Tax, accounting firms warned on organic growth focus

Planet Consulting founder and principal consultant Rob Pillans recently spoke about trends he’s seeing in the accounting profession.

One trend he highlighted is about the desire to secure more clients, which often overshadows everything else.

“The thing that I still hear lots of conversations about at accounting firms is, how do we find more clients?” he said.

“Ironically, I think often the answer is you could probably be doing a fair bit more with the clients you've got, but many firms still go ‘I want more clients, how do I find those?’”

Doing more for your existing clients comes back to having the right employees who embrace a quality-over-quantity mind frame when it comes to clients.

“For some firms their biggest issue maybe is they just can't find the people they want to get the work done,” he said.

“I still see accounting firms having lots of conversations about having difficulties in managing people.”

This comes as Superannuation Advisors Australia director Mike McHenry also said that he believes around 90 per cent of firms or more look at acquisitions.

“The firms in favour of acquisitions are in favour because they don't have a point of difference, they don't have a value proposition that appeals to the market to want to use them,” Mr McHenry said.

“Even if they did, they have no way of getting that message into the marketplace and they don't have a sales team that can go out and bang the drum to let the market know it actually exists.”

Hayes Knight Director Greg Hayes believes that firms should refocus on organic growth techniques before the M&A market inevitably dries up.

“The M&A piece is fine, but sooner or later that's going to stop, sooner or later that's going to come to an end or it's going to slow down dramatically, because there are only so many M&A transactions there to be done,” Mr Hayes said.

“If that's not the case, then ultimately we'll end up with one firm who controls all the accounting market in Australia, which is clearly nonsense.”