Your Clients Won’t Choose the Best Accounting or Law Firm. They’ll Choose the Right One.
And there’s a huge difference.
The best firm has the credentials, the case studies, the technical expertise, and the always-popular “we’ve done this before” slide in their deck. All useful and necessary stuff. But ranking as the “best choice” is a logic game. And humans are anything but logical, even if they pretend very hard to be. Logic is only part of the equation.
What tips the scale is a feeling. That gut-level hunch that says, “These are our people. This is where we belong.” The same feeling you got the last time you bought a car. You did all the smart research. You compared the pricing. You weighed every feature and read every consumer report until your eyes glazed over. And you walked into the dealership totally prepared to buy the logical car for you, but then you saw that other car. The one that wasn’t on your spreadsheet at all. And you bought it because it just felt like the obvious choice, the easy yes. You bought it because it felt good. And you are so glad you did.
That feeling has a name.
Values alignment.
This article will explain how to manufacture that easy, yes, that obvious choice feeling for your current clients, and the ones you would like to have next.
Let’s start this way. Before you spend another dollar chasing your next client, ask yourself three questions. When a prospect picks a firm, what makes that decision feel obvious? When a client stays year after year, what keeps them from wandering? And when you lose an account, what did they actually want that you never quite understood until it was far too late?
I got to explore those questions with a room full of very sharp people at CPA Ontario recently. To help, I brought a custom study done by our research firm specifically for the professional services world. What we found applies to every accounting firm, law firm, consultancy, and advisory group that’s trying to figure out how to win new clients and keep the ones they’ve already got. So I wanted to share the highlights here too.
The Study Behind the Keynote
For my CPA Ontario keynote, we conducted a custom Valuegraphics study of professional services decision-makers across Canada. (By the way, this is perfectly normal for us; we do this before every keynote I give, so I have concrete facts to share.) We profiled the people inside corporations, let’s call them The Deciders, who choose which accounting firms, law firms, advisory partners, and other professional services providers their organizations will work with. We also included high-net-worth individuals and family offices because many firms serve them too.
This is empirically grounded research. It comes straight from the Valuegraphics Database, the same billion-datapoint source we use with organizations like Google, PayPal, Amazon, Lululemon, and the UN Foundation. It’s built from a ridiculously complex dataset we created after conducting a million surveys in 152 languages across 180 countries.
And as complex as all that sounds, the message for this gathering of professional services providers was simple. Values pay dividends.
When you give people more of what matters most to them, measurable things happen. According to this study, loyalty will increase by 27%. Engagement will go up 20%. Trust will climb 21%. And what I call financial elasticity (their willingness to pay a premium for your services) will rise by roughly 18%.
These Values Dividends kick in the moment you stop being the best choice and start being the right choice. The one that feels right in someone’s bones, when you become the car they are so glad they chose.
The Three Power Values for The Deciders.
Out of the 56 statistically verified values in the Valuegraphics Database, three over-index dramatically for this audience.
Financial Security, Personal Responsibility, and Experiences. Let’s talk about how to make these practical.
1. Financial Security
Every group of people we profile has a specific definition or meaning for their values. It’s like discovering that a group of people like cake, but then also being able to see exactly what kind of cake they like, and how they prefer it served up. For The Deciders, Financial Security is all about stability that supports recognition and success.
They want to look smart and prepared, and they want a partner who helps with that. Stability is the goal in every decision they make. So be the embodiment of Stability by helping them feel as stable as all get out… so stable they will forget what instability ever felt like.
An idea: The Risk Translation Brief.
One way to have stability super-powers is to translate your technical risk language into human language. Give them what I call a “dinner table summary,” something they can repeat to their CEO, their board, their spouse, or their investment committee without breaking a sweat.
I wandered up to an exhibitor at the CPA Ontario conference and asked him to explain his product. He talked for ten minutes. I understood maybe six words. And I say that with love, honestly, I do. He was very earnest and excited about his product, but I had no sense of stability or anything else after listening to him.
Some (or even many) of your clients are nodding politely through the same experience. So translate it for them. If your client can retell your risk assessment stories clearly, you just handed them a heapin’ helping of stability cake. And you quietly helped them earn recognition as the person who made a smart call in hiring you.
2. Personal Responsibility
What it means to them: order and reliability. Both words matter.
Personal Responsibility people are people who feel a little thrill when they move the needle in the right direction themselves. They gravitate to anything and anyone that shows up on time and behaves predictably. They want to know what happens when, who does what, and how surprises get handled, because surprises are the enemy of everything they care about.
An idea: The No Surprises Operating Charter.
At the start of a new client relationship, sit down and lay the whole thing out. What you’ll deliver. When will they get it? What you need from them. When you need it. What happens when timelines slip? How you’ll communicate, and how often. Put it all in a document to make it real and tangible. It’s a roadmap that aligns with what matters to them, and they’ll love it.
Then do the simplest thing in business, and the rarest: do what you said you would do.
One audience member raised her hand during the micro-workshop and said exactly that. “Just do what you say you’re going to do.” It was so simple it almost hurt. But it’s a bar that gets bumped all the time. You forgot to send that thing you promised last Tuesday. You let a deadline slide by a day or two. Maybe they forgive you once. Maybe twice. After that, they start quietly looking for someone who never lets it slip at all.
We have so many techno-widgets, reminder systems, calendar bells, and whistles that there’s no reason anything should ever slip your mind or fall out of your workflow. If you can sort that out, you’ll have clients for life.
3. Experiences
What it means to them: repeat experiences that reinforce connection and belonging.
The Deciders who are responsible for your fees want a familiar rhythm, a way of working that makes them feel like you are singing from the same songbook. And that they know the words to the specific songs you will sing together, every time you meet.
An idea: The Signature Ritual.
Create recurring patterns, workflows, touchpoints, whatever you want to call them, that feel the same every time. Ritualization is the big idea. Same agendas every time. Same report formats. Same summaries. Same close. Same same same.
Someone in the room suggested sending birthday notes and holiday gift baskets. I loved that. Then I added one twist. Make it the same gift every year.
I have an ex-client who sends the same branded gift box every single Christmas. Same coffee. Same chocolate. Same little bag of nuts. Same packaging. Ten years running. I haven’t worked with them in a decade, and I still look forward to it. “Oh, here’s the thing from those guys.” They’ve resisted the temptation to change it up, and as a result, it’s reassuring. It feels like home.
In fact, it’s a great thing to remember. Inside your organization, when someone says, “Let’s do something different this year, “ don’t do it! That’s precisely the moment when the repetition is starting to work. Don’t change it. Stay strong! The Deciders will thank you with loyalty and trust.
The Simplest Tool from the Talk: The Sort/Select/Share System
If you want one practical habit your whole firm can use tomorrow, here it is. Keep the three Power Values close by and run decisions through this fast filter.
Sort. When you’ve got a pile of competing priorities, ask which ones connect to Financial Security, Personal Responsibility, and Experiences. The ones that do? Those move to the top. The rest can wait.
Select. When you’re choosing between options, pick the one that best delivers on those three values. It’ll be the one your clients are already listening for, because it’s aligned with what matters most to them.
Share. When you’re communicating a recommendation, frame it through those values. Show people how your advice connects back to what they care about deep in their hearts, and they’ll pay attention. You’re not trying to make it matter to them. It already does. You’re just connecting the dots.
Want the Toolkit?
We built a toolkit to go with this study, and it goes deeper than what fits in a keynote or a blog post. It includes a ton of practical applications any professional services firm can start using right now to find new clients, keep the ones they have, and reduce churn by aligning around what matters most.
If you want it, reach out to me, and I’ll send it over.
Because the truth is that your next client is out there right now, trying to decide between you and somebody else. And they’re not looking for the best firm, they are looking for the right firm, the one that feels like a fit.
Be that firm.
Remember: if you know what people value, you can change what happens next.
Download free tools, data, and reports at www.davidallisoninc.com/resources
Want to know What Matters Most to the people you need to inspire?
Download free guides and resources.
Use the free Valueprint Finder to see how your values compare.
Find out why people call David “The Values Guy.”
Search the blog library for ways to put values to work for you.
