What’s the point of client meetings?
Mark Lee explores the different reasons for arranging client meetings and asks if they are still necessary in an era of video calls and social media?
I have summarised below what I think are the main types of client meetings and what typically goes on during each of them. How many client meetings do you have and how many do you need to have?
1. Initial meetings
These must still be almost universal especially given the need to be sure of the identity of new clients to ensure compliance with the anti-money laundering regulations.
Some accountants will visit new clients at their home or business. Others will insist on new clients coming to the accountants’ office. This saves what may be wasted time if the prospective client doesn’t agree to sign up.
Continued...
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In person v on-line
A number of years ago we started moving our board meetings to web meetings so save one or more directors travelling four hours each way, or everyone travelling to a central point. Although we had initial reservations we have found that it did not cause any problems. We still meet a few times a year in person, but most meetings are now over the web.
Turning to client meetings, we started our webinar programme just about three years ago. This year about a tthird of all delegates have moved from the traditional face to face course onto our webinar programme.
Of course, their are still those clients who want the traditional training, and I suspect the same will apply to client meetings. Some clients will want to se their accountants face to face. However, I am convinced that many would be more than happy with web meetings, particularly if it eliminated their accountant's travelling time and resulted in a lower bill for the client and improved recovery rates for the firm.
Mike Sturgess
The client needs to know what he is paying for...
Having prepared the annual accounts and tax returns for a client the boss of the last accounting firm I worked for used to allocate an hour meeting time for each client.
His reasoning being: 'This is the only time we see the client and I want him to know what he is paying for'.
The firms clients were all locally based with none being out of the area.