Overcoming the Big “O”

If there’s one thing I never seem to run out of as a consultant who advises CPA firm owners and partners for a living it’s objections.

Everything from compensation to relocation, it’s a given that at least once you will encounter what I have come to label the big “O.”

More often than not, most objections can be overcome with common sense and a bit of reasoning. While other times you feel like you’re pushing against a stone wall with a dust mop.

Case in point. We are currently working with a firm in the Northeast whose owner makes a frightening high salary – enough so that most potential successor firms would quickly review the summary sheet and say no thanks.

But we did however find one willing to work around it – provided the seller firm’s owner agreed to consolidate under one roof – a distance of about 25 miles. Now I realize that in the New York-New Jersey area, 25 miles isn’t exactly like driving in central Nebraska as it often can take over an hour depending on traffic.

He responded with a succinct and terse, “no.”

 So the ensuing conversation went something along these lines…

“Why not?”

“Because my staff will not travel that far to go to work.”

“But you indicated that if you merged, none were mandatory to be retained.”

“I’ll lose clients if they see the person they deal with is not there anymore.”

“How many times do your clients visit your offices personally and observe work being done?”

“Maybe once or twice a year.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that your staff has the relationships with your clients and not you.”

“No, that’s not true.”

“But that’s what it sure sounded like. And I would advise you not to mention that to any successor firms or else it will easily get misinterpreted.”

You see where I’m going with this?

I also mentioned that, well, with some 300 vendors give or take a few offering cloud applications it would be relatively easy to perform some or much of the work remotely several times a week if the commute eventually became unbearable.

Again, I weathered a wave of objections the nature of which I won’t bore you by chronicling here. Let’s just say the owner didn’t exactly moonlight as a beta tester for new software.

For now I have him at least listening to offers and I will take that as a moral victory of sorts. But if I’ve learned one thing in this job, it’s that objections are a CPA’s greatest natural resource.