The Wize Way

Episode 133: What are the essential skills of a client manager?

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 133

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, join Ed Chan, Jamie Johns, Thomas Sphabmixay, and Tim Causbrook as they explore the crucial skills necessary for being a successful client manager. 

From mastering interpersonal communication to effectively managing expectations and delegating tasks, our experts discuss the importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) and leadership in handling both client portfolios and team dynamics. 

Tune in to gain valuable strategies that will empower client managers to lead with confidence and drive their teams toward success.

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Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time- poor practice to a business that runs without them.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

I want to tap into you now, Jamie. So look, Jamie, following on from this discussion, with Ed going around the roles, you know I'm getting this picture that it's not just taking over the sales of the client manager. There's a huge leadership component, a team component. They're responsible for quite a sizable portion of the client portfolio as well as the team. Could you help us dive deeper into what are the sort of essential skills that would help them in this role? You know I mentioned maybe some shallow ones, like interpersonal skills, but from your experiences you know, having dealt with dozens and dozens and dozens of client managers, up and coming and going from ACM to SCM, what sort of essential skills do you look for in these client managers and what sort of skills do you try to develop in them?

Jamie Johns:

First of all, they've got to be a people person, Thomas. So you know, if you don't like dealing with people, you're probably in the wrong seat if you're a client manager, so yeah, you've got to like people, you know. Ultimately you've got to be able to learn to plan. So you know a massive part of it is planning your workflow, and managing clients' expectations. I mean, if you can manage clients' expectations, you'll never really lose a client. And so when we talk about that, you've got to be able to effectively manage expectations of the clients, but of your team as well. But from the client's point of view, when their tax return or BAS or whatever they're lodging, you've got to be able to manage their expectations around when something's due, both in the lodgement and in paying the money as well. So no one likes surprises. That's the biggest thing. And often when you know you have a new client come on board or you know you should always ask them all why you're looking to change accountants, and it'll always come down to a lack of managing expectations. And it can be just from not returning phone calls, or not returning emails. I got an unexpected bill, either from the firm or from the government department, the tax office, the IRS, or whatever. So they're the sort of things that and not all of us are born with that. You have to learn that, of course.

Jamie Johns:

So managing is much different from just doing the work itself. It's actually harder to often delegate the work successfully than actually do the work yourself. So delegation is really a big process in itself that you have to learn. So there are sort of five steps to what the desired result is and what outcome we need. delegation. But one of the first things in delegation is And so one of the first things that comes to mind is well, here's the outcome that we need. And so, you know, one of the first things that comes to mind is well, here's a job that we've got and you delegate it to the team and you identify who's I have learned the art of delegation, Thomas, and that would probably be to work on the job and how much time they should be spending on it. the biggest thing that I've seen over the last 20 years.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, probably the biggest thing that I've seen over the last 20 years. Yeah, that delegating aspect is something that I see in client managers. There tends to be this thing where if they're really great at interpersonal. They might be a good project manager, but they might be weak technically and they struggle with that delegation. Could you dive into further what that relationship between the client manager and production manager looks like in order to help that client manager be better because sometimes they're not the most technical person and they're relying on their production person? How does that dynamic happen between the two?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, well, often, you know, in a fully blown, sort of million- dollar team, if you've got a senior production manager, then often they can be just as technical, if not more technical, than the client managers. So it's important that you know one person's strengths complement the other person's weaknesses and so you know, complement the other person's weaknesses, and so you know, a very technical person mightn't have the ability to articulate a very strategic approach. So that's where the client manager would come in to play and say, hey, I think we can do this, structure it like this. But let's ask our senior production manager, who's technical, whether a certain strategy can be done. But when you bring both together, I think, as Ed just said, that's where you get the synergy. I mean the classic examples.

Jamie Johns:

I was really good at dealing with people and, you know, probably optimistic and positive around their business, but I didn't always like know the exact technical aspects of you know setting up certain entities or structuring. But if I had, you know someone like Ash who would be, like, say, very technical, come into the conversation, often get a better outcome than just one person advising the client, and that's. I've seen that time and time again both in a team environment and just in a business environment where you're trying to make decisions together to advise clients on what to do, because, like, it's very hard to know everything, Thomas, so you know, you're very good with the technical aspect of you know apps. You're known around Wize for being very good with computers, very good with apps, and very good with integration. But if you overlay that with someone who's very technical around entity structuring, asset protection, tax planning, you know.

Jamie Johns:

And then, at the higher level, say a client manager as well, and you bring all those together, you're a pretty, um, formidable team, aren't you? Because when a client comes to you, you know they want to know what's the best way to do cloud accounting, what's the best way to do my bookkeeping? You know. At the very grassroots level, you know. Then, from upwards, right through to the strategic approach, or even you might say advisory or business coaching, and then the tax planning aspect of it, if you combine all those things together in a team, it's pretty hard to beat a team like that.

Ed Chan:

So, can I just add to what Jamie just said? Actually, you know the people who are very technical. They're very strong technically. They're not so strong often not always the case but they're not so strong in their ability to communicate with the clients.

Ed Chan:

And you can see that, whether it's in our profession or you know, if you ever go to a doctor who's very technical and he's using all these big words to you and you don't understand what he's saying, or you know IT people, you know they use very technical terms which you don't understand. As a senior client manager, I had an ability to be able to explain something in very simple terms, but often I didn't have the technical skills as Jamie. But my skill set was actually to be able to convert a very complicated technical thing into a very easy- to- understand layman's language. So in very, very simple terms, for example, the technical person will use terms like this They'll go oh, you're debtors and creditors and that's a debit loan account. So they're talking very technical. The interpersonally skilled person, the client manager, should be able to take that language and convert it to layman's language. So he or she would use terms like the people that owe you money, you owe people money, or you've taken money out of the company which is a debit loan account. Now you owe it to the company. So the technical person has difficulty in being able to convert technical terminology into layman's terminology. And if you have the two together working as a team. So often.

Ed Chan:

You know, when I was still practising, there was very complicated things with GST. I didn't understand the technical stuff, but I'd get the senior production manager in. They'd explain it in their technical terms and then I'd explain it in layman's terms to the client, and the client used to always say you're the only accountant I've ever understood. That's what they used to say to me all the time. But I was a natural client manager. Yeah, I wasn't a natural production manager, the difference was that I was always focused on how the client could understand me, whereas the production manager always focused on getting the work out the door. So there was a different focus coming from the client manager versus the production manager. So I was always conscious of being able to be understood by the client and I used to work really hard on dumbing down my terminology so the clients could understand what I was talking about, and hence I used to always have this.

Ed Chan:

Clients used to always say you're the only accountant I've ever understood. And that's not trying to, you know big note myself. It was just that I worked very hard at being focused on communicating with the client and getting them to understand me, and I often used to say to them do you understand that? You know, look, I don't mind. If you ask me, don't be embarrassed. And you know I can explain it again to you. And often I'd explain it. I had the patients explain it four or five times in different ways until they actually understood what I said, whereas the production manager doesn't think like that. The production manager wants to get it done, you know. That's why sent it out for signature, I used to pick the phone up and explain the answer, and the results to the clients, whereas the production manager was more interested in getting onto the next job. So they'd send it out for signature and that's why I used to get a lot of referrals, whereas they wouldn't. So I just hope that helps a bit that is a huge one.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

That's two concepts I can see there it's the red client and the blue client. You know, some clients want to talk about the kids and the weather. The red ones, right, and then the blue ones are let's go into the P&L immediately and that client manager has to pretty much be able to switch gears depending on if it's a red or a blue person that they're working with right, exactly.

Ed Chan:

So, the way that you determine whether the client is a red person or a blue person is just to ask them how's your day today. The red person would say they will start talking about their kids and all that kind of stuff. But the blue person would go yeah, it was fine, let's get into your work, get into the numbers, and then you know. If it's a blue, let's get into the work, and they just want to get into the numbers, and then you know, if it's a blue person, just focus on the numbers. But if it's a red person, you don't focus on the numbers because it will just go over their head and then they'll say something like oh, I didn't understand what the accountant was talking about because you've just used the wrong language with that person.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, you know, in addition to what you mentioned, Jamie, that essential skill set is being able to switch gears and conversations with people. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Jamie. On that, I actually want to get some input. I'd love to hear from Tim if you wanted to share your observations about essential skills that you've seen in your client managers and that you know you tried to foster. What sort of skills were they and how did you go about developing them together with the client managers?

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, I think leadership is underrated. I've got three senior client managers and two assistant client managers. When you've got a team of five or six people, they do have to be able to talk to clients. That's a given in the client manager role, because if they're not good at it, who in the team is going to be doing that? But the other really key thing is that they're strong leaders and just good at managing the teams, and that just takes a lot of work in terms of building them up as leaders, in terms of giving them maybe some manager training that they haven't had in their careers up till now. And that's kind of why we put on these seminars as well, to bring people along so they can learn the soft skills bit about how to be a good team leader, and the key word there is a leader. Yeah, just fill in that gap that professional certifications and organizations just don't really do that kind of training.

Tim Causbrook:

It's all focused purely on the technical being. A good manager of a team, as well as the clients, is key. Yeah, that is absolutely key. The client managers always say they have to have really strong EQ right because they're dealing with clients. And Jamie, I think, and Ed mentioned expectations management and being able to talk to the client in words. They understand and figure out what the client cares about. Is it the relationship or is it the numbers?

Tim Causbrook:

Those EQ skills that a client manager has can come in handy with the team. So we had an incident a couple of years ago where the style of communication a production manager had meant that we were kind of at risk of losing one of the grinders underneath them, purely over just the way that their management style was. And the client manager of this team that I'm thinking of this is in my own firm. She stepped in and saw, because of her high EQ, she saw that this was a problem and was able to directly fix it with the grinder or two grinders in this instance the senior accountants offshore and the production manager. It was just a really good illustration to me of how those EQ skills and emotional intelligence can be put to helping a team as well, not just managing the client side of it, and she was able to turn around and save those two senior accountants who are still with us today. Hopefully, that's a good illustration that makes sense to every senior accountant who is still with us today.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Hopefully, that's a good illustration that makes sense to everybody. Yeah, you know part of it, I see, Tim. It's just like that. Client manager has such a close and deep connection with their client they feel obligated that if they don't address the things happening with their team, their clients are going to continue to get disappointed if, like it's dysfunctional, right? So I guess it also comes from the need to just make sure the clients get looked after and then intern the team as well, right?

Tim Causbrook:

Totally, and we always say push down the work and build up the team. In my own firm, the most senior, technically speaking, the most senior people are the client managers, and so they really have to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of the training, and the more they invest in the team, the further they go, and I've just said that my own time again. The client managers, who are really good at leading the teams and playing people in position and investing in them, they just find each year easy to get through the same workload without even having to put on more people, and I think that's the biggest underrated is, apart from leadership. It's just being good at training and investing in your own team and your own firm, and that's really what leadership is. It's just being good at training and investing in your own team and your own firm. And that's really what leadership is. It's creating other leaders not having a bunch of assistants.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

That's pretty much what it sounds like. The essence of that senior client manager is it's really us developing the leaders for the team in the firm. They're more than just client customer service people. They're literally in charge of the client. We're counting on the client manager.

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