The $750,000 Accountability Story

The accountability system that I helped Keith put into place resulted in $750,000 in absolutely new client business. Let’s take a look at how this happened:

Keith was in his mid-50s, and was a managing partner in a large CPA firm. He’d gotten to that level because he was very good at business development — specifically, bringing in brand new clients.

His partner group, on the other hand, were mainly in their 40s. They were all highly competent in their technical abilities, but not very good at bringing in new business. Up until then, they hadn’t needed to concern themselves with that — it was raining clients. And they also saw plenty of growth just from adding on new services to existing client accounts.

All of that changed with the economic landscape in 2008 when the firm began losing clients. And that’s when Keith hired me. Keith had the skills – they were natural to him. He just couldn’t figure out how to transfer those skills to the people around him and get his people to go to market (when they’ve never had to) and bring in new business.

“Alan’s unique style helped me shift from telling my people what to do (and sometimes how to do it) — to showing them how to do it — and that made all the difference.” - Keith

The first thing Keith had to understand to become a more accountable leader was that just because something came easily to him, doesn’t mean it came easily to others. “They’re not you,” I often reminded him in our early sessions. Instead, Keith needed to apply the components of my Accountability With Care™ System – recapping, meeting his people on a regular basis, asking open-ended questions, developing his people, etc.

Instead of riding the bike for them by micro-managing, managing all the new client meetings himself and exhausting his own network and database to make introductions, he began to use my three core skills of leveraging, collaborating and strategizing.

“With Alan’s Accountability [With Care] System I was finally able to draw respectful and caring boundaries with my people and let them know ‘I’m not going to make decisions for you. I’m going to coach you to make your own decisions.’ When that happened, everything turned around.”

Set up a complimentary, no obligation or commitment call with Alan today to find out how you can transfer your skill set to others in your organization.