Bookends: The Consultant's Secret Weapon

When working with clients, specifically client appointments, there is a habit I call bookending that increases my engagement and determines how effective my time with the client is going to be. And like bookends, this involves doing something before the appointment starts and something after the appointment ends. It doesn't matter whether you are meeting in the office, outside the office, or virtually. The practice can be adapted to each situation.

The front end of the bookending habit involves just 5 minutes before the appointment starts. If I am meeting a client somewhere I try to arrive 8-10 minutes early and complete the front bookend sitting in my car. If it's a video conference or phone call I stop what I'm doing 5 minutes before the start time.

What I do next is a combination of agenda review, mental rehearsal and pep talk. First, I look over the prepared agenda and make sure nothing has come up at the last minute that needs to be penciled in. There is usually something that pops into my head that isn't on the page.

Next, I think about the space I'm going to be walking into. Where am I going, who am I likely to see along the way. I remember or lookup the names of the receptionist or the sales manager or whomever I'm likely to run into.

Finally, I think about my client. I thank God for them and I tell myself how much I care for them. I think about how much I want what is best for them. I remind myself that their best interest is my first priority and my job is to pursue it enthusiastically.

This exercise does several things. It fully prepares me to do the work I've been hired to do. It helps me present myself and my company well, even to those that might not be directly involved in the engagement. And it puts me in a frame of mind to sincerely and enthusiastically serve my client.

The backside of the bookend is just as important. After I'm finished I crank up the car, turn on the air conditioning and settle in for 10-15 more minutes of serious work. This mindset is important. It's tempting to finish a long appointment, let your shoulders down and breath a deep breath while listening to music or checking email. It's even more tempting to rush off to the next thing on a busy day. But stay with me for a few more minutes. We aren't done yet.

First, I pull out my notes and go through them. I add detail, finish sentences, polish up diagrams and just make sure what has been captured on the page is reflective of what happened during the meeting.

Next I take any commitments or todo items that I committed to during the meeting and put them on my master todo list. And I take anything that the client has committed to and add it to Basecamp.

Last I pdf my notes into Evernote using Scanner Pro and update the Trello card where any project information is kept. I will also append any client handouts or other documents gathered during the meeting so that I know where to find them, and any references in my notes to handouts are easily accessible.

This usually takes about 10 minutes. And it's a great 10 minutes that makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. But about 50% of the time something else happens that drives my productivity through the roof.

It's not uncommon for me to finish that last step, look at some of my action items from the meeting and think "I can crank a few of these out right now." It might be email follow ups to other partners or team members. It might be updates to a forecast or KPI model. It might be tweaks to a database app or a dashboard. It might be setting up an appointment with one of the client's vendors to talk about getting something we need. And right there, in my truck, usually with an iPad propped up against the steering wheel I experience some of the most productive work I'll do all day. It isn't busy work. It is critical, must do stuff, that is as relevant in the moment as it's ever going to get. If you want to feel accomplished spend some time working from your client's parking lot. It's magic.

Bookending isn't so much a discipline as a habit. Once you stop forcing yourself to do it and just embrace it as the way you do things it becomes a powerful practice that makes you standout from all the other people your client will meet with throughout the week.

The CONSULTANT'S Mobile Office: Scanner Pro

If you are doing consulting work there is a very good chance that you are onsite at client locations more than you are in the office. There's a good reason for this. You can learn an awful lot by walking around and seeing what's going on. You can learn the truth from frontline employees and managers, rather than the distilled version that often comes from the business owner.

So being on site is usually a good thing, but it requires a different approach to work. At your desk information and resources are just a click or two away. Cloud apps and mobile devices have given us access to everything in the client file for a long time now. But increasingly these same tools are allowing us to get stuff INTO the client file just as easily.

The quicker items can get into the file the faster they are available for future reference. And the less likely it is that they'll still be on a desk or at the bottom of an inbox when you need to lay your hands on them. When clients hand me paper I try to get rid of it as quickly as possible. One of the tools that I use every day is an iPhone app called Scanner Pro by Readdle. Here are the two things I like about it.

1. Auto page capture. You don't have to press the shutter button or line up the page to fill the frame. Just hold the camera over the page and the app senses page edges and snaps the pic when it's ready. I recently went through a 20 page board packet in about 90 seconds, without even removing the staple.

2. Workflows. Scanner Pro will automatically upload a copy of the pdf to the cloud service of your choice. But the real power comes from workflows. Scanner Pro allows you to setup multiple workflows to do things like save to specific cloud services, email files, rename them or send off to apps like Evernote or OneNote.

In practice here is what it looks like in three different scenarios. 

Meeting notes: I keep meeting notes in a day book/journal. Using Scanner Pro I can take a picture of my notes. Using a workflow the pdf is automatically renamed using my standard naming convention. At the same time the client name is added. And the last step in the workflow it is to send the pdf Evernote and file it away in the appropriate notebook. This beats scanning it at the office, dragging it over to Evernote, assigning the notebook and cleaning up the filename.

Client docs: While I'm onsite people hand me things. I'm not Tony Stark. I have to take them. But I don't like to hold onto them any longer than I have to. I usually just try to find a nearby flat surface, pull out my iPhone, and run through a similar workflow in Scanner Pro. The only difference is that sometimes I follow up with a second workflow that emails a copy of the email back to the client, just in case they want a copy. This happened the other day when a manager produced a copy of a process the owner hadn't seen before. Not only did I have it for my records, the owner now had it for his.

Bills: We partner with contractors and other service providers on big client projects. When I meet with these providers and they give me a contract or invoice requiring payment I scan the document with Scanner Pro and run a workflow that automatically emails the pdf to our company Bill.com inbox. And then I'm [almost] done. From there my assistant schedules the bill for payment, I approve it and the payment goes out electronically.

The best thing about apps like this is they are pretty much always available. It doesn't matter whether you're scanning restaurant receipts or a client's whiteboard. With Scanner Pro you have the ability to get high quality pdf's into the file before you step out of the room.

Building a Successful Week

Photo by Lacklan Donald

It's Sunday night. You have a vague sense that it's going to be a horrendous week. One more glass of wine, a promise to get an early start tomorrow and just like that, you've set yourself up for failure. We all want to get to Friday afternoon and look back over an incredibly productive five days. But without some groundwork it's not going to happen. 

Most CPAs, and especially those doing consulting work, have such a varied weekly schedule that starting Monday without a plan is productivity suicide. There may be no such thing as a routine week, or a standard daily workflow. That's why a successful week starts days or weeks in advance of Monday.

Step one is thinking about what your ideal week should look like. On what days should you see clients and on what days are you better off sitting behind a desk? Are you more productive in the mornings or the afternoons? Are there standing appointments that should be on the books weeks or months in advance? A template of your ideal week is one of the most effective tools for gaining productivity. It should include  large blocks of time for appointment scheduling, head down work, administrative tasks, business development, etc.

Step two is to get some help. Sit down with your executive assistant and other members of your team and ask them for help. Show them your ideal week template. Ask for feedback. Hone it. Refine it. Then ask for everyone's help in sticking to it. Make sure the people who book your appointments know when they should book them. Make sure they know your preferences for grouping appointments on a single day, if that makes you more productive.

Step three is to train the people you interact with on the methods and practices that work best for your productivity. Do you want to make house calls or do you want to have people come to you? Do you want to work with people who like videoconferences or only those who want to meet face-to-face? Do you like phone calls or email better? Getting in your sweet spot from a productivity standpoint isn't so much a matter of efficiency as effectiveness. How do you work most effectively? You need to train your clients to work with you this way. Come up with a list of the 10 ways you work best. This is a great tool for new client on boarding or orientation, and it sets the tone for your future working relationship.

I am a big advocate of sitting down before the week starts and doing some proactive planning. But the truth is, you can be way more productive right out of the gate if you lay the foundation long before that first appointment on Monday morning.