The CPA Playbook

In the early 1960s while an assistant coach at a California junior college, future NFL Hall of Famer John Madden, once scraped together enough money to attend a local football clinic which happened to feature a session led by legendary Green Bay Packers’ head coach Vince Lombardi.

Madden, who was in his mid-20s at the time, was arrogantly skeptical that he could learn any more about the game than he thought he already knew – even from the great Lombardi.

Hours later, after Lombardi had spent the entire session dissecting ONE PLAY – the famous Packers’ sweep – a humbled Madden walked out of the clinic now convinced he knew next to nothing about football.

But as Madden learned that afternoon, Lombardi’s coaching philosophy was predicated on perfection not complexity. The Packers’ playbook was truncated compared to other teams, containing relatively few plays unlike their competitors, but all executed to a point where every contingency and assignment was precisely calculated.

He unrelentingly demanded the team do a few things better than anyone else, as opposed to a whole roster of plays mediocre. And since he won five championships in nine years, it’s probably pointless to argue his methods.

That, in my humble opinion, is the blueprint that CPA firms should follow particularly when it comes to client service offerings.

Perhaps the greatest sin for a professional firm or any business for that matter is to overpromise and under-deliver.

Case in point, how many times have you gone to a CPA firm’s website and under the “about us” link learn that the firm offers as many as 20-25 different practice services?

Now digging a bit deeper, it’s been my experience that less than half those firms have a partner in charge of each practice line. To me that meant that some of those services are just lumped under a partner or principal’s purview.

Now no one with even a modicum of experience with the public accounting professional will rationally argue that’s it’s not critical to differentiate yourself from the competition with regard to practice lines. After all if Firm A offers tax and audit and Firm B offers tax, audit and financial planning for example, which one do you think will cast the wider net with regard to attracting new business?

But as I and many others would point out, it can also be a double-edged sword.  

If you have for example 10 client services, perform three of them well while the remaining are treated as almost an afterthought, then your firm is operating at a level somewhat less than perfection.

And if Lombardi were alive today he’d tell you that many of your soon-to-be-ex clients will see that as well.