53. The Collaborative Edge: How to Make Sure Clients Loop You In

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What do you do as a fractional CFO when your clients continue to make big spending decisions without looping you in first? My name is Michael King. Welcome to the CFO Report, where I talk about starting, scaling, and optimizing fractional CFO services. One of the most frustrating things that can happen for you as a cfo, your client goes out and they make these big spending decisions, and they're not telling you about it before they make the decision. That leaves you on the defensive. And on the defensive is not a good place to be for a fractional cfo because. Because you're supposed to be on the leading edges of these decisions so that you can help them understand the impacts on taxes, profitability, cash flows, things like that. So why is it that clients continue to do that? In today's episode, I'm walking through these questions with one of my coaching clients, and I break down for her the likely reason that her client is continuing to make spending decisions without looping her in. And I'm also telling her what she can do to prevent that from happening in the future. And you're going to want to stick around until the end because Carlos and I reveal our number one most favorite is tool for making sure that our clients keep us in the loop before they make big spending decisions. Let's check it out.

What do you do with clients who make big financial decisions without you? And then you find out about it in your meeting.

That's your fault. A little too direct there.

Let me.

Let me give you some context. I can. I can take it.

It's normally. It's normally your fault when that happens. And let me explain why. A lot of times, especially when we're newer at the fractional CFO thing, we don't do a good job of really explaining not just the value that we can bring, but what they need to do to get the most value out of us. Okay. It really starts on the sales call, and then you gotta start reinforcing it during the onboarding processes in your CFO calls about how you partner with them so that they can make smarter decisions.

Right.

And so you've gotta show them examples of how you can do that for them. You're gonna feel like you're beating your head against the wall sometimes, but you gotta keep giving that message and give them examples, reinforce it when they do a great job. But you've gotta start early on in the process. And so as an example, on a sales call, you might like, like after they've kind of committed. And then again on the Onboarding, you might say, look, one of the things I'd like to share with you right now is the clients that I've worked with that have been the most successful. Let me tell you the number one thing that those clients do that some of my other clients don't do, and that's they work with me to collaborate on big financial decisions before they make them. Because I can help you understand the impact on cash flows, on profitability, tax impact. But if you make those decisions without working as a team, I can't help you.

Right.

So you hit those like almost like an FAQ or a best practices on the sales call again during onboarding and reinforce those positive behaviors as they do it. Like when they come that first time and they're like, hey, Lauren, I'm thinking about this first. Look, I want to thank you. This is exactly why I'm here. So thank you for bringing this to me. Now let's open up the cash flow forecast. Let's start there and see how it impacts your cash flows or whatever.

Right.

So it's really about just kind of setting that tone and that expectation early and often until they build that habit. Carlos, would you add anything to that?

Yeah, I think you're right on, on the hitting on that message. One thing I always do before I start every single call, anything new, tell me about the business, how things are going. They're more than willing to tell me, hey, we're looking at this, we're looking at that. But I can tell you, no client of ours would ever move more than a thousand dollars without telling me it would not happen because they value my input so much. And one of the things that helped that move along a little bit better is that we're talking about the forecast and the projections on every single call. If I'm, I'm telling them, this is the plan for the next 12 months to be able to achieve this level of cash flows, this level of profitability, this level of net income. They know that if they make a decision without telling me, without putting it in the forecast, it's going to mess up those numbers. We're not going to hit our goals. So if that's happening, maybe you're not hitting a lot on, on the projections and the impact of those. Right. So talking back at the tools that you use, one of the tools that we use is just Google sheets, because if they tell, oh, we're gonna, you know, hire a new marketing person, and it's gonna cost us fully burden rate, $10,000 a month. I plugged that in right. Then there on the cash flow forecast or on the projections on that month, and then drag it all the way through to the next 12 months so they can see the impact of that. Now, they know that next time if they wanna do something, we have to put it there just to see how much it's affecting our margins. Right. So make sure that you're hitting on the projections and on the forecast on every single call, because that will trigger them to say, hey, I need to talk to you about something. You know, we're thinking about doing this and that. All right, let's plug it in and let's see what that looks like. How did it affect our profit margins? It might generate more revenue. Okay, let's see that. That's going to create maybe 10% more revenue. Let's plug that in as well. And if you're using kind of a tool that doesn't let you do that really fast, a lot of these online platforms, you have to go to the settings or start messing around with stuff. That's why I love Google Sheets, because I just plug it in right there, put a formula, whatever. I'll make it look pretty and more realistic later. But for the purpose of the call, I could plug it in right away.

Yeah, that's exactly why I decided to switch back to Google Sheets. Because the software was like, it looks nice as a presentation, but it's not nearly as functional. And you can't change things in real time with the client.

What were you using before Fathom.

It's not bad, but it's like. Yeah, it's just not as flexible, I feel like. And I can't let the client go in and play with stuff, so.

And by the way, I. I use Fathom, but the way I use it is I. I have a company that has five different entities. Right. So I use it for consolidating, but not for any CFO work. But if you got multiple companies, because it does a great job of eliminating entries and accounts and all that kind of stuff. So the client pays for it, but I use it to get the data out of it.

Okay, so like more as, like an overview kind of a look.

Yeah, just pull up the financials, the P and L, the balance sheet, the statement of cash flows again because it has five operating entities. But that's the only thing I use it for, just to pull out the financials.

All right, my friends, I hope this episode was helpful for you. If I could leave you with one thought, it would be to really go back to your sales process and your onboarding process and make sure that you've inserted an opportunity for you to tell your clients things that they can do to to help set you up for success as the cfo. Things like making sure that they're looping you in before they make spending decisions. And then remember, once they do loop you in, celebrate those things, reinforce that positive behavior so that they're sure to continue doing it again in the future. Listen, if you haven't heard about the CFO Accelerator Live yet, I want to make sure you hear about it right now. The CFO Accelerator Live is the first ever conference held exclusively for fractional CFOs and virtual CFOs, and it's happening May 16th through 18th right right here in Dallas, Texas. If you're a fractional CFO and you're looking for explosive growth in 2023, if you're looking to maximize the impact and the outcomes you're having with your clients in 2023, you're absolutely going to want to be at this event. Go to the CFO accelerator live.com to grab your ticket. Tickets are limited, so you don't want to wait. May 16th through 18th it's the CFO Accelerator Live. I can't wait to see you here in Dallas.