Why Collaborative Advisory Teams Outperform Individual Advisors
The big conversation in this episode is simple:
Advisory should never depend on one person.
Too many firms build advisory around the owner or one key advisor, and whilst that can work for a while, it eventually creates a ceiling. The business slows down, clients wait longer for answers, and the owner becomes the bottleneck.
Real advisory is not about being the smartest person in the room.
It is about building a team that can think, support, and guide clients together.
In this episode, we unpack why advisory teams are the future of modern accounting firms and why relying on one advisor keeps firms stuck. We talk about the shift from individual expertise to collaborative delivery, where multiple people can support the client, bring different perspectives, and create stronger outcomes.
Because when advisory is shared across a team, everything changes.
Clients get better support.
Response times improve.
Confidence grows across the firm.
And the owner finally gets space to lead instead of carrying it all.
We also talk about the culture behind it — trust, leadership, and giving your team permission to step into bigger conversations.
This is not about replacing the owner.
It is about building something bigger than the owner.
That is where scalable advisory begins.
Takeaways:
• Advisory becomes limited when it depends on one person.
• The bottleneck in most firms is often the owner themselves.
• Clients benefit more when they have access to a team, not just one advisor.
• Strong advisory teams create better conversations, better decisions, and better results.
• Building trust in your team is essential if you want advisory to scale.
• The future of advisory is collaborative, not individual.
Links mentioned in this episode:
apxtraining.co.uk
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.
Speaker A:This podcast is for accounting professionals and financial coaches who are ready to step beyond compliance and into advisory.
Speaker A:Because real advisory isn't about doing more yourself.
Speaker A:It's about building something that works without you being the bottleneck.
Speaker A:Hello, Deb.
Speaker A:How are you?
Speaker B:I'm good, thanks, Tim.
Speaker B:How are you?
Speaker A:Yeah, pretty good, thanks.
Speaker A:Pretty good.
Speaker A:And here we are again on Advisory Conversations, ready to have another.
Speaker A:Another discussion.
Speaker A:And today we're going to talk about why advisory teams matter more than advisors.
Speaker A:Now, I think that sticks in line with our constant message, of course, about advisory teams, but we're going to talk about a few different things and a few different reasons as to why having a team deliver an advisory is so much more valuable and important.
Speaker A:One of the main reasons, Deb, is that, you know, only one advisor, which is generally the business owner, they would find it very difficult to scale, wouldn't they?
Speaker B:Yeah, they would.
Speaker B:I mean, we keep harping on about this, but it's so true.
Speaker B:They just become the bottleneck, don't they?
Speaker B:There's only a certain amount of clients that they can serve.
Speaker B:Everything relies on them.
Speaker B:What happens when they're ill or when they're on holiday or they don't have any more capacity?
Speaker B:They have, you know, firefighting in their own business.
Speaker B:All those elements.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The clients have just kept waiting, aren't they?
Speaker B:When it's unnecessary, it's unnecessary.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And the clients, they've been trained as well.
Speaker A:When we.
Speaker A:When we set up our accounting and bookkeeping business, we are the focal point.
Speaker A:And so because we're growing, then we start to take on staff and we end up with a team.
Speaker A:But because the clients have been with us a long time, we're the one that seem to be the expert.
Speaker A:And that problem in many ways, because although it's nice for our ego that everyone wants to come to us and they want to talk to us and they say, oh, but we like working with you.
Speaker A:We know you're more personable.
Speaker A:We don't really want to have to learn to work with other people.
Speaker A:There's a lot of what we would call shared intelligence within the firm, isn't there, that perhaps people or clients aren't aware of, therefore they're not tapping into that knowledge.
Speaker A:And so I would say that's an issue that needs resolving in many accounting practices.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think that also is how the business, Business owner deals with it, though, because if they're seen to have confidence in their team member and position it correctly, then the transfer or the shared responsibility becomes much easier because ultimately the client trusts the business owner.
Speaker B:So if they're trusting them to advise them in their business, they should trust them to say that a particular team member is capable enough and the business owner is lucky enough, if you like, to have two people looking out for their business or maybe three people to look out, depending on how many advisors they have within their team.
Speaker B:It's all about positioning and giving them clear way for them to start communicating and building those cross pathways of trust really, rather than it just all traveling in the direction of the business owner.
Speaker B:There's so many, so many points that are valuable to the client with having more than one person looking into their business and helping them essentially.
Speaker B:They've got a team of people, haven't they?
Speaker B:Which.
Speaker B:So many different viewpoints, they've got so many different suggestions, more than one person's experience, more than one person's outlook, more than one person that they can contact or can answer their questions quickly when they have, when, when they arise.
Speaker B:So yeah, they don't have to wait in line, do they?
Speaker B:They've got all these people that they can, they can, they can ask and, and, and be served by.
Speaker A:So yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I can, I can remember going back in time seeing the phone ringing and seeing a customer calling and you know, and thinking, oh no, no, they're going to want to ask questions and stuff like that.
Speaker A:And you know, I've really got to get this tax return done or these, you know, I've got another client coming in to collect their books and you know, all those things go on in your mind, don't they, as you're, as you're seeing the phone ringing and you're deciding whether to answer or not at that moment in time.
Speaker A:Sounds terrible, doesn't it?
Speaker A:But it, but it's real, real life, isn't it?
Speaker A:This is what happens.
Speaker A:Yet if you've got your team and they're all on board with serving that client and they're all on board with what the client is trying to achieve and they've got, they've had an input in an advisory meeting about it.
Speaker A:They've discussed it with their team, around them, their team, well, their colleagues, I should rather say really, so that any one of those number, and like you said, 3.
Speaker A:I don't know why I always pick on 5 for some reason.
Speaker A:It must be one of my lucky numbers.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:But it means that when, if they pick up that phone so the owner doesn't have to because he's got other stuff going on.
Speaker A:They can probably solve the problem that the client's ringing for, or they can kind of say, okay, yeah, I get what you're asking.
Speaker A:We were talking about you just the other day actually, and we were going to reach out to you to come in for a conversation with us.
Speaker A:And perhaps it's an opportunity now for you to do that.
Speaker A:We can think about the question you've asked and we can have a conversation before you come in and we can prepare for the meeting properly.
Speaker A:All of a sudden the client's going to be thinking, wow, normally I speak to Tim and I only want to speak to Tim, but now I've got someone else who's actually well aware of what I'm doing is telling me they already know about my business.
Speaker A:And I invited me in for a conversation to answer the question with other people.
Speaker A:And it would feel like you've got your team, you've got a team yourself around you.
Speaker A:I think we've said before, Deb, haven't we, that, you know, you start off with looking for an accountant to help you with your business and then in time, you then.
Speaker A:Then you want more from them.
Speaker A:And then eventually you might want your own finance team.
Speaker A:And if you had your own finance team in the larger business, you've got people within a department that have different roles.
Speaker A:Well, it's kind of no different when it comes for advisory.
Speaker A:It's just that we're not talking about the technical aspects, we're talking about how commercially they can see what's happening with this business, what's happening with the numbers and where they can help the client in the best way.
Speaker A:Where are the pain points, the clients suffering from and how can we solve that for them and how can we help them move forward?
Speaker A:And if there's a group of you having those meetings and those discussions, then it takes the onus of the business owner and it means that the business owner's ceiling or capacity that they can, you know, there's only so many hours that they can provide a good level of performance.
Speaker A:And from an advisory perspective, you know, you reach that ceiling, you can't really do any more.
Speaker A:But with your team, you can serve so many more people.
Speaker A:And I think that that outcome for a client would be.
Speaker A:Well, it's not.
Speaker A:Would be.
Speaker A:It is fantastic.
Speaker A:We know this, but of course we also know that a lot of practice owners find it very difficult to move into that scenario and to give their team the confidence to be able to take that call and have that conversation or Join them in a, in an advisory session with a client so that they can learn and they can start to get involved and understand the way the conversation has gone.
Speaker A:But, but yeah, so what, what, what do you see that changes for clients when they have a team supporting them,.
Speaker B:They feel really supported.
Speaker B:I mean, when I think back on when I was doing onboarding calls with our potential clients or our new clients and I explained how our communications worked, we didn't have phones, we didn't have phone calls, we worked purely on messaging.
Speaker B:And we would set a group WhatsApp for the client, any of the client's team members that they wanted to be involved within the group.
Speaker B:And then that allowed the business owner not to feel as if everything was on their shoulders.
Speaker B:They had a team member, whether it was a VA or assistant manager or somebody that they, that they wanted to be privy to the conversations.
Speaker B:But when I explained that we had a bookkeeper, accountant, business financial coach and myself within the group, and when they put a message in, unless it was specifically confidential, and then it come by email to, to who it was directed to, but generally it came into a WhatsApp group and any of our team members would be able to answer.
Speaker B:So it meant that they weren't waiting, they weren't having an email forwarded and forwarded to get to the right person.
Speaker B:And we could then answer in our own time and via links, via video loom videos.
Speaker B:We used to send them screenshots.
Speaker B:And it was, it was much more of a team effort.
Speaker B:Everybody could see what was, what was being discussed.
Speaker B:They could learn from each other.
Speaker B:So it was like a peer to peer learning exercise as well.
Speaker B:But the clients kind of like came away from that thinking feeling that they kind of like hit the jackpot because nobody else had been offering that kind of support to them.
Speaker B:So yeah, they, they felt elevated within their own team because we pitched it as a we are your finance team at the end of this one, within this WhatsApp group.
Speaker B:So we might not be on your premises, but we are your finance team.
Speaker B:And yeah, we won an awful lot of business that way because it's different, it's proactive, it's supportive of the client.
Speaker B:I was on a call, you reminded me.
Speaker B:I was on a call with an accounting accountant colleague the other day and his phone didn't stop ringing.
Speaker B:And it was just ringing.
Speaker B:I mean, it kept turning off, turn it off.
Speaker B:And I said, we were talking about this specific conversation.
Speaker B:This client keeps ringing me, I'm in a meeting and he wants my attention.
Speaker B:I said, well, we used to have a WhatsApp group, which meant we could answer in our own time.
Speaker B:Other people could answer, the other team members could answer the call, and the client didn't expect to be answered immediately.
Speaker B:He'd put the call and he knew as soon as somebody was available, they would answer the call.
Speaker B:But we as a team would block our time.
Speaker B:So we would have somebody check the messages in the morning, somebody else might check them at lunchtime, and somebody else might check them in the afternoon.
Speaker B:But the purpose, we made sure that everybody checked them at least once a day that was in the group, and that way we could get on with our own work.
Speaker B:Jobs weren't taking longer because we were answering client queries.
Speaker B:It was all scheduled, all blocked, and everybody knew that they were all equally participating in answering calls, answering questions.
Speaker B:Yeah, to me, it was just a sensible way to run a team and to manage client expectations, but by supporting the client in the best way that we could, just kind of made sense.
Speaker B:Didn't mean that didn't matter if somebody was on holiday because we had the rest of the team available to answer.
Speaker B:So, yeah, yeah, they loved it.
Speaker A:It's really interesting that you mentioned that the client, you.
Speaker A:You gained more business because you had a team.
Speaker A:And so the clients actually want this.
Speaker A:They might not know.
Speaker A:They want this because they might not know it's an option right now.
Speaker A:But actually, when you open up that conversation and let them know we've got a whole team that can support you, this won't just be me, you know, you've got this team and between us, one of us will get back to you within a certain time limit or at a certain time during the day or is, you know, we're measuring how urgent it is and we'll come back to accordingly.
Speaker A:But the fact that you also said they didn't expect an instant response is also part of the initial communication that you would have with them when they either signed up as a client or when you transitioned into this way of working, isn't it?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker B:I made that clear.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:We had what we called a quick query service.
Speaker B:And the quick query service was put your message in the WhatsApp group.
Speaker B:And if it didn't take us longer than 10 minutes to answer, it didn't involve any specific research, you would get an answer within the package that they'd been assigned for free.
Speaker B:If it was a question that was going to take additional work, then they'd receive a quote for that work.
Speaker B:But that was our quick query service and they loved it.
Speaker B:Because they knew that they weren't going to get charged like the old school of charging for every phone call, charging for every letter, but they also knew that they were going to get answered within a certain timeframe.
Speaker B:They're not going to call the accountant one week and not hear for them for three.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it was our pledge to them, but we put it in the service offering.
Speaker B:So, yeah, just, it just differentiates you and it states out and it sets the expectations from the beginning.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it worked really, really well.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So from a, from a client's perspective, the clients loved it and it helped you gain more business.
Speaker A:And they had a.
Speaker A:They had had a place they could go and ask questions and your team collaboratively looked after the clients.
Speaker A:So just a slight twist, although this isn't necessarily the topic of conversation, but I think it's appropriate to ask this question.
Speaker A:How did that affect the team?
Speaker A:How did the team feel about this way of working?
Speaker B:They loved it because they were involved and they were learning.
Speaker B:So particularly since they had myself, the business financial coach, and obviously an accountant and a bookkeeper.
Speaker B:So they were learning from all of our collective experiences.
Speaker B:So because the answers were going in the group chat, so.
Speaker B:And you would see maybe the more junior members repeating answers that we'd given that myself or the accountant or business financial coach had given to one client.
Speaker B:They knew the answer if the question came up with another client and they would answer because they knew that was the right answer because they'd learned.
Speaker B:So it was all about being proactive with the clients and they felt valued, they felt part of a team and they were learning and they felt valued because it didn't matter who answered.
Speaker B:The client was always very appreciative of an answer.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it opened up, opened up kind of like the enthusiasm and the collaboration of the team.
Speaker B:They felt as if they were being developed and yeah, we didn't, we didn't lose any, any team member in the time that I was, that we were trading.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah, just shows, doesn't it?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know that wasn't necessarily the topic, but I think it's important because, you know, for any practice owners listening to this, yes, we're talking about delivering advisory through a team, but it's obviously important that the team are happy and on board with this situation because for some of them, you know, they're moving from being a data entry or, I know days of data entry have slightly past us by now, but there's still an element of check in, checking what's happening.
Speaker A:In the software, running off reports, looking at it, sending it to clients, et cetera.
Speaker A:We still have to do a lot of these things to then have conversations with clients.
Speaker A:But I know from my experience when I kind of transitioned away from compliance into, into advisory, how much I enjoyed the conversations because I wasn't, I was no longer reporting what had happened in the past.
Speaker A:I was talking about and having, and an impact on what might happen in the future for the client's business and for the client's personal life.
Speaker A:Because obviously if the business starts to thrive or improves, then the personal life of the owners and the directors lives are going to improve, which means their team's lives are going to improve, their employees lives are going to improve as well.
Speaker A:So it gives you much more purpose with what you're doing when you wake up in the morning and you go and you think about how you can impact someone's life.
Speaker A:But you know, as we've talked about on many occasions, you know, I guided lots of accountants and bookkeeping practice owners to deliver advisory, especially over the last four years.
Speaker A:And there was a consistent problem that used to happen where they would work with a handful of clients, but then things would slow down and then I would have to go back to them and say, how are things going?
Speaker A:What's happening?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I'm working with a handful of clients going really well.
Speaker A:Any others?
Speaker A:No, I can't really commit to doing any others because it's all on me.
Speaker A:You know, I want to have a holiday, I want to, I want to do these things.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Makes life very difficult.
Speaker A:But yeah, so what happens after that is everything slows down and they basically continue delivering the compliance.
Speaker A:They offer some advisory to a handful of clients, but they don't really take it to that next level.
Speaker A:And the answer to that, of course, is to start to help your team learn to become advisors.
Speaker A:But of course there's a problem with that as well, isn't there?
Speaker A:Because that means the business owner's time is going to get completely sucked up trying to train the team.
Speaker A:So yeah, there's, there's an argument for invite them in to devise your conversations and stuff and start, start to bring them on board like that.
Speaker A:But maybe they also need to learn how they can do that.
Speaker A:You know, how, how can I train my team up to become a valuable collaborative advisory team?
Speaker A:And funnily enough, we've got a solution for that, Deb, haven't we?
Speaker B:Yes, we do.
Speaker B:Yeah, we do.
Speaker B:We wrote a book about it, didn't we, Tim?
Speaker A:We did write a book about it.
Speaker A:And actually if anyone is interested in reading our book, you can go onto our website, which is apxtraining.co.uk you can find out more about us for one thing.
Speaker A:But also you can go on there, there's, there's a section on there where you can find out about our book and you can hit the link to download a free copy of our book.
Speaker A:And of course, if you really want to, you can go onto Amazon and buy the book and just search advisory teams and you can buy it.
Speaker A:But we didn't really write it to become serial best selling authors.
Speaker A:We actually wrote it because we identified the problem that we talk about on these podcasts.
Speaker A:We're providing the solutions in the book from the book.
Speaker A:Then we've obviously created some training programs for people to follow which you can also find out more from on our website, which I will share once more, which is apxtraining.co.uk so there you go.
Speaker A:There's our little plug for the podcast for now.
Speaker A:But Deb, going back to the conversation before we finish, I think it'd be nice if we can wrap up how this really does help clients.
Speaker A:You know, how the client can receive this world of support from a team.
Speaker A:The difference between that or having it from just one person is immense, isn't it, when we really think about it.
Speaker A:So is there anything you want to share on that before we wrap up?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean the whole team should really be involved because it's the.
Speaker B:You think about it, the bookkeeper is the person that has their head in the numbers on a day to day, weekly or monthly basis.
Speaker B:But they're seeing what's happening within the client's business.
Speaker B:They're seeing the patterns and then they can, if you teach them to spot the patterns, because everybody can see, the bookkeeper will be able to see if there's debt payments going out, if cash flow is going thin at a particular part of the month, if they're missing direct debits or about to, they can see if the business owner is not paying themselves if enough and maybe living on credit cards, et cetera.
Speaker B:And they're the patterns.
Speaker B:If we teach them the insights from those patterns and then the strategies to smooth out those patterns and lead them to best practice, then by offering the strategies as suggestions, then the whole team can be involved.
Speaker B:You can have the bookkeeper spotting the patterns, relaying those patterns to another team member, be it the accountant or business financial coach or the business owner.
Speaker B:But if they come together and they learn together and they come up with best practice strategies, then that can then be relayed to the client either in a team meeting or even if it's just one person's leading the meeting, it can be.
Speaker B:It should be spread across the.
Speaker B:Across the team because you've got different levels of advisory.
Speaker B:You've got entry level advisory and you've got much higher level.
Speaker B:Entry level might be debt management, for instance, or cash flow management.
Speaker B:It might be.
Speaker B:The higher advisory may well be scenario planning and future, future forecasting, etc.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's definitely a team service.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to all land with one person.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:Thank you, Deb.
Speaker A:And I think to wrap up this call, we will just end on this note.
Speaker A:The future of advisory is not superstar advisors, it's collaborative advisory teams.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining us again this week.
Speaker A:See you soon.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening to advisory conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.
Speaker A:If you found this useful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode.
Speaker A:We'll see you next time.
