I recently joined Randy Crabtree on Episode 198 of The Unique CPA, I explored how accounting firms can transition from transactional to advisory services. Our discussion focused on the importance of understanding client needs and conducting internal analysis to develop a strong go-to-market strategy. Firms should identify their niche, create relevant advisory services, and leverage existing expertise to drive growth. Emphasising the value of deep expertise and strategic client engagement, I also provided practical guidance on expanding advisory offerings and unlocking new revenue opportunities.
Listen to the podcast:
Below is the full transcript of our discussion.
Today, our guest is Michael Haynes. Michael is a B2B go-to-market, marketing, sales, all-kinds-of-generating-business guru, and I know I did a terrible job of explaining that. That’s why I’m going to ask him to explain it when I introduce him, which I am doing at this moment. But Michael, before I mess up anymore, welcome to The Unique CPA.
Thank you, Randy. It’s great to be on the show. So hello, everyone. My name is Michael Haynes. I am a B2B, go-to-market specialist. I’m a go-to-market specialist, not a marketing specialist.
Haha! Did I say marketing?
Yeah, I’m go-to-market specialist – there’s a marketing component, but it is not fully what go-to-market is. So I’m a go-to-market specialist, and my focus/passion is working with the leaders, the CEOs, and their teams of small and medium B2B accounting technology and law firms, working on their full end-to-end go-to-market strategy so that they can ultimately acquire, retain, and grow the business clients that they seek so that the firms can achieve the growth and impact that they want to have.
Nice. And then, so, not marketing. I didn’t even know I said marketing. That’s good.
Yeah, you put it in there, and it’s part of it. It’s all good. All good.
No, no, I entertain myself, so I’m making myself laugh right now. So, let’s concentrate on what we’re doing here today. This is my first recording in a while. I might be off a little bit. We will see, but Michael will actually bring it all back together no matter how I mess it up today.
So you and I were talking before we started recording about the accounting industry in general and what you’re doing to help. One of the biggest aspects we hear going on in the accounting profession is that keyword, “advisory,” how everybody wants to get to advisory. I don’t think everybody has gotten to advisory at this point, and I don’t think everybody even understands how to get there, but the key thing is it’s important to us as accountants for many reasons. But one of the key reasons is, our clients want it. I mean, this is something they’re asking for, is that advisory work. So when you go in and do your go-to-market services, how are you helping them get to that point?
So, yeah, you’re absolutely right, Randy. I work with clients in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and there is a big trend towards accounting firms trying to move from transactional to be more advisory. I work with B2B accounting firms, and as part of the process of developing that end-to-end go-to-market strategy—which I will unpack for what exactly that is—I talk to business owners, because part of the process is really understanding the clients and process their requirements and needs, these business owners and leaders are growing their businesses. And so they are looking for that strategic guidance to make decisions as to how to go about progressing and growing their firm. They’re looking to their accountants to provide much more than just the level of transactional financial activities that accountants are known for, but helping them to serve as that trusted advisor partner to guide them as they’re looking to build and take their firm internationally, into new markets, M&As, what have you. They’re looking for that advice, and they see the accountant as a trusted source to be able to do so.
Got it. So, like, let’s assume I’m a traditionalist, a generalist firm right now, and I’m helping a lot of different clients, and, you know, I may have a variety of clients from, you know, whatever, I’ve got a hair salon, and I deal with law firms, and I deal with Burger King, and I deal with a construction company. Are you able to help a firm like that get to advisory or do they have to start to get more into a niche area to expand in advisory, or can you do advisory at any level?
Okay. Great question, Randy. To answer that question, I’m going to kind of walk through in my mind, one of my clients here in Sydney that I’m actually working with, LMS Advisory, a 20-person firm. They’re a B2B firm, so they deal with business clients—real estate, construction, FinTech, PropTech—and the two founders are looking to really build and grow their business – so they want to take the business to the next level.
Got it.
So we’ll get into, well, maybe this is a good segue to kind of talk a little bit first of all, what exactly is go-to-market?
That’s a good call. Yep, let’s do that.
When I say I’m a go-to-market business growth, go-to-market specialist, the go-to-market strategy is the end-to-end strategy for your accounting firm. So this is the end-to-end strategy where we’re wanting to identify what are the right market opportunities. What industries should my client here be going after? What industries, what geographic markets, what types of organisations should they be pursuing, making sure they have an understanding of those prospective clients. With my client, LMS Advisory, a lot of their focus is in real estate and construction. So we need to understand what are the needs and requirements of those real estate clients, those construction clients.
Looking at your offering. What is your menu of solutions that you are providing to your accounting clients? This is where you want to be looking at how you can start interjecting, designing, and implementing advisory services, which can take a number of different forms that will meet your client’s requirements. Then I also work with clients on client acquisition, as well as retention and expansion. So for my LMS client, how are we going to bring in those PropTech and FinTech clients, but also how are we going to get them to grow? So they’re going from, let’s say, just spending $10,000 a year, how can we get them spending $20,000-$30,000, ideally recurring revenue? So your go-to-market strategy is the end-to-end.
Marketing and sales are a component of it, but it’s cross-functional. To execute on your go-to-market strategy, yes, you’ll need marketing, you’ll need sales, you’ll need your client delivery, your service and support. You will likely need learning and development, and many of your key components and key functional areas will be important and necessary in building this overarching business strategy roadmap so that you can build and grow your firm, and the development of your advisory services should be a key component of your go-to-market strategy. So that’s what your overarching go-to-market strategy is. It’s developing the appropriate go-to-market strategy for your firm that will help your firm transition into advisory.
So now, one of the first steps in order to be able to do so, we really have to start doing some internal analysis, what I call listening. We need to be listening on a few levels. So first we need to do what I call listening to you as a firm leader—what are your goals, what are your objectives and priorities? What are the strengths within your accounting firm? Where are you getting the wins? Because often I come in with many, I go into many firms, including this client that I’m referring to, and they’re working in all different sectors. “Oh, Michael, we deal with lawyers, we deal with FinTech, we deal with startups, we deal with scale”, they’re dealing with a whole raft of things. So we look at, where are you getting the wins? Let’s actually look at your book of business and do some analysis to see where are the clients that you’re really successful with? The clients that really love you, that are giving references and referrals, the clients that you’re gaining, are profitable and bring in strong revenue. So the clients that are giving you recurring revenue. We try to really zone in on what kinds of clients, what industries, what markets – where you seem to be winning. We want to gain an understanding of that.
Yeah, let me jump in on that real quick because I love that because the areas where you’re getting the wins, the areas where you feel like you’re having the impact, the clients you’re enjoying working with, that right there, you’re starting to identify your passion, the niche industry you like working with. And I love narrowing it down to where you can start working with the clients you love working on. And when you love working on those types of clients, that passion shows through, your knowledge shows through, what you’re going to advise them shows through so much better. So I love that you start to identify that right away, because that’s an area where firms don’t often do that because our mindset is like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to help everybody.” Well, no, you got to figure out who to help.
Thank you, Randy. A quick point I’m going to say: It’s important to do, it’s vital to not just cut. I follow a lot of research around the world in terms of professional services and there’ve been a number of studies done. Such as The Hinge Research Institute in D.C., has done a number of studies about the needs of professional service clients. The number one thing they’re looking for is expertise and depth of expertise, okay? So this is not just a feel good thing. There have been a number of studies which document and say the bar has been raised by the buyers of professional services because they’re looking for strategic advice. They want clarity, they want confidence. So you must have depth of expertise.
When you niche down and you start to become the expert at what you love, what you do, you instil that confidence. So this is not just a nice to have, this is in response now to the latest trend of buyer requirements, specifically within our sector of B2B within professional services. So we build that understanding. What I call listening to you. We really get an understanding of the strength within your organisation. What are the firm leaders looking to do? Where are you having those wins?
So now that we’ve worked out that there’s a couple of sectors that you’re really quite strong in – construction and real estate, for example – then we now want to start really understanding, not just those companies, we need to understand the decision makers, the buyers of those accounting and advisory services. We really need to get an in-depth understanding of those individuals. And so that’s where I, with all my clients, I will interview and speak with a sub-component of some of their current clients that they have. Ideally, if I can also get maybe one or two clients that have left, and maybe potentially one or two prospects, because you want to get a full market view ideally.
And so, Randy, these discussions, often they can be in person or via Zoom, is really to understand and to really unpack what are these buyers priorities, their key objectives, their key challenges, but they also need to understand how do they buy? How do they make their selection of their advisory services, okay? So who makes a decision? What are their priorities? And how do they buy? Fundamentally, those are the three core questions that you want to gain a very detailed understanding of with respect to your current clients. And then if we can interview some prospects as well, so we can understand what will the firm need to be doing that they may not be doing now in order to attract the clients that they see.
So how do they, if there’s services they aren’t providing now, then you help identify that. You just said it, but then, I mean, is this potentially bringing in somebody with expertise? Is this finding an outsource partner? Is it all of the above? What’s that step?
Okay, so, that step of having that discussion, and I want to come back to having those discussions, because that is the crux, that is the core that is going to give you the gold and that’s going to give you the clear roadmap. So it’s very important that you have those discussions undertaken. Generally, I found when we’re talking small and medium organisations, doing between 12 to 15 interviews that are documented and if they’re structured well, you will get some clear insights as to what are the key priorities of those decision makers, what are they looking to do, what is their decision making process that will help you navigate in terms of what you need to be doing, what you need to be offering, and what is the nature of the advisory office. Because there’s different kinds of things that they can be looking for. So it’s fundamentally about doing really structured interviews, you can do them via Zoom, you can do them in person, but you must document and record those insights. That is critical. And that needs to be shared across the organisation, because fundamentally to deliver to those advisory services that they’re seeking, it’s going to be a number of people within the firm that are going to be involved. So it’s very important.
Now, in terms of what tends to come out of those discussions, I’ve been noticing a few things. And needs will always vary by firm, but there’s some common elements when we’re talking advisory services, some common elements. So one, often there’s going to be a need for them, often they’re going to want some help with some of that further strategic planning. Because they often, these clients, when you’re dealing with growth-oriented accounting clients, where they’re looking to build and grow their firm, they have aspirations around market expansion, developing new offerings, so they often need help from a business planning standpoint. So they’re seeking support with that strategic planning and some of the financial elements as well. As part of their needs because your clients, they think across the needs of their business, they don’t think in silos by function, so they’re often recognising, “Okay, I’m going to expand into new markets. I have requirements around HR, I have requirements around technology.” They see their accountant as a trusted advisor. They don’t necessarily need you to be able to provide those services, but you being the conduit to direct them as to who can help them with I.T., with H.R., with some of the elements is something that is highly valued and something that they would need to see.
And so you need to, as part of your go-to-market, you need to start creating and having an ecosystem and network of the other kinds of providers that your firms are seeking. And where you can bring them together, is massive value, Randy. Clients will pay massive for access and connection. They highly value that and they will pay for that. So even if you don’t do some of these additional services, if you can direct them to those that can provide the kinds of strategic advice, that expertise that they need, that’s quite important.
Yeah, being the quarterback, being their quarterback, their go to: “Hey, I need help. You’re going to connect me. You’re going to be there for me. You’re going to be my advisor in an area where you’re not even potentially advising, but you’re bringing in the right people.” I like that, the quarterback to go to.
Yeah. And the reason why, Randy—this is so important—is because there’s been a number of studies done, again, I’m always happy to share the research, in our world of B2B. Before the question used to be, how do I solve? I want to expand into a FinTech product, how do I do so? Now, the question for those seeking advisory services is now who can help me do the merger and acquisition? Who can help me crack into the U.S. market? And so now the criteria for clients that are seeking advisory services, they are looking for those that can help ask the question, “How?” So therefore, part of your offering, part of your go-to-market, is to be the facilitator, the connector, that can lead them to those service providers, those experts, that can give them, provide them the requirements of services that they are seeking. So that is very important.
And so ultimately, being that conduit is very important. And then in many cases, like I said, that strategic and financial planning is very upfront and very important. So if you’re able, if you’ve got the skill set internally to be able to provide the things such as workshops, those kinds of things to help them start developing those plans, whether you do it yourself and or with a joint venture, that’s highly valuable. So that’s one category of offering. Like I said, another key component is how do you facilitate connection. If I’m talking in broad terms, it is another component that you need to be able to provide. So you might have the occasional kind of roundtable events, lunch and learns, where you’re bringing prospects and experts together. Executive briefings, roundtable, where you’re providing value and some of these experts are providing value showcasing. This is so your clients can be making those connections. This is another thing that they can do.
The third element often can be around implementation support. So having access, not just to the expertise, but someone to handhold them after working through their problems and their issues and their key objectives. That is often a third element of around advisory that you may want to provide. And so this is where things like your kind mastermind and your business groups where people can check in. There’s different ways you can structure that, where people can have the quarterly check-ins and be able to ask questions to their accountant or to subject matter experts to get help.
So those, I would say, at a very broad level are some of the kinds of advisory offerings. You can also get into other things, like with some of my larger clients, some of the larger SMBs, they get into executive engagement—so, you know, to really entice and cultivate the CEOs of their clients and connecting them with other CEOs, we start doing things like roundtables and masterminds and intensives, to really engage and help the CEO to further develop strategies and getting clarity, confidence and insight. So that’s really kind of at a very broad level, the kinds of advisories that you can do. You can get quite fun and creative with them, but it all starts, Randy, with having that depth of understanding around the industries, markets, and buyers, both you currently serve and those that you seek to serve. You must have that depth of understanding, it needs to be documented, it needs to be shared across the organisation. And from those insights, you will start to get a clear roadmap based on mirroring up now: “Okay. We know what our strengths are. We know what our capabilities are, where we’re getting wins. We’re seeing what it is that our clients are seeking.” Then you can start to map out this go-to-market- where are we going to start to niche down and focus in on? And what do we need to be doing in terms of, what kinds of offerings that we want to do /are capable of doing. And then the process can start from there.
Yep. And I think something we haven’t even touched on, but the importance of this, or, we did touch on at the beginning, clients want it. Clients are seeking this. But there’s also a value to this. I mean, there’s a higher value to this advisory service that you’re offering than to data entry that you’re already doing right now. But with all the technologies out there now and AI getting involved, it’s still, you’re going to be able to automate, I believe, so much of the stuff that you’re currently doing and probably should be automated and maybe haven’t at this point, that it’s going to free you up and now be able to charge a higher value, a higher amount for your time—although I don’t like charging for time—but charge you for the value of what you’re offering. And so, just from a growth standpoint of the firm itself, from a revenue standpoint, you know, with the same amount of people, you should, I assume, be generating a higher revenue stream each year with hopefully even working less.
Absolutely. Because once you have that understanding of what your clients and your prospects are seeking, then we can start creating your holistic solution, your bundles. And you can start putting some very creative, very sexy things in those bundles. Where you can start, based on what your clients want, you can start throwing in things like it might be some added training reporting, you might have a quarterly CEO intensive where you’re bringing clients prospects, your folks together, and you’re bringing them together to give them insights around strategy and planning and a new trend and giving them the opportunities to connect with each other. Your folks that are listening- access and connection, senior leaders will pay massive value for that. And it may seem very easy to you because, “Well, I know all this stuff.” That’s right. But your prospects don’t.
One of my clients at a professional services firm here in Sydney, a Management School, we created a whole new revenue stream essentially from them running fundamentally a mastermind program, and they put together some monthly reports as the basis for discussion in those, and it became a whole massive revenue stream. Wasn’t a lot of work to them, and the CEO, Dan, was like, “but Michael, this is so easy.” Well, I said, “Yes, but that’s exactly what we want. We know what is of value to your clients, and we want to leverage your expertise, and if it’s easy, then pack it up.” But access, connection, insights, senior leaders will pay massive amount just for the access alone because it helps them give that clarity and confidence because leaders now in our world again, the question has changed from how to who. Who can help me do X and Y. And when you can connect me to people that are going to give me the clarity and confidence to do so, they will pay massive money.
Randy, this is why Mastermind, you hear about the Mastermind with Lewis Howes and so forth. People go for two days and they pay $50,000, they go once a year. It’s because of access and connection, getting access to the right people who can give me the clarity, the confidence, I can ask the questions, I can come up with new ideas. That is why at some of the highest levels, folks are running these masterminds, and it’s a weekend. You can say now, once a quarter, we’re going to bring folks together, we’re going to meet for an hour and a half, they can ask them questions. You pull out some of your reports. Give them some updates on trends. Let them introduce—this doesn’t have to take a lot of work. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, but you just leverage what you’re good at your expertise. That can be a whole new revenue stream, it can be incorporated as one of the things you do as part of your bundle. Then you can throw in the likes of a workshop. There’s a whole raft of things that you can do to make the firm scalable, it’s highly profitable. And in many cases, sometimes it seems like, well, this is so easy, but it’s about expertise, which is what our buyers are still seeking. And when you are a niche, that expertise really comes out that you really know your stuff and clients prospects lean in, they feel confident for that and they’re prepared to pay more for it.
Yep. And that’s the mindset that I hear too often in their profession. It’s like, well, it’s, I know this already. So why am I going to charge for that? Well, yeah, because you know it, you said it, because you know, when your client does it, they want it. And so stop giving it away.
They highly value it, they’re prepared to pay for it, Randy, and you’re prepared to pay for it at a premium because premium price means you get what you pay for. So you’re going to charge me $15,000 to be a part of this accounting ecosystem mastermind? Well, yes, I will because I’m getting insights from it, I get to meet Randy, I’m meeting colleagues. This is all going to help me on my business growth plan. And again, getting that clarity, that confidence, that’s what they highly value, and they will pay a premium for it. And there’s lots of research that is documented to demonstrate this.
End of the day, firms seeking to get into advisory, they need to have your holistic go-to-market strategy. And so, in order to do so, start with where you’re at now, do an analysis of where you’re getting your wins, in terms of your clients, the industry, the markets you serve, what you’re looking to do. You have discussions with some of those key clients that are showing you the love, paying the bills, being profitable-gaining an understanding of who exactly are those decision makers, what are their priorities, and what are their requirements, and how do they buy? Because how do they buy, where are they going, what are they looking at, who are they speaking to, that will define your go-to-market in terms of where you need to be visible with whom you need to be engaging, and from those discussions as well, you’ll get a clear road map of what are the opportunities in terms of the kinds of advisory services that you may want to develop.
And you may start and do it phase by phase. You might start phase one. Let’s just start with doing a workshop or let’s just start bringing people together and doing it and having a lunch and learn there. We’ll just have a briefing and then you can evolve and go from there. But it starts with all about doing that upfront understanding of your business, of your clients, their requirements, how do they buy, sharing that information and then you can start to workshop what are the requirements in terms of what to deliver and where and how you need to be visible, and who across the organisation needs to be engaged. That in a nutshell is the very roadmap—I could go into more detail as to the framework to execute, the whole go-to-market framework, but that’s in a nutshell how you build a go-to-market strategy. It’s going to enable you to unlock those opportunities to drive growth, drive scale, and to become the trusted advisor.
Perfect. I think that was a great summary of that whole discussion that you did an awesome job with explaining this for us. So before we completely wrap up, I have final two questions I would like to ask you. One will be a contact information, that’ll be the last question. But the second to last question that every guest gets, you know, we just talked about all what you’re doing and you could tell the passion of that you have for this shows through, but I want to know your outside of work passions. When you’re not helping firms with their go-to-market strategy, what do you enjoy doing that’s not work related?
Great questions. And I probably could sum those up. Travel is a big thing for me. I haven’t done a lot of travel to new destinations—I’m very big on new destinations, new experiences. I haven’t done a lot of that, but that will be my goal to really kickstart that. I’m only at 40 countries that I’ve been to, which sounds like a lot.
That’s a lot!
No, not compared to my other friends, Fletch, Kevin, Bill, who are at 112, 95, 76.
Oh, wow!
So they’re kind of my, who I look to. And I feel like I’m just so off, I feel like I haven’t done anything because every time we talk, I feel like I haven’t gone anywhere. So travel is one of my passions.
I’m a massive track and field fan. I watch lots of podcasts and video, sprints, hurdles, particularly, I am a fan of different athletes all over the world. A number of American athletes I’m a big fan of, Grant Holloway, Masai Russell, Abby Steiner.
And I guess third is probably cooking. Entertaining is what I like to do for fun. But yeah, those are kind of my three passions. Travel and athletics. Athletics is probably number one by far because every day I’m on the international website, I’m on YouTube. I probably watch three or four podcasts, athletic podcasts on a regular basis, I went to New York for the first All Women’s Athletics Meet, Athlos, this year. Yeah, so those are my go-tos when I’m not thinking about go-to-market strategies and all of that, which I quite love and enjoy doing as well, too.
Well, that’s cool. I’m glad that you have those, because there’s not been a guest yet that didn’t have a passion, an outside-of-work passion. So I’m batting a thousand in whatever 200 episodes we’ve had so far, which is good. Because statistics say that 92 percent of people have an outside-of-work passion or hobby. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s 100%. They just don’t know how to define it.
Yeah, you’ve got to. I mean, as much as I love my work, you’ve got to have an outlet or something, even if it’s just sitting in front of the TV and watching your favourite kind of genre.
Exactly.
You’ve got to have something you enjoy besides doing work.
Yes. Alright. And then last question, if obviously I’m assuming everybody’s going to want to reach out to you, but if anybody wants to find out more, what’s the best place for them to look or get ahold of you?
Okay, so there’s two places, Randy. One, you can go to LinkedIn. I put lots of content out there, and I’m always keen to connect with folks. Or you can go to my website, ListenInnovateGrow.com. And there is a whole repository of videos, articles, checklists. Sign up for my newsletter for upcoming events. And I’m doing lots of things to advise, educate, and inspire those of us working in accounting, tech, and legal firms. That’s me.
Well, that’s great. Well, Michael, I appreciate it. You educated me, which I assume means you’ve educated others listening today. So thank you very much for being here.
Thank you for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
