We changed our accountants earlier this year. It is not the kind of decision you expect to teach you much about running a consulting firm, but it has turned out to be one of the clearest case studies I have come across in a while. The gap between the firm we left and the firm we joined highlights almost everything I find myself saying to consulting leaders about trust, delivery, and growth.

So let me tell you the story.

The original accountants…

We did not pick our original accountants carelessly. They came strongly recommended, including by some of our consulting firm partners. The conversations I had with their salesperson were excellent. He explained their model and the experience they promised, and it was good enough that we borrowed one or two ideas for our own sales process.

Then the service began, and the standards did not match the promises. There were mistakes, a lack of care, and numbers we could not rely on. Our feedback was listened to but nothing material changed. I was double-checking things, finding errors, and getting frustrated at the time it was taking me. I wanted to trust it was all in hand, but I couldn’t. And when you cannot trust the figures, you cannot trust the advice that sits on top of them.

Within a year, we gave notice.

A living Trust Equation example

In our training we lean heavily on The Trust Equation from The Trusted Advisor, by David Maister and colleagues. It holds that trust is built from four things, credibility, reliability, and intimacy, all divided by self-orientation. It is a simple model, and it diagnosed our old firm with uncomfortable precision.

The Trust Equation, from The Trusted Advisor by Maister et al.

They majored on intimacy, but not in the right way. They were warm, personable, and full of questions, but frankly it was far more ‘relationship’ than I wanted from an accountant. I do not need a friendly chat about my holidays. The intimacy I want from an accountant is challenge: the willingness to ask hard questions about my numbers and not be afraid of the answers.

On reliability they fell down badly. They missed deadlines so consistently that we had to move our accounting year end back three months so they could get our accounts ready in time.

On credibility they fell down too, because the numbers were just not right.

But the real lesson for me was self-orientation. Very early on we paid for a strategy meeting because they said they wanted to understand our business. We got nothing from it. What followed, in the first week of us working together, was a push to sell a range of additional services. Before they had proven they could do the basics, this didn’t land well.

Three ways firms grow, and the one that has to come first

When we talk about how advisory firms grow, I describe three models: delivery-led growth, relationship-led growth, and authority-led growth.

*Three models of growth for a consultancy firm*

Our original firm had used authority well to win us in the first place. They talked a good game, and I believed them. Then they reached for relationship-led growth, but in a misguided way, trying to build closeness before they had earned it. What they missed is that neither authority nor relationship does any work for you with an existing client unless the delivery underneath is excellent.

World-class delivery is the foundation. It is what makes people want to work with you again, and it is the entire basis of retaining and expanding a client relationship, whether you work on retainers or on projects. You cannot grow an advisory firm you are not delivering for. Our old firm did not stall, it went backwards - because it tried to build closeness too fast and sell more before it had delivered.

What the new firm did differently

The firm we’ve moved to could not be more different. There is no slick sales process and no sales team. The sales conversation was simply the experienced accountant who now runs our accounts telling us what she personally would do. It was obvious she would be rolling her sleeves up and getting into the detail herself.

We’re a couple of months in and the difference is night and day. She’s friendly but appropriately professional. She has found software licences we were paying for and not using. She is rigorous on expenses and has saved us money on VAT reclaims. She is lower cost than the firm we left, and she has not tried to sell us a single extra thing.

What she is doing is early proof of value - another idea we train on. Within the first week or two she had identified savings, so we saw a return almost immediately, and she has continued finding value we did not expect. She is nailing delivery-led growth. I’m confident the relationship will deepen and the wider opportunities will come, but she has earned the right to them first.

The warning for firm leaders

If you are running a consulting firm and you are thinking you need to standardise your processes, increase spend per client, and optimise for your own delivery efficiency, be careful. Each of those instincts is reasonable, and each is easy to take too far.

The moment you lose sight of the fact that world-class delivery is the core of everything, you are in trouble. Growth runs in a sequence. Delivery-led growth comes first. Relationship-led and authority-led growth build on top of it. Delivery-led growth is underpinned by a relentless focus on trust, and trust (as the equation reminds us) rests on credibility, reliability, intimacy, and low self-orientation.

Credibility and low self-orientation are both strengthened enormously by delivering early proof of value when an engagement begins. Get that right and your new engagements start well, your long-standing ones grow organically, and you build the case studies, testimonials, and referrals that let you speak with authority and win new clients.

Shift too far towards a slick sales process, your own efficiency, and pushing your people to cross-sell and up-sell from day one, and you will be left wondering why growth has stalled.

Actionable takeaway: Before you optimise anything, ask one question of your firm. Are we earning the right to grow with each client by delivering exceptional value first, or are we reaching for the relationship and the cross-sell before we have proven ourselves? Deliver first, build trust, prove value, and the growth will follow.

The Skilled Consultant is written by Deri Hughes and Colin Mann, Managing Directors of Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training. We help consulting leaders develop exceptional teams with world-class training to support every career transition.

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If this article raised a question about your own team, do drop a comment below or book a 30-minute call with Deri or with Colin to discuss how we could help you.

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Why We Fired Our Accountants