1. Conduct Your Year-end Review

A year-end review is one of the tasks that many firms seem to skip because it’s time- and resource-intensive. However, you can learn a lot from these reviews, which will include:

• Firm performance: What was your firm’s performance? How did it perform this year versus last year? Did you reach your KPIs?
• Client feedback: What are clients saying about your firm? Do clients believe that your services provide value? Is there a common complaint that you can resolve to improve your firm?
• Efficiency: Did your firm utilize its resources adequately? Are there areas where you can be more efficient?

Your year-end review will allow you to better understand how your processes and procedures are working for you. Often, you’ll notice areas of your business that can be improved upon that will allow you to take on more clients, refine what you’re doing already and generate more revenue.

Once you have your review done, you can move on to creating an action plan.

2. Create an Action Plan for Adding Advisory Services

Your action plan will outline how you plan to add advisory services to your firm. Before you can add services, determine what your clients want and need most by:

• Finding areas where you can help them further. For example, if you offer tax planning, your client will likely need financial planning, too.
• Assessing where you can become a one-stop shop. What area of service can you provide a complete package?

You can also sit down with others in your firm to discuss gaps in your services that you can fill with added services.

Now, how will you add these services? You can:

• Hire professionals to offer these services in-house
• Train existing team members on how to offer these services – more on this later
• Partner with an outside provider that offers advisory services

You have the basics down, and now it’s time to review your tech stack and enhance your service.

3. Technology and Service Enhancement

Now that you have a plan for your new services, shift your focus to your firm’s technical capabilities. Evaluate your current software and tools, and identify areas where you can upgrade or adopt new platforms that will support your new offerings.

4. Staff Training and Skill Enhancement

Implementing the right technology is essential, but it’s equally important to make sure that your team is up to the task of handling these new services.

Are they ready for you to introduce or expand your services? Will they need additional training?

Sit down and create a plan to ensure that your team members are trained on these services and prepared for you to expand your offerings.

5. Set Clear Goals

Now that you have a plan for training your team and incorporating new services, it’s time to establish clear goals for the upcoming year, such as:

• Targeting a percentage of current clients to introduce your new services to (like financial planning)
• Setting milestones for the growth of your new services
• Whatever other individual goals you may have for your advisory services

Setting goals will help you ensure that you’re on the right track to making your services a success and will give you something to measure your progress up against.

6. Establish a Feedback Loop

Once you start rolling out your new services, take the time to implement a feedback loop to collect data from clients and team members. Keeping an open line of communication between all parties will help ensure that your services are a success.

Make sure that all parties know how to share their feedback and check in regularly to review their thoughts and concerns. Adjust your processes based on their feedback to continually improve your services for all parties.

Final Thoughts

Adding new advisory services to your offerings will help you better serve your clients and boost revenue for your firm. First, start by reviewing where your firm is at right now. Then, plan out which advisory services to offer your clients. Determine which technology and training you’ll need to implement, set goals for the upcoming year and put a feedback framework in place to ensure that your new services are a success.

Continually improving your services based on feedback will help ensure that clients and your team are on the same page and satisfied.

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John Graziano, CPA, PFS, CFP® is president of FFP Wealth Management, a financial planning and management firm. He also actively mentors more than 80 accounting firms across the country. To get in touch with John or his team, please do so here.