Customer Intelligence: Turning Client Data into Real Relationships

Cassy Clayman: Welcome to Amplify the podcast for accounting firm growth. I'm your host, Cassy Clayman. This season we're focusing on business development and business development tech, how bds are using tech to win. Today we're discussing BD with Adam Klein. In the episode, we're going to talk to Adam, head of industry for accounting and advisory at introhive. We will discuss how data and intelligence tools can reveal relationships and insights into current and future client relationships. Adam, it's so nice to see you.

Adam Klein: Cassie, great to see you. Thanks for having me today.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Before we jump in, uh, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself, uh, from anything I missed from that intro.

Adam Klein: Yeah, no, happy to. Again, thanks for having me. Uh, so I've been in the profession now for going on, I guess, 13 years or so. I spent the first 12 years inside firms. I was most recently the chief growth officer of a top 100 firm. Before that, I led business development and strategic partnerships, uh, at a larger top 100 firms. So did that for a dozen years and then made the move earlier this year, uh, onto the service provider side of the industry. And I now have the great opportunity to, to work with a bunch of friends and peers throughout the profession and helping them with their growth strategy and their revenue, uh, their revenue, uh, uh, tactics inside their firms. So, uh, I love being part of this profession and it's, uh, a great time to be a part of it and happy to be here to chat with you.

Cassy Clayman: Amazing. So, yeah, you jumped from inside firms to this, uh, customer intelligence that we're talking about. So I guess to start off, how would you define customer intelligence in the context of accounting and professional services?

Adam Klein: Yeah, it's a good question. Cause I think if you ask a bunch of people, you'll probably get a whole lot of different answers and maybe mine will just be a derivative of what some other people would share. I think what's to me, I, uh, guess I'll define it, but also say what excites me about this area is we are, everyone knows we're a relationship business, we're a relationship industry and. Right. We have long driven our success off the strength of those relationships. But I think most people would also agree that as a profession, as a whole, we've probably been fairly, across the profession, we've been fairly immature, uh, on a large scale in terms of how we've managed the relationships we use to drive our success and how we've engaged in, you know, with our clients, our prospects Our network, our referral sources. So, you know, when I look at the idea of, you know, customer intelligence, client intelligence, or relationships, it really is, you know, this, this concept of how do we best understand and get our hands around the people we engage with and how do we use that insight to really drive our strategies and tactics to bring more success to those relationships and bring more success to our, uh, to our own organizations.

Cassy Clayman: Do you think those tactics are changing or do you think. I mean, how are they evolving?

Adam Klein: Yeah. How long do we have? Right. Uh, you know, I think it's all in my mind. There are some sort of underlying in which the audience of this show will be very familiar with. Right. There's some. I think there's just some very fundamental underlying aspects of what's going on in our profession today. And it's those that then sort of boil up to directly impact our business development and marketing efforts, our growth efforts, and within that, the relationship intelligence. Right? But you look at the nature of our profession today and you know, not only the changes over the last decade or two, but, uh, the changes in the last three to five years have been, you know, have been significant. And we're looking at today firms that do more firms, firms that are engaged more. Right. We as a profession largely moved out of more traditional, pure compliance services into advisory. We're finding more services to sell our clients, more ways to engage. We're changing the nature, um, of our profession as a whole in terms of how we operate. You look at what's going on with private equity and the influence of mega mergers and such. Um, you think about. Right, right. The, the changing dynamics of our profession, expectations, the way we're, we're centered around growth. Right? And so because of that, I think, uh, and the other big underlying one, I think you look at the changing nature of our organizations in and of themselves, right? This, you hear a lot of this talk of we're moving away from, you know, me type accounting firms to we type accounting firms. Right? The one firm model, you know, changing that traditional, hey, it's my book of business. You know, I'm the professional. My hands are around my clients, my relationships, and we're, we're opening up the aperture, if you would, and we're really facing our client relationships in a more holistic way. So all that is changing all those sort of undercurrents. And I think as a result of that, um, we're seeing the way we engage with and we manage these relationships change.

Cassy Clayman: That was the first time I've heard the firm of the Phrase mega merger, I love, accurately defines what's happening in some of the industry.

Adam Klein: Yeah, it's, you know, it's just. And the thing is, I think it's continuing. I mean, we all know this, right? We're seeing all these continuous changes and it's just, it's impacting, you know, for good or for bad, right. It's changing the way our firms operate and how we, how we continue to grow and how we continue to serve and how we continue to sell and market. Right. It's all just, it's evolving. To me, that's what's so exciting about being in this profession, particularly in the lens that you and I and all the others in the audience of this show. Right. On the growth marketing, BD side.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah. I'm curious about. So as we, as we kind of talk about how these changes are happening within the industry, obviously that impacts all of our clients. So I'm curious if there are, like, if there are certain insights or patterns that you're seeing, um, from that relationship intelligence standpoint from, you know, as our industry does shift into this Advisory. More advisory.

Adam Klein: Yeah. I think, you know, again, at Cassie, at kind of a. On the large level, right. It's. I think we've, we've entered into a time where we just recognize we have to be more, you know, the word. I always come back to whether it's our BDM marketing efforts, whether it's client experience, whether it's, it's that proactivity, right? We just, we, we, we. We have been a profession that's been successful for so long based on largely reactionary, you know, a little bit more passive. And I say that with all due respect, right? But now we're at a stage and, and I think what we're doing in the profession, to me, very much echoes our broader sort of personal and commercial lives, Right. I mean, this is. We expect our, our are again, Amazon knows everything about us, uh, who we buy from. Those people know a lot about us, right? And that's, I think, sort of trickled down into our profession too. You know, it used to be back in the day, this idea that, well, as long as you knew your client and their birthday and their wife or their husband's name and their kids and where they went to school, like, that was all you needed to know, right, to maintain the relationship and provide value. And now what we're seeing is, right, what are clients really looking for? We hear it all the time, right. They want more proactive insight. They want us to understand their business and their world. Right. They want us to understand what's going on in their, you know, in their organizations and how do we proactively bring value there and help them be more successful. I think part of that is we have to have that insight into the relationship and into those. Into those, uh, you know, into those. Into those people we engage with. Right. And that's whether that's some of the, you know, the. How. How often are you engaged? Are you engaged with them? How often are you seeing them or speaking them? But that insight around, you know, what are they talking to us about? What are they looking for? You know, are we aware of sort of, again, the left hand knowing what the right hand's doing inside of our firms. Right. And how we're engaging with those. Those clients and prospects and really having that deep understanding and that level of engagement that we've. We've really never. I, uh, shouldn't say never, but I, uh, think except with some outliers, right. We really didn't often focus on. It was like, well, look, as long as things are going well, uh, the customer is not complaining, right? We're delivering the tax return or the audit report on time, and it's. It's quality, like, that's enough. And I think we're seeing that evolve.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah. It's interesting. What you're talking about is kind of emerging of the old school and the new school. Right. So, you know, I imagine that, uh, the accountants don't want to lose that personal relationship. Right. You know, it's where they're involved with their money. Like, very, very personal things to our clients. But there is this element of, like, data and the Web. The Web, whatever. Whatever that means. So I guess something I think about is kind of the fragmented nature of that. So I imagine that accounting firms struggle with fragmented client data. Data, whether that, you know, does it just live in the partner's head? Does it live on a spreadsheet? Does it even happen? So what are some of those blind spots that you see and like, how confirms help close some of those.

Adam Klein: Yeah. It's so true. It's such a good question. It makes me. If you'll allow me to divert for a sec. It makes me think when I first came into the profession, my first firm, I'll never forget this experience where I was inside a partner's office and, you know, very traditional, particularly, you know, 10 plus years ago, you know, he basically had his whole world on his huge whiteboard in his office. Right. I mean, everything he needed to know was on this whiteboard, right. It Wasn't anywhere else. It wasn't in a, it wasn't in a system, it wasn't in a spreadsheet. Right? It was just, it was. Visually he saw it, right? This was. And at one point the firm was that we had changed, the building had changed like housekeeping services or something. And one night the board got erased, right? They had had new housekeepers or something and the board literally got erased. And it was, it was, it was sad but funny at the same time. But it was like everything was gone, right? I mean literally this, this guy's world, his insight was gone, right? So that literally disappeared off the whiteboard. And it made me. Early on I realized I was like, wow, this is different. It's kind of, you know, this, this, this, this model where you have these partners, typically, you know, partners, other professionals inside an organization where you know, they, they know what they know and they, they hold again, they kind of have their arms around that, that relationship insight and that data. And you know, they're not. That information isn't always find whether it's probably not then definitely not even CRM, but whether it's time and billing or any other, you know, marketing type systems or then ultimately CRM and you just saw examples of it time and time again. You know, bills going to the wrong people. You know, we, we want to send out an invitation to an event or a, uh, webinar. You don't have the right relationships captured, right? Or, and then you take something like what. And I think was really this profound almost awakening for the profession was the pandemic and PPP and everything came out of that. And I think what we saw was, I think that was in my mind one of the first real examples of the firms that had their hands more squarely around their relationship data. Uh, they were more effective and they were more successful at being able to quickly reach their entire, you know, universe, their network with hey, here's what's going on, we're keeping you informed. How can we help you? Here's what's going on. You know, here's the latest and greatest in PPP and the firms that, that, that never really had, that really struggled for a while to, you know, was that typical, you know, that, that, that, that emergency email to all the parent that all the, all the partners like oh my God, tell us everyone, you know, dump your relationships spreadsheet, right? And we have to quickly email everyone, right? And I think it really was one of these sort of demonstrable um, exercises in, where we saw, where the management and Control of good data was very beneficial and what the downside was of not having your hands around that. So, and I think, look, in all fairness, I think to still today disparate data and you know, lack of quality data, ah is still a huge struggle inside of our profession, inside of our firms. You know, this is where you really see the difference between professional services and maybe a more traditional B2C company, you know, or a tech company that sort of has built themselves on the management of data. We built ourselves on the management of relationships, which is great, but sort of it's come at the cost of data management a little bit there. And so it's still something, you know, we struggle with. I mean, my own firms I've worked at, firms I work with today, you know, we hear it all the time. We, we don't have good data connectivity between front end, you know, marketing and sales and back end time and billing and everything in between. So it really is still a real challenge.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, interesting. I mean, just like anywhere, any, any topic we talk about within this industry, you're going to find a spectrum of where firms lie. Right? So, you know, I think something I think about is, you know, you're right, this is uh, a very relationship driven industry regardless of the data. Data is important and it drives your decisions. But I wonder what relationship intelligence really means for those firms that do rely on referrals and long term client trust and you know, like, what does that mean for those firms and how can they adopt these practices?

Adam Klein: Yeah, well, you know, I think it's, it's interesting because I think we'd all agree you just made the point that, and I've always said the single most important asset our firms, um, have maybe outside their own people are their relationships. Right? The relationships are the basis of everything. Right. And yet if you look at sort of some, you know, statistical data across the profession, we really don't leverage those relationships as strongly as we should. You look at, you know, in many cases the lack of strong cross selling, right. The lack of strong client communication, um, you know, so on and so forth, shows that we still don't, you know, do a great job in a relationship based business of managing the data around those relationships. And you know, I think firms that we're starting to see this really concerted effort towards better data management on the relationship intelligence side. Because what firms are really beginning to understand is when they have more of that insight, when they can leverage that insight, it makes them a more valuable partner. It gives them more reason to stay appropriately engaged with the Clients, I always think of a not exactly relationship intelligence directly example, but something always along this line always comes to mind is you hear these stories inside firms where, uh, there's the client and they're doing work with the audit team and the tax team and someone in the advisory team. And we hear that client go, guys like three of you have asked me to fill out the same form, right. Or you're all asking me for the same piece of information, like, why don't you have your stuff together there? Right. And that's been, again, because of the historically siloed nature of our organizations. Right. We've not been able to do that very effectively. And I think firms today, again, particularly the more proactive ones, see that if they can better leverage that relationship intelligence, understand who's talking to who and when and how often and. Right. Just gives them the ability to more properly and appropriately engage with all these relationships they have in a value added way.

Cassy Clayman: Um, yeah, you're kind of, I mean you're making a case for a centralized source of truth, right, which is a CRM. Um, you know, I think that's a, that's a conversation that, you know, kind of comes into play in every aspect when we're talking about marketing and business development, the accounting industry. And you know, the question always is like, what's the root cause for under adoption? And it could be anything like we just said. But you're really making the case to have that centralized source of truth so that the, uh, accountants and so that the service advice advisors can, or providers can use it to leverage the relationship. You said something interesting earlier, like way back about um, how we're kind of transitioning from like, like, like Amazon, right. And those web services. And maybe, okay, so maybe a firm does have a ton of data that they're, that they've collected through whatever, whatever means. Do you think that there are, um. Or I would guess I would ask like, what are some of the common misconceptions accounting firms about, have about their own data?

Adam Klein: Yeah, um, Well, I think the first and foremost one is still unfortunately a bit largely in our profession. I think a lot of people just don't think the data is important. Right. I don't think they think it's particularly valuable. I mean, you. Again, maybe it's the nature of our profession. You know, I think most of our professionals say, well, there's some really key pieces of data and that's, that's time and billing and that's realization and utilization. Right. And, and hours. If we have that data that's that's internal. That's the operational stuff. Right. I think there is still a, um, um. A missing piece of the understanding that the value that relationship insight really provides us. Right. So I think that's, that's, that's the first piece, Cassie, is just the uh, this in some cases, whether it's just sort of a little bit still head in the sand or just, hey, I don't see the importance of it. I think there's that. Right. But then I think the other part is really understanding, well, what do we use it for? Right? How do we use it? It's funny, I think of you brought up CRM earlier, right. Before I was in accounting, I spent most of my career in big enterprise global manufacturing. Right? And big traditional sales and marketing organizations that lived, eat and breathed inside CRMs. Right. And sort of I grew up in my career. CRM was this idea. CRM was a sales advancement platform, right. CRM wasn't just this fancy database. It wasn't just where you were sort of forced to go stick information in. It was really, it was really the way you use to track your engagement in most cases with prospects, but with clients too, right. It's how you tracked and understood how you were engaged with that organization. Right. Where were all the different relationships? Where was the relationship strength or where was there missing? What was the strategy? Right. And what I saw, you know, to a large extent when I got into professional accounting was that that CRMs, if used at all, were largely viewed as just sort of overpriced, underutilized databases where we kind of, you know, someone's making me enter information here. They were not used as sort of what I, what I consider the sales advancement platforms. They really were intended to be. Right. Or truly customer relationship management platforms. Right? So which they are. Um, so I think there was just sort of this, this, not only this sort of misunderstanding but misplacement of where the effort went around there. And I think a lot of it again. And this is not my, my critique of the profession. I think it's the reality. I think we're allowed that came out of from is is most people tell you, at least for a very long time until more recently, right. We were very individual contributor model. Right. Where we are, um, you know, equity partnership professional organizations that it's like, hey, you know, I do my thing. I don't really necessarily. Cassie doesn't need to know what I'm doing. I don't really need know what she's doing. Right. As long as I'm keeping My clients happy and they're paying the bills and they keep coming back. Right. It's all good. Sort of hands off, leave me alone. Right. But now, as we're evolving again into these holistic, multifaceted organizations, that's changing and tools like CRM and others just are becoming increasingly needed and necessary. And that's a bit of a hard shift for some firms to make because it's not sort of been in our cultural DNA to some extent.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, you're really talking about the relationship between the intelligence data and then the client relationship and kind of translating that from data to action. So I'm curious if you have in your, you know, you're very, you're in the industry. I'm curious if, without naming names, but if you have an example of a firm or if you can think of an example where someone affirm they transformed their, their outcomes through this customer intelligence, through using this data, or even just a fake example of like.

Adam Klein: No, no, no. It's funny, there is, there is even a specific example that comes to mind with me, a large firm. And one of the things they're doing which I think is really interesting, not only are they as an organization really leaning into, um, this growth mindset, but this idea that they have to shift away from the traditional small group of rainmaker model to, hey, everyone at the firm, particularly at a certain level and above, has to contribute to the firm's growth. Right? And that may look different for different people, but everyone's got a drive towards growth, right. And continually evolving the organization. And what's particularly interesting, I think what, what these, what this organization's doing with some of their kind of like, I think they're maybe like rising managers or rising senior managers. Um, they're not only sort of tasking them with business development responsibility, but they're really building in the behaviors and the technology usage to drive that behavioral change. But also from the tracking standpoint, and I don't mean tracking from the big brother, right? Uh, hey, uh, we're watching me. But they really want to know, like, hey, are you putting your effort and energy into really being out in the market building those relationships? And in fact, one of the things that this organization is doing is, you know, every one of their professionals, again, I'm not remembering exactly what level, but you know, they are required to have a certain number of, of targets, right? That they are, that they, they are going to be going after in some form or fashion. And they're using, they're using CRM, they're using, you know, A tool like Intra Hive and some others way to look at all that aggregate data to say like hey, what are you doing out in the market? Not the uh, I always think of this the more traditional way which is, you know, the, the managing partner saying to a professional, hey, how are you going to you know, grow your book of business this year? And it's like, well you said I had to increase it by 5% so I just increased it by 5%. Right. Not where's that going to come from or who are you going to lose, who are you going to gain? Right. So I think it's interesting to see firms um, um, um, just really leaning into that more and more. The way, I mean you look at what's going on with account account based management, you look at the way firms are leaning into, you know, propensity to buy, right? Looking at, hey, how do we use the data that we have about our clients and go, hey, why does this client who looks just like this client, but why does this client pay us five times more than this client does? Right? There must be something there. And you know, and really digging into that and using some of that data insight, uh, to determine some causation and then what are some actions we take to uh, take this one to where this one is. A, um, couple examples I think of.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, I feel like you're talking about that shift that I think a lot of us have experienced. I mean I haven't been in the industry that long, um, and I've only been at one firm but talking to people at AIM and everything, you know, I can get a sense of what it was like before. Um, but what you're talking about is that shift into the strategic thinking versus what you talked about earlier, which is that reactive, not even think, just kind of doing it until the next deadline. Right. So we're, we're, the industry is transforming a lot. Um, and then we're kind of, you know, this whole season is about tech. So I'm curious how, you know, obviously you're at Inter Hive. There are so many tools out there. Whatever. There's so many tools out there. Um, but you know, I do imagine there is a hesitation from partners or decision makers to pick, pick something and they don't know like how, how are they supposed to use, how do they enter the data? Is it a manual process? So could you talk a little bit about the tools and like how they're using them to get and then interpret the data?

Adam Klein: Yeah. Oh my God, it's such a good question. I was literally Just having this conversation with, I was at Digital CPA earlier this week. Uh, I'm not sure if I say that it may not make this completely evergreen, right. But. And that's, that's a conference all about technology and innovation in the profession, right? Not necessarily around marketing tech and growth tech, but, but related. And I was having a conversation with a friend there and saying that in a way, it's such an exciting time in our profession. But I also don't envy, I mean, I think back to when I was a CGO and I had to think about all this different technology. Do we, do we adopt this and do we use this? And how much more effort do we need to put into our CRM? Or how much, uh, do we need to use this tool? Or this tool? Right. I'd say I don't envy those decision makers. It's tough right now, right? There's so much technology change going on and there's so much technology fatigue. Right. And I sell the time to friends of mine, particularly on the, on the technology side, selling into firms like we're all fundamentally trying to have the same impact, right? Which is whether you're selling CRM or proposal software or client experience related technology or, or relationship intelligence, you name it, it's all with the same fundamental goal of we want to help the firm grow, right? And so when you have all these almost, you know, certainly complementary, but could be competing technology initiatives, all with the same goal, right? It's, it's. I get when, when firm leadership, particularly whether it's a cgo, a CMO or someone else in that, in that organization is like, my God, where do you start and where do you stop and where do I lean into and where do I invest? What, you know, the limited resources I have, right? It's really challenging. There's, there's a lot going on right now. And while a lot of it is sort of aligned and connected, it's also still somewhat disparate. And I think you combine with that, again, what I say, almost the more fundamentally critical underlying theme, which is, look, our profession, I say this to friends all the time. I said this when I was a cgo, I say it now. Being on the service provider side, it's challenging when you have fresh and that continues to be really successful and doing really well. And I've heard from tons of my partner friends, right, Friends of mine who are practicing, uh, you know, practitioners, their audit partners or tax partners, and they're like, Adam, like business is booming, like things are going well, like, why do I Need to lean into CRM or relationship intelligence or automation or AI. Like whatever it is, like, it's like it's not broke, don't fix it. Right. And sometimes there's, you know, it's all good now, but that's probably going to start to change at some point. Right. We want to be looking towards the future, but I get, I really do, I understand why that's a challenging thing sometimes to get your hands around when times are really good and business is strong and you're like, I hear it all the time, we're turning away business app. Why? Why are we going to put effort into getting more. Right. It's uh, it's sort of a tough paradox there. Um, and so I think it's. And then you look and we're talking, Cassie, just like a piece of it, right? We're talking almost just in the growth stack. Think about everything else going on inside firms with changes to systems around time and billing and workflow and process and information management. Right. There is so much change that it's uh, I joke, it's like change didn't come for three or four decades and it all came in the last five years. Right. So it's so, it's a lot. So there is, I think uncertainty and confusion and apprehension and then there's also, you know, again, there's some just resistance to it because of that.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah. Well, I mean also you, I think you also missed the uh, change to hours, you know, the ever present attempt, um, to reduce hours to retain talent in, I would call it. We're in the future proofing industry. We're not in the accounting industry. Right. Everything you're talking about is future proofing. Um, which is hard. You're right. It's hard to think about when you're, when business is fine. And like, why would I think five years in the future my relationship is right now. I totally understand. Um, inevitably the question comes up, what about AI? So how does AI play? Does it, you know, it's so funny. You talked for briefly, you were like, you talked about going, uh, technology fatigue. Love that term. I'm using my notebook. I've got, in my office. I've got like a sticky note social media calendar now. I was just like, I'm done with the, I mean I'm obviously not done with the computer but technology totally speaks to me. But AI, I mean that's a huge part of technology and definitely, um, the, the silver bullet that everyone's hoping for. But what role does it play in customer intelligence and uncovering Opportunities.

Adam Klein: If you know the answer to that, let me know. Or, or go become a consultant to this industry. You'll go make a lot of money, right? I mean there's, it's still. Right. There's so much uncertainty and so much unknown. I heard something really interesting said recently and I want to credit it to a friend, you know, many, many in AIM absolutely know Mitch Reno and many of us, you know, are friends or colleagues with Mitch Reno. Mitch said something recently and I literally for the life we can't remember where we had a meeting together or maybe it was something online or virtual. And I don't know if Mitch said it, I heard someone reference it to Mitch, but it was this idea that, that where, where the evolving technology and, and Mitch, if you're listening, I apologize if I've gotten this somewhat wrong. You can correct me. But you know, this idea that the evolving technology, AI and everything related to it and adjacent to it is only going to be as effective as it helps make the professional's job easier. Right. As it serves up insight or action to allow them to be more efficient and effective. Right. And I think about, right. How does AI, not only native AI tools, but the AI that's being built into all the tools we all use today just going to make us again more efficient and effective and allow us. And I think what's particularly interesting in our profession across all facets of accounting, not just the professional, you know, the practitioner, even within marketing and growth. Right. How's it going to m. Allow us to open up uh, bandwidth to do the most strategic stuff and start to streamline and minimize more of the, some of the, I don't want to say menial tasks, but the day to day sort of tasks we have to the rote stuff a little bit. Right. How's it going to make it easier? So you know, if I can read through a paragraph AI summary of a three page long email thread. Right. That's really helpful. Something like that. Right. And similarly if you look on the growth side, if, if you know, I think about, don't just you know, if, if the professional gets, gets prompted, hey, it's been X number of days, X number of weeks since you've reached out to this person. You should probably do so, right? That's probably going to be particularly valuable. More so versus well, the technology exists for me to go figure that out, but I still have to figure it out, right? I still have to query it. I still have to. So how do we deliver that insight and that intelligence and that action to the Professional in a way that they could very easily leverage.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah. That's more automation than AI, which I think that's right. You know, that's uh, that's the, that's the practical way to use the tools. Right. Not that AI isn't practical, but automation is the thing that it's the action. The AI is kind of the research and the automation is the action. So, um. Yeah, very interesting.

Adam Klein: Yeah.

Cassy Clayman: Um, what are. So actually, you brought something up. What did you say? Oh, yeah. I'm curious. So, you know, we, the world, we're all kind of all, all of us in the accounting industry, we're all working towards the same goal. We all kind of have similar perspectives. You know, obviously every firm has individual is. Is different, but it's a crowded landscape. Right. So I'm curious if you. What are, what are some things you've seen that firms do to use their customer intelligence to become a true differentiator to their clients or to prospective clients?

Adam Klein: Yeah. And obviously, you know where I sit today. I'm probably a bit biased on this, but I can tell you that this was my attitude when I was inside firms. I truly believe. You know, my first CEO when I was at Apprio, Richard Koppelman used to say to me all the time, he said, adam, for the most part, we all have basically access to the same people with the same skill sets and the same resources and the same tools. Right. It's merely a question of who really wants to evolve and change and who can execute on it. And I think about that a lot. Right. Is, is there is so much competition, particularly again with these back to term, you said you like the mega mergers, the uh, private equity infusion as these organizations are getting more sophisticated, as they're getting more tech enabled. Right. I think the competition is just going to be increasingly challenging and I think the firms that are truly going to be the most successful are the ones that not only are going to lean into evolution, but and are going to lean into using technology to make them more successful. But again, using that data insight to be most effective. And even, I mean, think about the way firms are even take a more sophisticated approach today to client culling and evaluating their client base than they used to. Right. It used to be, well, they pay us on time, they're fine. Uh, they're our cousins, brothers, sister, that type thing. And now it's, it's a little bit more. There's still that, that personal element, the relational element to it, but there's more data behind it. Is it profitable business is it opening us up to other opportunities, you know, by doing this work, is it keeping us from doing other work? Right. So we're taking a, uh, more both the objective and the subjective, uh, approach to answering those kind of questions. And, and I think the firms that just continue to evolve are going to really have an advantage. I even given sort of a specific example, I think of, I think of firms that really get specialized inside. I mean we heard about industry specialization niches forever. Right. And truth is, most firms still, I'd say didn't do it great, some better than others. But I think that's really going to become a differentiator. And I think when a firm really begins to understand and being able to effectively serve some sort of niche, they're eventually going to have a competitive element over their peer firms. Where I think it used to be the client would say, well, I love these guys or gals. I've been with them forever and they do good job and I don't really want to change. But when that other firm starts getting some inroads there and they start providing that client insight they're not getting from the incumbent firm seeing value they're bringing to their business, I have this belief that at some point that client's going to go, you know what? Cassie's great, I love her and I'll still see her around town. But you know what? But Adam and his firm, they're really helping me be more successful. And that's at the end of days, what I'm paying for. So I'm going to make that change. So I think again, firms that are going to lean into, how do they utilize that intelligence, that data, uh, that insight to differentiate themselves are going to be at a real advantage.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, that's, that's, that's like a trend that you're seeing. I find that interesting. I'm wondering. So, you know, we've got our, our service providers, our relationship people, but the people who kind of support them are our marketing professionals, our business development professionals. So how can those professionals use these tools to together to collaborate to support that growth for the firms?

Adam Klein: Yeah, again, um, I'm a bit biased because I'm a sales guy through and through, and I've spent my career in business development in the last, like I said, almost 13 years in accounting. So I believe that we as a collective growth leader group have the opportunity to be the most impactful of anyone inside of our firms. I really do believe that, that, you know, the experience we bring, the insight we bring really makes us uniquely qualified to have impact that maybe some others don't have. And I think when you look at the technology out there again, and the insight and uh, whether it's relationship insight or data insight, these tools bring the growth leaders, marketing, bd, sales leaders have the opportunity to leverage that insighted data across the organization. Not just in this one team, not just in the manufacturing audit group. Right. But across the organization. And embed this, embed the technology, embed the insight into strategy and into how we go to market. It really puts us in a position to be super impactful in that longer term growth. I always think about the power that a growth leader has is to look at growth across the organization. And while I say again, with all due respect, every partner wants their firm to be successful and grow, but they want first and foremost is their book of business to grow and be successful. Uh, that's their first priority. And maybe what they're doing to be successful may or may not be shared. Right. They may not be embedding those best practices, let's say across the firm, but the growth leaders have that opportunity to really say, hey, look at what's working here. How do we parlay that across the organization? Or why don't we try this? Or why don't we use this insight? Um, I think that's really unique opportunity that the growth organization, the growth leaders have.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is something you touched on earlier, but you're talking about that cross selling or that cross serving those opportunities that might be missed. And so you're kind of, uh, this isn't really centralized truth, but this is like a centralized hub for, for those opportunities. Do you, do you think that the, uh, I mean, I would imagine that the, that person also has the opportunity to help the firm cross sell, cross

Adam Klein: serve more productively, 100%. And again, maybe a bit of my bias here, but I mean if you look at as a profession what we've probably among the least effective things we've done is better cross serving, better cross selling our clients. Right. I hear managing partners and CEOs say this all the time. If we only did a better job doing that, we don't even really have to worry about the new logo business. Right. The new logo business would all be cherry on top. The cherry on top. Right. Still need it. But we just leaned in to better serving the clients, bringing them more value and insight. The growth potential would be exponential. Um, and so I think the cross serving is a huge thing. And again, I think if you look at the various technology tools that are out there Today being more adopted by firms of all shapes and sizes, um, whether it's CRM or an intra hive or something like a propensity or you know, you name a number of them, right. That are really uh, equipping the firms and typically the growth leadership to distill these findings and this data across the organization to say, hey look guys, here's type of things we could be doing. Why are we, we're doing a really good job over here, but we have, we have an opportunity to grow over here. Right. We're not selling these services to these type clients. Right. There's such an opportunity to leverage that and I think that's where we're going to continue to see, um, the evolution of the technology usage is in that data insight and that relationship insight. That's really going to be one of the, I believe one of the distinguishing factors.

Cassy Clayman: Yeah, I mean if I could summarize our conversation we started, we were going to talk about how these tools are going to help relationships. And what you're talking about is using the tool to get the data to maintain the relationship, to maintain the same type of value that they we've been offering clients for decades. Just in a more sophisticated and you know, data driven way. In the way that our entire uh, you know, community at large. At large lives.

Adam Klein: Yeah, no, Cassie, you're spot on there. I, I say to friends all the time the technology does not replace the relationships. I don't believe the technology will ever be more important than the relationships. They will enhance and help drive the success of the relationships. Right. And I say relationships across, not just in sort of my world, in intelligence, but across the board, the way we engage and interact. Right. The technology only helps us do that more effectively.

Cassy Clayman: Um, absolutely. Well, if a firm wanted to start improving their customer intelligence tomorrow, or let's say Monday because we're recording on a Friday. What's the, what's the first practical step that you'd recommend?

Adam Klein: Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's candidly don't just run off and invest in any technology. Right. As much as uh, probably a lot of my technology friends would want that to be the answer. Right. I think it's take a step back, really understand what you're trying to accomplish, understand your strategy. Take an honest, open minded look at what you are doing well or maybe not doing well. You know, be candid with yourself and your organization and look at what are some of the things we could do in a, uh, in a, you know, I, I say a lot of the Technology today on the gross side of our profession, it's not that complex, right? It's not that intricate. It's all very important and has in my mind huge outsized results. But you're not, you're not needing to change the whole way your business operates to better utilize these, right? So let's look at what are some of those low hanging fruit. Like what are some things. If we could, if we change this one thing today, like, or a couple things, say what would it be? And then take those small steps and start to build off that, right? Get the success, build off that momentum. I think it's really. But it's being thoughtful and it's being strategic and I think a challenge, if I, if I could say this, I think a challenge some firms have, which I think is natural, is they either we find either completely underinvest in technology or I don't want to say they over invest in technology, but they sort of jump into everything and they don't necessarily think about what's the connectivity and how do we ensure that one plus one is not two but three, how do we ensure that they're getting outsized results from that? So I think it is taking the time to be thoughtful and thinking about that. And I tell people all the time, utilize the resources out there, whether that's the technology companies themselves or, or other firms who have done things and been successful. You know, at this point kind of goes back to that comment. You know, Richard used to tell me, right. It's not, no one needs to reinvent the wheel at this point, right. It's all, we've got enough history and success out there that we can, we could sort of replicate what, what's working amazing.

Cassy Clayman: My day to day is marketing and I, that whole thing, I'm like, I'm going to clip that for social media. I'm going to clip that for social media. That was a, that was a great final comment from you. I think that, you know, you're right, it's. The industry's been around for decades, right. You know, it's, there's no reason to, to blow up your entire operational process. But being thoughtful, being proactive, being strategic and utilizing these tools to help just enhance everything that firms have been doing all this time will be the most, I think what you're saying is, will be the most value for the time that you put into it.

Adam Klein: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Absolutely. You summarized it really well.

Cassy Clayman: Thank you. Well, thank you for joining us. Um, before we wrap up, can you let people know where they can find you or if you have anything to click on or anything like that.

Adam Klein: Yeah, no, thanks for asking. Happy to share. Obviously, uh, uh, I love this organization. I love this group of friends and peers. So I love being connected out and meeting new people and so obviously, probably easiest places on LinkedIn. Uh, also obviously, as you've said several times, I'm with Intra Hive, easy to find me there and I try to stay pretty engaged in the market both in person and virtually, ah, at events and such. And I just love uh, what I enjoy more and I always tell people I think what's incredibly special about accounting and unique about accounting is it's such an inclusive, welcoming, a collaborative profession. Right. Look at just this in and of itself, right? I mean the way we all share and want to, you know, help one another succeed, I think it's, it's really special because I don't, I don't think this does exist inside a whole lot of, of industries. I think it's something special we've got. So I just love being part of the community and, and happy to, happy to chat about this. I love these kind of conversations. So anyone who wants to chat about anything, you know, related to this kind of conversation, let me know. Happy to do so.

Cassy Clayman: Amazing. Thanks, Adam. I agree 100% with you. Uh, well, that's it for another episode of Amplify, the podcast for accounting from Growth. A big thanks to all of you for listening today and again to Adam Klein for the engaging conversation. If you like what you heard, we'd love a review on the podcast platform you're listening to us on now. And be sure to listen to the other episodes of this season. Our theme, business development and business development tech. You can learn more about Amplify and our past seasons on accountingmarketing.org, look for the podcast under Publications. If you want to connect with me, Cassie Klayman, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. Thanks again. We look forward to having you join us for another episode soon.