A week of curiosities and a valuable reminder

It has been a strange week. On Monday I went to see a client to collect his tax papers, only to find that they were in a locked cabinet to which only his wife had the key, and she was out. It was a short meeting as a result, and I did wonder why my client had not telephoned to save me the journey.

Two less eventful days ensued, and I went to my monthly local meeting of tax practitioners on Thursday. “Tell me, everyone” I said, “what do you guys do in the way of marketing?” Six faces looked back at me blankly. “Marketing? We don’t do marketing. We don’t need to because we always have enough to do.”

I was amazed, and actually even felt a little foolish for a moment. After all, I spend quite a lot of time marketing. I have one local targeted ad, and apart from that I work on my website, my blogs, the social networking sites, Twitter and face-to-face networking. All this results in work coming in, which compensates for the occasional client of mine who finds it necessary to dispense with my services. There is always some attrition. When people leave me it never seems to be because they have gone off my firm or its service. People move and like someone local to look after their tax affairs, or they sell up everything and move abroad.

How do my colleagues not have net losses of clients? It can only be because they are longer established than me (a mere seven years) and get plenty of referrals without looking for work, or they are good at client stickiness and find it easy to keep their revenue from each increasing year on year. I admire that, and am even envious though I worry about their complacency. Apparently any sort of networking is alien to their natures. I enjoy it and it gets me out, gives me a chance to feel useful in connecting people, gets me work and avoids the loneliness of some small business owners.

I went back to the office to puzzle over an email from a client’s wife. “I haven’t time to send you my husband’s papers so that you can do his tax return as we are going on holiday for the whole of August and we need his refund by September”. Now, hang on, she lives a long way from my office and I cannot easily take the ferry to do my customary house visit, but we have broadband and live in an electronic age; hence the email. Said lady then goes on to ask me how to fill in the Return by requesting a technical calculation for last year. I answered her question of course, and wish her the best of British with the Foreign and Non-resident pages which are hardly logical even to us professionals (we always seem to have to do work-arounds to get them to make sense). I have not had a response to my somewhat injured one, but am not holding my breath. Needless to say I advised her that if she sent me the information she could have emailed copies of the Return and accounts for approval easily by the end of July. It would be inconvenient but I will always try to be flexible to meet my clients’ needs. I am not holding my breath, though.

Late on Thursday, I saw another new client for the first time. It turned out his previous adviser had died, and no one seemed to be running the practice now. I think the accountant was unqualified but nevertheless may have been very good at what he did. The client had obviously found his service good. In these tragic circumstances it is a reminder that we should always allow for someone to take over the reins of our business if we become sick or die suddenly as this guy did as a result of an accident. We owe it to our clients and also to our families as it is better to have a saleable business as a going concern than a business which is as dead as the owner.

If not lessons, I feel I have had some useful reminders. I must check that my nominated successor is still happy to run my practice in the event of my incapacity as I have directed. I will call her to check.

Has common courtesy had its day?

I try not to make this a whingeing blog. For that reason, if I complain about our dear friends at HM Revenue & Customs, it is the system, bureaucracy and stilted thinking that annoys me, not the staff who have to carry out the wishes of their masters. I cannot recall in recent years ever having had a difficult conversation with a Revenue employee, other than in the rare context that the person was not prepared to strike the best deal I had hoped for concerning a client under enquiry. Certainly there have never been angry exchanges.

Having put the record straight about the dear Revenue, I have to say that most of the time I have good relations with all my clients, my subcontractors and my suppliers (well, except the bank which is still vicious with its charges; however, since we never speak, I am not sure it constitutes a relationship). With regard to clients, if I feel uncomfortable with our communications I try to get to the bottom of it, and if we are still not getting on, I ask them to use someone else. That has been a very rare situation in the seven year life of my business, partly because one develops a feeling about a prospect before signing him or her up, and sometimes it is better just to suggest they go elsewhere.

Well, this past month two incidents have got me going. The first involves a quite major (for me) client whom I gained through a referral. The company needed some remedial tax work in order to claim some extra tax back from HMRC. I re-did two pretty complex Corporation Tax Returns which had originally been submitted by a Big Four firm. I have found out that after the FD needed help with an accounting matter (which I did know about) and asked a local firm to look at it, they have now done all the tax work for this year for my client without even asking for professional clearance. I am pretty upset, and whilst I do not know whether the firm in question just did not understand that my firm was the registered agent in succession to the Big Four firm, whether they just went for it, or the client is to blame, one way or another between them they have contrived to keep me out of the loop and de facto I have lost the job. I had tried to keep up by repeatedly asking the client about progress towards providing the information I needed, but I have been the furthest from anyone's mind. I should have been told that my services were being summarily dispensed with. The now ex-client is to his credit very apologetic and evidently embarrassed, and is a nice guy, but I am still left high and dry.

A month or so back, I had a response to my one and only paper ad which appears monthly, and went to see the prospect, who told me that he felt remote from his current adviser who never spoke to him. We had a good meeting, he gave me copies of his last Tax Return and accounts to take away, and signed an authority for me to act on his behalf in dealing with HMRC. I asked him to let his current accountant / adviser know of his decision before I wrote to that firm for professional clearance. I heard nothing more for a number of weeks, but on telephoning today I am told that not only was he staying with the current firm, but they had already done his latest accounts and Tax Return. He was going to tell me, but hadn't got round to it. He hoped I didn't mind.

Now, I do accept that my firm is not the only one out there, but the elements that go with my work for clients include great service, regular communication (I do not ever charge for telephone calls and am always happy to speak to a client) and where possible at least one face-to-face meeting a year. I charge nothing extra for this because I think clients should always have the Waitrose quality rather than cheap and cheerful, or worse, cheap and surly.

I always hope and dare to expect that clients will treat me as I treat them, and if they have a confession to make that they are “seeing someone else”, I will get it early rather than stumbling upon them in fond embrace. Is that too much to ask?

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