TOP QUALITY WORK IS A GIVEN

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Your clients believe that you are an expert at many things just because you are a CPA. They also believe that all work prepared by your employees is accurate. That’s why they are willing to pay you some fairly significant fees.

So, remember, if you send something to a client (a work product) that has a handwritten sticky note on it rather than a professional client instruction sheet – it says something about your quality of work. If you rush something through your system and out the door without following the quality steps (like proofing), it could come back to haunt you.

David Maister tells us, all the people at your firm are faced with two very important responsibilities:

#1 – Quality work (a given from your clients’ viewpoint).

#2 – Quality service (very visible to our clients).

You need to focus on both of these – all of the time.

Many people inside CPA firms rush through their assignments/duties knowing that the “system” provides two or three other people to catch their mistakes (reviewers).

It would be better to build a community inside your firm where everyone does their absolute best to: Do it right the first time. Don’t rely on others to catch your mistakes.

Check out the George Washington quote below. Maybe that is why their are so many sole-practitioners in the CPA profession. Maybe that is why many partners do not cross-sell – they don’t feel comfortable having other partners serve their clients.

Are ALL of your partners on the same “quality” page? If not, how are you going to develop a community of quality inside your firm? You need to move quickly on this one.