96. The Secret To Keeping A Client Happy (The Sandbox Method)

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Should you be giving your clients access to your forecast projections and other CFO tools, or are you setting yourself up for failure if you do? In today's episode of the CFO Report, I'm going to definitively answer why you've got to give your clients access to these tools. But you're going to want to stick around until the end because I'm also going to reveal the number one thing that your clients need from you as a fractional cfo. Without further ado, let's dive in.

Hello. Thank you, Michael. So glad to be here.

So glad you're here.

So my background before my firm was corporate finance and having collaborative partnerships with marketing and sales, etc. But it was very much the viewpoint of owning the numbers, protecting the integrity, having one set of truth type of thing. And I've noticed that you've talked about some things that you share with your clients and you allow them to use on their own, like with the cash flow forecasts, you know, etc. So just wanting to, to understand the pros and cons and your thinking around that and what are those things to share with them, which I'm sure helps with your, you know, efficiency and getting their buy in, but then balancing that with you being, you know, the expert that they go to.

Yeah. So just make sure. I'm, I'm tracking on the question is how do we balance between, as the cfo, like kind of owning our product but then letting the, the client, I'll use the word metal in that, on their own and play around with it. Is that, is that kind of the question? Like, how do you think about those two? How do I approach that? Great question. Great question. And I think you might find the answer is a little counterintuitive. One of the things that I've learned over the years about fractional CFO work is if you want to stay around with the clients long term, and I mean like beyond six months or a year, two years, five years. Like I was just talking about, you got these clients five years. You have to show them their growth. You have to help them grow as an executive, as a decision maker, as a CEO. And with that growth, like what it really boils down to is you've got to teach them how to make decisions. One for no reason, for your sanity. Because every time that they think about, hey, maybe I want to hire somebody or maybe I want to give the pay raise or we want to move to this other location, but the rent is more. If every time they've got big decisions to Think through. They're all up in your biz asking for input and how would you do this and can we afford it? You're like, I don't have time for this anymore. Right. So there's reason one, but reason two is they need to learn honestly as an executive how to think through those decisions. And so from a data integrity standpoint, I'm like, most of this, what we call the CFO report, like they're not in there playing with that, but I want them in, particularly the projections. Anything like the forward looking stuff, I want them in there, what we call sandboxing. And so I'm like, oh, you're thinking about hiring that new CMO that comes, you know, fully burdened at 17k a month. Go ahead and plug that in so you can see how it impacts your margins, how it impacts your cash. And do you feel comfortable with those margins and with those cash positions? You want to pay a little extra on the debt? Let's go ahead, go and plug that in there and just see how it shakes out. Because that gives them that growth that they need. Because if you're always just teeing up the answers for them, you're gonna find, like I said counterintuitively, that they leave after a while. Because they, what they really want is the growth. Even if it's not a subconscious thing that they're looking for, or if it's not a conscious thing, very subconsciously, they want that growth, they want that empowerment. And what a lot of times we tell ourselves, well, like, well, shit, if we end up telling them and teach them how to do all that stuff, they're not gonna stick around, they're gonna leave us. That could not be further from the truth, right? Because at the end of the day, they're not paying you for the reports and the projections and stuff. They're paying you for your perspective. They're paying you is they've put the things into the projections to say, wait a minute, what about this? Or I see your logic there. But back in 2018, we had a client do a similar thing and what ended up happening was, right, or you put these employees in, but what you're not thinking about is the fact that with that headcount you're going to need another level of management in there or like whatever the case is, right? They're paying you for those perspectives, not for what's in the spreadsheets. If this is you let go of that need to control. And I don't want to give away the secret sauce. You can't give away your secret sauce. How long have you been a professional? Do you carry yourself like you've been around for a minute?

Your.

Your projections tab, let that go. That 20 plus years of experience you got, that's what they need, okay? It's the insights that you bring to those numbers. Let them play with it. Let them get in there and start doing things.

Okay? Thank you. Yes. Huge, great perspective shift for that.

All right, my friends, I hope you found this episode helpful. I cannot wait to see you back here next week. I'll see you then.