn't understand or use.

The trouble back in the mid 1980s (and still today) is that most accounting firms seem to have a death wish to let their clients know how much they know. The simple fact is that clients assume their accountant knows all the technical stuff otherwise why are they in practice?  Most clients want something that enables his/her business to grow and make more money and, at the same time, allows them to have a better quality of life rather than having to work for up to 18 hours a day.

So what do most accountants still do? Three or four times a year (sometimes more frequently) they still write to their clients and tell them about all the latest legal and tax changes that have taken place. Most clients I've spoken to say that they are having difficulty keeping up with the job that they do at work or in their business let alone to find more valuable time to read technical literature they receive from their accountant.

What Paul Dunn said over 20 years ago struck me at the time like a flash of lightning. What is the best, the absolute best, way to keep in touch with clients and help their businesses grow and make more money and, at the same time, allows the business owner to have a better life rather than working 18 hours a day?

The answer is simple: accountancy networks have jumped on the Paul Dunn bandwagon by suggesting that accountants become business advisors... business advisors who show business owners how to make their businesses really work.  To accompany this shift in service, a regular newsletter not dissimilar to Harvard Business Review was needed but tailored to the needs of the small/medium-sized business rather than multi-national organisations.

In my own firm we started Better Business Focus - a monthly client magazine which exactly hits the right buttons with clients. Today, we have contributing business experts from all over the world and firms all over the UK subscribe to it. The magazine is mightily appreciated by all who read it and inspires many business owners to go on to do things differently and more successfully in their businesses.

Better Business Focus has become the essential key for business owners and managers. It achieves that by focusing on the way in which successful businesses in the UK and elsewhere compete and manage their organisations. It focuses on how people are recruited, coached and developed; on how marketing and selling is undertaken in professional markets as well as in markets with intense competition; on how technology and the Internet is reshaping the face of domestic and home business; and on how people are being equipped with new skills and techniques. In short, it's a focus on a better way to do business.

Is that what your newsletters do?  If not, perhaps you need to change a few things and try some lateral thinking...

... Paul Sloane, a regular contributor to Better Business Focus, outlines a moral dilemma that was used as a test in a job interview and emphasises the importance of lateral thinking.  He suggests to you that you are driving along in your two-seater car on a wild, wet and very stormy night. You pass a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:
a)  An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
b)  An old friend who once saved your life.
c) The perfect man (or) woman you have longed to meet.

Knowing that there is room for only one passenger in your car, what would you do?

The right answer will surprise you. To find out what it is, go to www.bizezia.com. The next time you face a tough problem do some lateral thinking.  Try looking first at how you can use the resources in and around the issue.  That way you might escape from prison, put out a fire or land a top job!

By Martin Pollins

Martin Pollins MBA, FCA ATII, F IDM, former ICAEW Council Member, the Founder of The CharterGroup Partnership and Bizezia Limited

For further information about Better Business Focus, contact Iman Rouane at: Bizezia Limited
Tel: +44 (0)870 389 1420, E-mail: iman@bizezia.com

To set up a free trial of Better Business Focus visit www.bizezia.com