How does True Advisory® Raise Personal Effectiveness?

Many of the accountants I meet feel ineffective, showing up as: 

• Reluctance to raise client prices  

• Not confronting unproductive staff  

• Failing to chase unpaid bills  

• Not billing for extras  

• Avoiding sales pitches  

• Not cancelling unused subscriptions  

• Not renegotiating bad deals 

So how to deal with that?  

I’m not talking about a personality transplant. It isn’t necessary to become a different person in order to deal with such problems.  

But it is essential in transitioning from a practice to a business, to learn about assertiveness. 

In its simplest form it means recognising the difference between aggression and passivity and pitching yourself between the two.  

How does one do that?  

Assertiveness means expressing your emotions honestly as leverage to get action from the other party. For example: 

“Nigel (client) I need to review my prices so that I can continue giving you the service levels that we originally agreed” 

“Eric (staff), your billings are bringing in less than I’m paying you – did you know that?” 

“Frank (client), I’m borrowing money at 10% to finance debtors at 0%. I need your help to eliminate the gap!” 

“Dave (client) I’d love to help you with that problem. Do you feel it’s worth paying for?” 

“Mr Smith (prospect). I believe you are interested in changing accountants. Is that true?” 

“Dear (provider). I haven’t used your product in over 12 months. Is there any reason I should continue subscribing?” 

“Dear (client / provider) I must admit to a failure on my part. I’ve agreed to a deal which has put me in a bad place. Can we renegotiate please?” 

So, in all the examples above, we have not been threatening but said honestly how we feel. And not put the other party in a corner.  

Which opens the door to discussing a solution.  

No worthwhile person will get angry or sarcastic with any of these approaches because all you have done is to invite dialogue on their terms.  

Assertiveness training ie giving you the ability to do this naturally is just one tool in the True Advisory® toolkit as we proceed along the Yellow Brick Road.  

And this easily learned adjustment affects the whole of your life because now you are getting things done, people are listening and you are feeling good about yourself.   

Next step: to explore all that and discuss what the new ‘Effective You’ would look like Call me anytime.