The Art of Persuasion for CFOs: Leading Clients to ACTION

Here's the reality. The value that you bring as a fractional CFO is going to be drastically minimized if you don't learn how to lead your clients into taking action. Look, I don't care how many insights you have. I don't care how great your CFO report is. I don't care how much savings that you can show them on paper. If you don't learn how to convince your clients to move forward, to take action, then the value simply isn't there. Hi, my name is Michael King. Welcome to the CFO Report where I talk about starting, scaling and optimizing fractional CFO services. One of the biggest frustrations that we can have as a fractional CFO is when we're telling our clients all the things that they need to do in order to achieve their financial goals, but they're not taking action. And so in today's episode, what I want to walk you through is a change in mindset that I think that you should at least consider, if not definitely adopt. It's going to help you convince your clients to take action. And I'm also going to share with you a recent coaching call that I did with one of our inner circle clients where she was struggling to get one of her clients to take action. And Carlos and I share with her how she might approach the situation differently so that her clients do take action and they can realize some of the benefit that she's bringing to the table as their fractional cfo. Let's dive in.

We're going into obviously the final stretch of the year. So before I turn it over to Carlos, I want to share with you guys things that I'm kind of seeing right now. I had a coaching call earlier, one on one coaching call, and it's like the third or fourth person that's had this issue lately. And so I thought I would address it with the group. Especially for those of us that are new to advisory services, it's really hard sometimes when we start giving our clients more of the strategic help that they need when we're talking to them about things beyond transaction allocation or tax strategies. But we're really getting into the nitty gritty things they need to move their business forward so that they can accomplish their goals and realize their dreams and do the things that they want to do when they start their business. It's hard sometimes as accounting minded people. Right. I'm a nuclear engineer, got into this later in life, so I'm like, double whammy with me. We know the right answer. We Tell our clients, this is what you got to do. And then we want to beat our heads into the wall when they don't do the things that we know that they need to do. Has anybody ever dealt with that before?

Where you're like, how many times do.

I have to tell you, knucklehead? You know, just, you gotta have the talk with the vendor to get your cost of goods down. You've gotta cut payroll a little bit, right? If you would just do these things, all your other problems go away, but then they don't do it. And I think the challenge is that advisory relationship is very different. It's very unique, probably relative to any vendor that they have. Most vendors are tacticians. They're what I call task rabbits. You know, you're going to go and edit a video, you're going to do transaction allocation, you're going to schedule the meetings. Fractional and virtual CFOs have this unique relationship where we work for them, but in a lot of ways we work with them. We are CEO peers with them. And so a lot of clients have never had someone in that relationship before where they're taking the input on that level of stuff, where there's accountability. So I think there's two things that we've got to learn how to do as fractional CFOs to kind of get over those hurdles. Number one is we've got to teach them what healthy relationships look like with us, what does good look like from a fractional cfo so that they can understand better how to get the most value out of this. There's a learning curve there because it's very different from, let's say, like a bookkeeper. And I'm not diminishing the value of a bookkeeper. That's not the message here. But the relationship is distinctly different. So it's incumbent upon us to really articulate what we do and how they need to look at us and respond to the feedback we're giving so that they take action. The second thing, some of you guys might push back on this. I'll argue with you until the cows come home. The reality is, to do fractional CFO work, we really have to learn how to become coaches. And there's a difference, I think, between a coach and a consultant. The consultant answers the question, the coach teaches the client how to answer the question or arrive at the result themselves. So we've got to embrace this. Like, we can't just go and tell them what to do all the time. That's why we're butting our heads against the wall. They don't want somebody. They think they do, but they don't need someone to tell them what to do. We have to learn how to get them to think differently as a CEO, particularly as it relates to finance. The message that I gave to this coaching client earlier is you've done a great job in your career learning how to do the work, the accounting work, the forecast, the projections, the audits, all the things. Now you've got to learn the psychological portion of it, the psych behind being an effective fractional cfo. That looks a lot like learning how to coach. You've got to learn how to motivate and inspire people to take action. Because really, at the end of the day, as fractional CFOs, if we don't understand how to get our clients to take action, we have no value. We really don't. Advisory without action is useless. So my message for everybody in here today, especially those of you and I know there's some people in here, you're beating your heads against the wall because your clients aren't doing the stuff. You're laying out goals for 2023. They've already said they're going to go do this thing and they changed course. Right after the call. They said, I'm going to get these 1099s on the payroll or I'm going to open the other bank account or I'm going to do it. And then they didn't. If you're in that spot where you're.

Already kind of frustrated with clients, I.

Would encourage you really start learning and sharpening the axe. And I think it's leadership. Right? I define leadership as simply the ability to motivate and inspire others to take action. Where can you level up to speak differently to your clients? You can't pull them. Right. You can't pull them across the line. You've got to learn how to guide them and get them interested in going across the line themselves.

Hi, Maria, glad to see you. Glad to see you together. I always appreciate talking to you.

We always like being together, so it's great for us.

Mike, the other day when you were doing the introduction to the analysis of the P L and the balance sheet, you were talking about being a coach. That's exactly where I struggle because I get frustrated when I tell them what to do. They just don't do it. So how can one improve our coaching abilities? How did you manage to transition from just telling them to being a coach? What can we do to improve?

I'm going to Give you a couple thoughts. Your journey might be different, but frankly, I've probably spent somewhere between 30 and $50,000 over the last several years getting coached on how to coach better. I work with, like, Brendan Burchard. I've done a lot of work with people that do this, that understand psychology and adult learning. I was intentional about. I read a lot of books on it. I'm constantly investing in myself to learn how to do these things. Now, that said, you don't have to spend 30 to 50 grand to get better at it. Okay, this is how I want you to think about it at a fundamental level. And I'm so glad you're here. Okay? Because. Watch. So this. This is how I want you to think about consulting. Carlos, do this. Carlos, this is what you have to do, but this is how I want you to think about coaching. Carlos, what could the future look like? How could we get there? I'm asking him questions to pull the answer out of him. So instead of telling him what to do, which I think is like consulting, I want you to think about. Coaching is where you're looking to the future together, and you're helping them figure out the answer. Right. Or you're helping them. You're driving them to the answer instead of telling them. Because, like, just when you start off the question, I'm telling them what to do. You can't tell them what to do, but you kind of have to tell them what to do. It's a nuanced difference, but it's by the software.

Or buy the inventory software.

God, exactly right. Our jobs would be so easy if we didn't have to deal with clients. Right? We would just go in there and do all our amazing things. I really want you to think the Socratic approach, that's really like, where you start getting into that coaching thing. You're showing the possibilities, helping them figure out the ideas rather than telling them the answers. Because the truth is. And I think you'll see this as you get more into your own business. I know you're still working somewhere else, that the life of a consultant. The lifespan of a consultant with a client is significantly shorter where you're just telling them the answer all the time. It's much shorter than if you're the person they go to and you're teaching them how to think differently. And a lot of times it's subconscious. But when. When they know that you're that person, that helps them think differently about the issues in their business rather than just telling them, go buy the software. When you're the one that says, look, okay, this is a frugal client. How do I change the narrative here? And you start having them think about this as like an investment that's going to unlock this. You know, they want to pay for their kids to go to college or whatever. And if they do this, then it's going to enable them to understand the distributions they can take out of the business without making fearful decisions or fear based decisions.

Right.

You're walking them through that stuff. That's more on the coaching side. That's really where we can differentiate ourselves and add a level of value that no other vendors or very few other vendors are providing.

Thank you.

Yeah, great question.

All right, CFOs, if you found that helpful, then I would love for you to check out the CFO accelerator. Inside the accelerator, I have a program called the Inner Circle. That's what Maria, who you just watched, is part of. Every month I go live and I teach on the frameworks that I'm seeing work right now. I'm teaching on the lessons that I've learned scaling my business. And I also go live every month for an hour and I take questions from CFOs just like you and my team and I address them. If you'd like to learn more about that, go to the cfoaccelerator.com innercircle I can't wait to see you inside. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you back here next week. I'll see you then.

Sam.