[hr]<\/p>\n
Submitted by:\u00a0<\/strong>Steve Salvia [hr]<\/p>\n Steve Salvia, Managing Director of Southern Financial Strategies (SFS) and 2010 AFA Adviser of the Year, likes to joke that he got so tired of trying to build relationships with accounting firms he decided to buy one.<\/p>\n \u201cMy experience with accountants prior to taking on the business was probably very similar to other financial planners,\u201d says Salvia. \u201cI had a very ad-hoc relationship with around five or six accountants. I spent a lot of time trying to nurture those relationships, but it\u2019s not in an accountant\u2019s psyche to ask those probing questions that are needed to give holistic financial advice. Generally, accountants are about numbers and data – there really isn\u2019t a lot of proactive advice.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very, very frustrating. In the end I gave up and started looking for another model.\u201d<\/p>\n In a case of almost perfect timing, one of the accountants with whom Steve held a relationship was looking to sell his business, and in 2008 Steve purchased AccountingFocus, which now forms one of the three pillars of his SFS group, which also includes a financial planning business and business coaching enterprise.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t without pain and suffering; it wasn\u2019t an easy process,\u201d says Salvia of the merger. \u201cI inherited fourteen staff, and unfortunately none of them are still with us. That was the difficult part; I could not get them to align with our service model.<\/p>\n \u201cI worked very hard over a six month period to get them aligned, but after about five months I could see that it just wasn\u2019t going to work. At the end of the day, my experience with accountants has been that they are reactive history takers, rather than proactive history makers. And that was the problem I\u2019d had with accountants in the first place. So now, even though I\u2019d bought the business, I still couldn\u2019t get them to change their thought pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n Salvia elected to hand-pick his own accounting team \u2013 one that had the same understanding, ethos and approach to proactive advice. By doing so, he says he now owns the entire client process.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019ve done is turn my accounting firm into a mini-financial planning business that does accounting. I believe that financial planners\u2019 businesses are generally better. Their systems and processes are better.<\/p>\n Salvia believes one of the reasons for this is the questioning techniques used by advisers:<\/p>\n \u201cI get the clients to take a few steps back, and talk about themselves, their business, their families, their hopes and dreams. We then get the clients to work through what I call a Business Health Diagnostic. Unfortunately with a lot of accountants, when a client walks in they say: \u2018Give me your payslips, give me your tax returns and your receipts etc\u2019, whereas we actually work through a process and get the client to identify some areas to be addressed. Then we take them through the Magic Wand List \u2013 that is, if you had a magic wand what would you like to achieve?<\/p>\n \u201cClients say: \u2018Wow, do you do all this? My old accountant has never spoken to me about this before.\u2019 And they thank us for talking to them about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Another interesting by-product of the acquisition is the fact that Steve now receives more leads from his existing accounting referral partners than ever before.<\/p>\n \u201cI kept my relationships with those individuals, and now that I\u2019ve bought the accounting firm, I\u2019m getting more referrals from those other accountants, even though I\u2019m now a competitor. They now understand the financial planning process more and they see the value in our business and what we do.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve also made it very clear that their clients aren\u2019t at risk. When I talk to my clients I look for and identify opportunities for increased tax and accounting work. So there\u2019s no threat to them to send a client to us. In fact it\u2019s a benefit because I find more work for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the accounting relationship is external or in-house, Steve believes it takes three things for it to be successful: \u201cThey need to know me, they need to like me and they need to trust me. A strategic alliance partner will not do business with you unless all those three things are there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This practice management case study looks at one practice’s approach to developing successful accountant-adviser referral relationships, the ‘Ownership’ model. This approach involves buying an accounting practice and merging the two businesses. [hr] At a Glance Submitted by:\u00a0Steve Salvia Business:\u00a0Managing Director of Southern Financial Strategies (SFS) Referral approach:\u00a0Ownership model [hr] In detail Steve Salvia, Managing Director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4477,4261,4486,4666],"tags":[4681,4564,4558,4484,5764,5765,5768,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-24555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-marketing","7":"category-marketing-sales","8":"category-referrals","9":"category-sales","10":"tag-accountant","11":"tag-business-model","12":"tag-client-relationships","13":"tag-generating-leads","14":"tag-marketing","15":"tag-referrals","16":"tag-sales","17":"tag-value-proposition-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riskinfo.com.au\/case-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBusiness:\u00a0<\/strong>Managing Director of Southern Financial Strategies (SFS)
\nReferral approach:\u00a0<\/strong>Ownership model<\/p>\nIn detail<\/h3>\n