You knew you needed to grow your advisory services. So, you did what you were sold. You found the platform. You paid for it up front. You took your best people off the tools to be trained. Months passed. And then, at the end of all that, you’re still facing the part nobody prepared you for: you had to sell it. To clients who came to you for a tax return, not a pitch.
For a lot of firms, this is where it quietly dies. The software sits underused. The revenue never really comes. And you’re left wondering whether advisory work is just something other firms are better at. Or maybe my clients are different – they don’t want business advisory services and are not prepared to pay for it. Here’s what I think went wrong – and it happened long before the selling. The model started with a product and then went looking for a client to sell it to. That’s how software companies grow. It’s their business model, built to sell apps. It was never built around what your clients want or need.
So even firms that do everything right end up stuck, because they built on someone else’s foundation. Trusted advisers are in a different business. Trust is the confidence that you’ll act in the client’s best interests – especially when they’re vulnerable. Selling works against that. It asks you to convince. And the moment you’re convincing, you’re no longer being trusted; you’re being resisted. If you find yourself having to justify the value of a service, or you keep hitting fee resistance, that’s not a selling problem. It’s a sign you’re having the wrong conversation.
The alternative isn’t a better sales technique. It’s a different conversation entirely – one where you help the client *buy* rather than set out to sell. Put your services out of your mind. Start with what the client is trying to achieve, and why it matters to them. Where are they stuck – what’s their felt problem? Understand that first. Then explore the options genuinely, using your curiosity and your ears, without reaching for your offerings. Then agree the way forward together, and only then connect that back to the service that solves it.
Remember, no one wants to buy your services – they’re not on anyone’s bucket list of things to experience before they die. What they’re buying is the solution to their problem, and you as the pathway to it. Nobody has to be sold anything. And you don’t need an app to start. You need your next client meeting – the one already in your calendar. You are going to have that meeting anyway – it does not require any additional time, just a different conversation.
But it’s not just a different conversation. It’s a different mindset – and it’s not the one most professionals were trained in. Which is exactly why so few of your competitors are doing it.
