“I’m good with numbers, but I’m not sure I’m good with people.”

It’s something we hear from accountants and bookkeepers who know they want to move into advisory, but aren’t quite sure they have the skills to do it.

Here’s the thing:

Being a good advisor isn’t something you’re simply born knowing how to do.

It can be learned.

In this episode of Advisory Conversations, Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday explore what it really takes to move from technician to advisor — and why the skills that made you good at compliance aren’t necessarily the same skills you need to have meaningful advisory conversations.

As accountants and bookkeepers, we already have an enormous amount of information about our clients and their businesses.

The question is: what are we doing with it?

If we’re simply collecting the numbers, processing them and reporting them to HMRC, we’re missing an opportunity.

Those same numbers can help us spot patterns, identify problems, ask better questions and help clients understand what is really happening in their business.

That’s where advisory begins.

But knowing the numbers is only part of it.

Advisory also requires communication, listening, curiosity and emotional intelligence. It means learning how to ask the right questions, uncover what’s really going on and turn financial information into something a client can actually understand and act upon.

And these are all skills that can be developed.

Tim and Deb also discuss what AI means for the future of the profession.

Technology can process information faster than we ever could. AI can analyse data, identify patterns and produce reports.

But there’s still something incredibly important that sits on the human side of advisory:

The conversation.

Understanding the person behind the business. Recognising when what they’re saying isn’t necessarily the whole story. Asking another question. Listening. Building trust. And helping someone make a decision when the answer isn’t always obvious.

That human connection matters.

And if we want advisory to become part of the way a practice works — rather than something only the owner can deliver — those skills need to be developed across the team.

In this episode:

• What really changes when you move from technician to advisor
• Why advisory skills can be learned
• Using the financial information you already have more effectively
• Moving beyond reporting the numbers to helping clients use them
• Developing better questioning, listening and communication skills
• Why emotional intelligence matters in advisory
• What AI can — and can’t — replace
• Developing advisory capability across the whole team
• Creating a more consistent, collaborative approach to client advisory

You already understand the numbers.

The next step is learning how to use them to start better conversations, create meaningful insights and help your clients make better business decisions.

That’s the journey from Technician → Advisor.

Find out more

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https://apxtraining.co.uk

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https://facebook.com/groups/advisoryteams

Welcome to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.

This podcast is for accounting professionals and financial coaches who are ready to step beyond compliance and into advisory, because real advisory isn't about doing more yourself.

It's about building something that works without you being the bottleneck.

Welcome along to another episode and it's great to have you all with us again.

How are you today, Deb?

I'm really well, Tim.

Raining cats and dogs at the minute.

Cats and dogs?

Yeah, maybe just dogs.

Summer's well and truly over, I think is probably the upshot of that.

Yeah, yeah, never mind, never mind.

We keep going forward.

So I think that's my feeling about where we're at right now.

What are we going to talk about today?

Well, we're going to talk about there's a misconception that goes around the accounting and bookkeeping world that great advisors are simply naturally good with clients.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

And I think we probably to go back a step and think about how do you move from being a technician to an advisor?

And we kind of need to go right back to how we learned how to be technical, don't we?

Yeah, yeah, we do.

I mean, we started with debits and credits and I still remember.

I mean, it's a while ago now, but I don't think they even teach it this way anymore.

But we, we were taught pearls, which was purchases, expenses and assets.

And then on the credits was revenue, liabilities and sales.

Yeah, it's a good way to remember it.

I didn't know that one myself, but.

Yeah, that's interesting that you looked at.

I think they do it completely differently now because when my daughter was doing her bookkeeping qualifications, she didn't know what I was talking about and she said, oh, no, we learned it another way and there's another way that they teach it now, so it's okay.

But yeah, so you learn a certain way, don't you?

As I say then, bank reconciliation was a topic that we learned.

We learned all those processes first before we touched VAT returns, certainly before end of year.

We didn't, we didn't jump in with end of year exams before we'd learn all the rest of it.

So, yes, it's all, all done in modules.

Do the same with advisory.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you do, don't you?

Because you yeah, you learn that.

You learn debits and credits, you learn sales, daybook, purchase, daybook, cash, book entries, you know, like you say, that develops into bank reconciliations way before you even think about trial balance and then extending the trial balance and writing that manual journal, you know, or posting journals, I should say my age again.

But yeah, you're right.

You start at a basic level and you gradually move forward to the higher level and eventually you become qualified and, and, and then, and then you still learn when you start actually producing accounts in the, in the, in the practice for clients, you're still learning as you go forward terribly.

You'll make mistakes, everybody does.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't make mistakes in the past.

Of course.

But that's part of the learning process.

Yeah.

And it depends on the environment you're in, how that, how those mistakes are dealt with.

But for me, you learn from your mistakes and necessarily make them again because you have to move forward.

But that's part of the environment you're in.

And whether you feel safe to hold your hand up and say, do you know what?

I think I've done something wrong here, I need a bit of help.

But that's learning, but that's the technical side.

So how do we translate that?

Because everybody expects everyone to just naturally become an advisor at the click of fingers, don't they?

And it's not really, that's not really the way.

It's very unusual for someone to just rarely to transition like that, isn't it?

Yeah, I think, I think we should look at it as continued learning because, yeah, your technician or your technical skills are reporting what's happened and obviously we have to report those to hmrc.

But it's not hmrc.

I mean, it always got me.

It's not HMRC that pays us, it's the client that pays us.

So it seems a little bit unfair that we're taking their data and just reporting it to hmrc, which we have to, we've got that data in front of us, so shouldn't we then offer at least to the client to use that data to help them move their business forward?

So, yes, report, but that's reporting what's happened.

So it's looking backwards, but for some more money from the client.

We've already got the data there.

Let's use the data to help them achieve their goals, help them move their business, improve their business.

It always seems a little bit unfair that the client has to pay to report HMRC and then we do nothing with that data to help them.

So, yeah, I mean, it's just continued learning.

So instead of just reporting, which we learn and become qualified to do, but start learning to think commercially and spot patterns, gain the insights from the patterns, and then have your suggestions ready and your strategies ready to give to the clients based on the data that.

And the patterns that you're seeing.

So, yes, it can be taught, but it's just an extended part of your journey as a, as a technician.

And if you're having to deliver bad news to a client on their tax bill, which we all have to do, then it's actually a nicer and easier way to give them some good news about talking about their goals and their aspirations and about looking to the future, where their business can go.

So that's a nicer aspect of it.

I think if you're skilled in delivering bad news, then, you know, it's, it's a, it's more pleasant for you to, to deliver nice, nice news and to help, I think rather than have that sad face or shocked face or head in hands reaction that we often get when we're delivering the tax bill information.

Yeah, yeah.

And they think it.

And let's be honest, you know, going back in time, they think it's your fault, don't they?

Yeah, yeah.

Because you're delivering, you're the messenger, but they think it's your fault.

And that's a difficult place to be.

Yeah.

And I was going to say, sometimes actually, you're right because they think that you've been, especially if you've been doing the bookkeeping, if you've been doing the bookkeeping, you haven't been telling them how much their tax bill is going to be.

You've had your head in the numbers all the time.

So they expect you to have known that they were going to have this.

So why haven't you told them?

Yeah, well, that's advisory, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Now, you should be teaching them to put that money aside.

So it's not, it's not a surprise, it's not a shock and they're prepared.

But that is part of the advisory service really, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I recognize that, Deb.

You know, I recognize that for my accounting practice in the early days, having some difficult conversations with clients who, if I'm honest, weren't paying me very much money, therefore they weren't probably getting the service they wanted because I was just rattling through compliance and stuff.

Um, when I started to deliver advisory, I saw the difference and I.

And I could see the difference in.

Rather than being reactive and being proactive and looking forward and, and starting to have conversations with clients about what's next, what do you want to achieve next, where are we going to go with your business and what are the, how are the numbers going to help us get there?

And I think it's a different, it's a completely different type of conversation and it's one that the owners tend to take responsibility for.

Yes.

Moving from being that technician from reporting numbers to interpreting what they mean helps us.

That's kind of a starting point, isn't it?

Adding insights that you've mentioned, providing that to clients, that takes us another step forward.

But it's difficult for a practice owner to do this all on their own because they're kind of just going off cuff and even harder for them to train others to do that if they're not really 100% certain that they've got a system in place.

So this is something that we actually answer, isn't it?

In our, in our program that we offer at APX training and part of our pathway starts with taking people from technician to advisor, doesn't it?

Yes, it does, yeah.

There's a process and it ranges from understanding what a technician does and what an advisor does.

And the difference thinking commercially, being able to hold strategy meetings, presenting advisory services, because it's often that conversation is something that the client may be not in, not be expecting.

Because if they're used to you just reporting to hmrc, they might not know that you offer business support services and we call it advisory services to clients.

They don't really know what you, what you mean.

So it's really business support services.

So yeah, there's a whole range of stages that we take you through and give you the skills and the knowledge and most importantly help you implement in our implementation cohorts, which I'm sure you'll talk about in a minute, Tim.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

Yeah.

I mean, I've shared the website on the screen while you've been talking, which is advisoryteams.co.uk just so that listeners can be aware that they can go there and they can follow what we do.

But also there's a part on there that shows the pathway is where we take people from initially technician to advisor, because that is the first stage and once you become an advisor then you need to become a leader and you need to be able to lead your team and then you.

Then we then have the programs for the team to go through.

So it's just it's just the opportunity to have a look at that.

So I'll share that one more [email protected].

So that you can understand what it is that we offer.

And when we talk about these things, we have got something that backs up what we're talking about.

You know, we've lived and breathed this ourselves and now we train, you know, we train you.

We don't just train you.

The business owner, which most people that offer support advisory do, they literally just focus on the owner.

We train the team as well.

So we want the owner to go through the initial training program so that the team will then go through the same.

Which I think is really important because you've got that consistency then of knowing what everybody else is doing.

For me, that is the clever part of this, is the leadership part, Deb, where they can learn how to allow their team to have confidence, to move forward and to start having these conversations and for them to transition from technician to advisor.

Because I would say the practice owner has it in their mind, if they're not already offering some form of advice, which I'm sure most people are these days, they probably have it in their mind that that's their job, to provide strategic advice to their clients, for their clients to move forward with their business and to look ahead and provide forecasts, all these kind of things.

The team, not necessarily so.

And so moving a team member from being a technician to an advisor is again, a slightly different skill.

They can follow the same pathway, but as a leader to.

To manage that.

Take some.

Take some important skills as well, which again is part of our program.

I kind of digressed a little bit, if I'm honest.

But.

But I wanted to kind of bring that in to the conversation because we can't just talk about moving from technique technician to adviser because it doesn't sit with us as, as our ethos of what we're about, because we're about collaborative, you know, which.

Which is with the team in this instance, isn't it?

Yeah.

And then.

Yeah, I agree, it's.

But I was also going to say, because you reminded me, why did we decide that we would teach the team as well?

And that's because we could see that the.

A business owner, if you're.

As a practice owner, if you're running your practice and you're delivering advisory, how on earth are you going to have the time to teach your team to.

If you're doing all that as well, we don't want you to be the bottleneck.

The idea is that we want you to step away from being the bottleneck and allow your team to step up and take over the services.

And of course, we would just make you the bottleneck.

If we said to you, if we left you at that and said, train your team, how are you going to have time to do that when you're running the practice?

So, yeah, so we train your team and that means that your team are all consistently trained.

They're trained on the same pathway, the same strategies, the same collaboration methods.

And you've already gone through that program so that you, you understand what they're being trained on, what stage they're going to be at and what they're going to learn next.

But it's actually still taken out of your hands.

It's not been.

We're not landing it in line plate, you know, not landing it in your lap.

So.

So, yeah, so that's, that's, that's why go and have a [email protected] and see what we offer, see what other people are doing.

They're already on the path and we have our live cohorts at the end of September.

We do.

That's exciting.

That's exciting.

I'm very excited about that, actually.

To, to be on a call with lots of different practice owners and some team members potentially as well, and to be able to share.

Yeah, to be able to share our experience and knowledge, but also to take them through what they've learned on the elearning platform, but take them through in a more.

A more personable way, because some people learn better through reading, some people learn better through conversation.

I personally believe in the power of conversation and be able to incorporate everybody on, on those workshops and be able to listen to their thoughts and feedback on what they're seeing as well, I think is only going to make this get better and better and better.

And it also follows the ethos of our collaborative kind of way of thinking that we all improve together.

To help and to guide people through the training is one thing, but to also have the conversations with them, deliver the workshops, of course, but to have those conversations whilst we're doing it is really powerful and I think that adds the weight to what we're creating within the advisory team environment.

So I'm really looking forward to that element of it and I'm looking forward to watching some of the practice owners move into that leadership space because there are many different types of leaders out there and it's going to be interesting to see the different characters, the different traits that people have and how they can reflect back on the way they are and how they move forward to how they then lead the team that they've got for their team to be able to transition from technician to advisor and feel safe to do it, feel confident to do it, feel empowered to have these conversations with the clients.

Because conversations with clients is everything, isn't it?

Without that, there is no advisory.

You can't produce advisory from reports and from emails or from text messages.

It's just impossible.

It has to come through conversations.

And that's why with AI coming in, where it can help us with the technical aspects, that should free up time for our Technicore team to transition into the advisory skills that they need, ready to achieve what the client's outcomes are.

And if you start achieving the client's outcomes, those clients are going to step up, they're going to be willing to pay more, they're going to be with you long term.

It's not always reliant on you as the owner.

You can step away, you can decide to continue an advisory as much as you want to.

You can decide to run a mastermind, you know, you can decide to build your business to sell, you can decide to step back and just let the money keep rolling in and you oversee it all and look after obviously everyone that works for you.

All these options are possible if you allow your team to start delivering advisory.

And the opportunity is there right now, Deb, isn't it?

I just think it's a fantastic time and a fantastic opportunity to develop advisory teams.

What better time to do it?

Yeah, without a doubt.

And with AI being so prevalent in everything we do these days, your team members will likely be concerned about their long term job prospects.

So if you are a practice that actively encourages them to step into an advisory role, you're much more likely to keep your best team members to encourage hiring of other technicians that are at the top of their game really and don't really want to leave the profession.

But yeah, it's a concern.

Everybody's talking about AI coming for your jobs.

We can see it.

I mean, it's already happening.

It's coming for the technical side of accountancy.

So yeah, it's got to be the future.

The future is going to be human to human and that's going to be business support.

We can see it happening.

Yeah.

Some of the things in our programs that we help with are things like emotional intelligence and, you know, having empathy with, with the clients and so having that human connection.

AI can't replicate that, you know, and how accurate is AI going to be if you just put in some figures and ask for advice on what to do, you know, how, how much understanding has it really got of what that client wants to achieve?

So I think conversations, the skills of being able to listen to someone as they tell you what their problems are and actually being able to uncover what the real problem is behind what they think the problem is.

Because often or not your clients will tell you one problem, but that's because that's what's stressing them out right now.

But underneath it there's a more deeper rooted problem that they need to solve first.

And having the skills to listen, to probe, to ask more questions, they're really important skills to have to be able to deliver that higher quality level of advisory that can be trained through our programs.

But isn't that what we want to be?

Because that's what AI can't replicate.

It definitely can't replicate that because it'll only answer the question that you pop in.

So if the client popped in that question, it wouldn't actually get to the root of the problem.

That as a, with the human connection, with empathy and with understanding and with being a little bit more direct.

When you need to understanding what type of character you're dealing with, is it something you need to metaphorically put an arm around, give a cuddle, you know, give them some love to, to get underneath the problem or is it something you could be quite direct to and say actually that's not a problem, is it what's really going on here, you know, because some people you can talk to like that, other people you can.

But understanding that is where you get your results from, isn't is?

Yeah, without a doubt.

While you were talking to him as well.

Another aspect is if AI is coming for the technical aspects of the role, it's going to drive the price down because the client's not going to value it.

So what better way to maintain your prices, raise your prices, keep your clients from looking elsewhere.

If you've got your whole team personally involved in the improvement and the success of your clients, businesses, they're not going to want to leave a whole finance team that they consider a personal improvement team.

If you like business improvement team behind for the, for the sake of just reporting figures to HMRC for cheaper for AI, they're not, it's not going to be, there's no going to be no comparison, is there?

So yeah, it's a retention strategy as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Couldn't agree more.

And I think that's a Fantastic place for us to end on.

Other than I'm going to now share the opportunity for people to come and join us in our free community, which is on Facebook.

If we just search advisory teams, you'll see a nice graphic with me and Deb's faces on.

You'll be able to request to join and there's a couple of questions.

We just need to confirm your accountant and bookkeeping practice owners so that we can allow you in.

So feel free to do that.

In the meantime, thank you very much for joining us again today.

It's been great fun chatting, Deb, as always, we love these conversations.

Yes, we do want to highlight the fact that we are going live with a brand new cohort on the 29th of September.

Of course.

And we would welcome accounting book three and practice owners team members to come and join us on this journey of transitioning from technician to advisor and then to leader and building your advisory team.

So one step at a time.

As you often say, my mantra is Deb, but the starting point is definitely to reach out to us.

Like I say, join us on our Facebook group, Pop on to our website apxtraining.co.uk find out more about us.

You know, you can, you can sign up there and then you can book a call with us.

You can join our free community.

There's lots of different things you can do from there, so.

So don't be shy on your go and we will look forward to you listening to us again in another episode of Advisory Conversations.

For now, thanks very much for joining us and thank you to you, Deb.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.

If you found this useful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode.

You'll see.

See you next time.