In this episode of Advisory Conversations, Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday tackle one of the biggest frustrations for advisors everywhere.

Why do clients agree with the advice, leave the meeting motivated, and then do absolutely nothing?

As advisors, it's easy to assume that if a client isn't taking action, they don't value the advice. In reality, the reasons are usually far more complex.

Business owners are juggling competing priorities, constant interruptions, operational pressures, and an endless list of decisions. Even when they know exactly what they should do, implementation often gets pushed down the list as urgent issues take over.

Throughout this episode, we explore why great advisory is not simply about giving good advice. It's about creating the accountability, structure, and support that help clients turn decisions into action.

We discuss the importance of breaking larger goals into manageable steps, creating clear ownership around actions, and helping clients build momentum through small wins rather than overwhelming change.

We also explore the role of the advisor in creating accountability without creating dependency. True advisory should empower clients to move forward confidently rather than relying on the advisor to drive every decision.

Ultimately, advisory is not measured by the quality of the recommendations we make. It's measured by the actions clients take and the results they achieve.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why clients often fail to implement advisory recommendations, even when they agree with them.

• The psychological and operational barriers that prevent business owners from taking action.

• How accountability can dramatically improve implementation and results.

• Why breaking actions into smaller steps creates greater momentum.

• How to support clients without becoming the bottleneck in their progress.

• The difference between giving advice and creating lasting change.

If you've ever left an advisory meeting wondering why nothing happened afterwards, this episode will help you understand what may be getting in the way and what you can do differently to help clients move forward.

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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.

Hello, Deb, and welcome back again to Advisory Conversations.

Hi there, Tim.

How are you doing?

I'm pretty good, thanks.

Pretty good.

How about yourself?

Yeah, I'm good.

Yeah, really good.

So we thought today we could have a little chat about a bit of a classic issue that accounting and book dreaming practice owners come across when delivering advisory.

So we're going to discuss about why clients don't take action.

I think we've probably both come across this in our time when in our accountancy practices.

And you know, I think it's an obvious thing that for me they can be overwhelmed with change quite often.

And what's your experience of this, Deb, that you've come across so far?

Yeah, there's lots of reasons.

I found that clients, you give them a focus, a good idea and a good change and you can see the outcome is going to be beneficial.

And in the early days you're kind of surprised if they don't take action.

But with experience you half expect them not to immediately because they have all sorts of things going on and it's your job to uncover them.

And that doesn't necessarily always happen at the point of suggestion.

You uncover it down the line.

But yeah, there's a multitude of reasons.

Fear of change.

They're not other things going on.

There's different priorities.

They can't see the benefit of the outcome, they're not sure it's going to work for them.

They might have resistance from a team member.

It might not just, you know, they might have other stakeholders that they need to run it past and that's where it stumbles because they haven't been party to the full conversation.

They might think it's extra work that's not necessary to be done.

Yeah, lots and lots of reasons for them not taking action.

I think as well they, they have a session with you and everything is great and they feel like if they've had some great advice and they've got some great actions to go and take, but once they've left that meeting, probably their mobile phone goes off, probably there's 101 questions they need to answer, there's a client on the call, there's a team member asking the questioners and so many other things take over that what seemed a really Good meeting and gave them some great action points is suddenly lost within the whole world of them running their own business and having to firefight situations.

And it's a symptom of perhaps how they've set themselves up to run their business, of course, which is something that we can guide them through as their advisors.

But it is a reality, isn't it, that, you know, and I would say not only business owners, but I would say practice owners, accounting of, but driven practice owners are guilty of this as well.

Because, you know, what I saw previously was even though you're guiding the practice owners to deliver advisory and to.

And to take action in their own business, quite often the same thing would happen and there's the.

There's an art to encouraging people to take action.

And obviously that comes from holding accountability.

You know, in the next session for us with the membership we were in, we have weekly sessions.

So it was quite easy to bring that accountability in the following week.

You know, have you taken action?

What we talked about last week, if you haven't, why haven't you?

And what can we do to help you make that happen this week?

So there's a nice way to kind of open that and to be a bit more direct.

But that's because they were learning to be advisors so you could be a little bit more direct.

A client, on the other hand, is a slightly different scenario, isn't it?

Because like we say, they're juggling 101 plates all the time quite often, and it can be very difficult for them to then regain the focus on what they talked about in the session out in the real world when they're juggling all these plates.

Yeah, we, I think when we delivered advisory within the accounts ladies, it was a crucial part of the action steps to keep them accountable in between meetings.

So we would not just give them an action, but we would give them space in the meeting to open up their own calendar and to look to see when they had space when they could complete the action.

So we get them to put it into their calendar.

If it was very hectic and that was pencilled in, we would also ask them, is there a second time?

So if you can't meet that first, is there a second time that you can pencil in?

So they had two options within their calendar before the next meeting to be able to complete the task or the first step, and we wouldn't generally give them more than one because that would overwhelm them.

So just having the first step of a process and writing it in the calendar, they take accountability for themselves because they've made the decision of when they're going to do it, how long it's going to take, and if it doesn't happen, then it can also happen on another time and date.

And we would be in touch with them, so they would get a reminder or a nudge to say, how are you getting on with such and such and see what they came back with.

So, yeah, it's knowing that it's your role to do that, but it's not your role to force them, it's just to encourage.

And if they still don't do it, then it's.

The question is, okay, so what's holding you back?

Is it actually that you didn't have time or is there an underlying reason that maybe you don't think it's going to work for you?

It's not the right time for your business?

Do you have other priorities and uncover what's actually going on in the business and then see where that conversation leads and maybe that's the next problem to tackle.

Yeah, yeah.

I can remember when I started delivering advisory and transitioning from the world of compliance into advisory, as you know, that I did.

I was very keen when I started working with a client in this way and holding what I called strategy sessions, because clients don't know what advisory means.

Advisory is a term for U.S. accounting and bookkeeping, you know, practice owners, isn't it?

But I used to try and get them on weekly meetings initially.

Now, that wasn't always going to be weekly meetings because otherwise my time would just be sucked away completely.

But I used to try initially when I started working with people was go for weekly meetings for the first month, maybe first two months, then we'll go to monthly when we've got you up and running and we've got like a process going on in the system that we're working to in a way that we both understand each other and how we can, you know, make sure that you're taking action from the steps that we're providing you with.

And I made sure that every step that I asked them to take was a very small step.

So there was no going away from the meeting thinking, oh, my Lord, I've got to do all of this before next week.

There was, I've only got to go and do this one thing, you know, and that one thing might be open another bank account.

It might be that simple.

It could, you know, anything like that.

It could be, you know, we talk about debt snowball quite a lot.

So it could be making a list of all the debts.

You know, it could be that simple.

It was a simple task.

But what it meant was they felt when they came to the next meeting, they had done something productive to bring to the next meeting and then you could then take the next step with them.

And I found that that worked really well.

Of course there was the odd time when someone would turn up and they hadn't even done the small one step.

And then it's a conversation of okay, so what happened, you know, what, what, what, what happened last week?

They took your focus away from this and, and there'd be a multitude of reasons and they are all genuine or sincere or understandable issues that can happen when you're running the business.

But then you take them back to, okay, but what, what's going to happen if we don't make this step?

You know, and you, and you just guide them gently through the idea that if we don't start making this step, we can't take the next step and the next step after.

And this step has become like a crucial one small step to make, to move forward to the next one.

And sometimes if the step's that small, I would do it with them in the next session just to make sure that it's done.

Then we can move on to leave them to do the next step, you know, in the following week, if that makes sense.

I'm sending a lot of steps.

I know.

So.

Yeah, well, I agree.

I think to remind them of the impending outcome.

Yes.

And then if they're delaying each mini step, then that just pushes the outcome further into the future.

So to always close the meeting on reminding them that we can achieve this by this date, if this is done within this time period and then we can move on to the next and just have that plan in front of them so that they can see how we're going to get there, how we're going to get to that result.

Yeah, I think it's vital.

You can't just get, even though they're small steps, you can't just get consumed by that particular step.

You have to always finish the meeting with the broader view, the more long term view.

We will get you here because that's, that's the goal.

And then they, they're more fired up, they're more motivated to get that done.

It doesn't seem so big of a job.

But when they realize that they're all, lots of little steps to get them there at the end, I think as.

Well is, is probably a reminder of what their priorities are because by this time you should already know exactly what outcomes they're looking to achieve and what forecasts we're looking at to get them to achieve those outcomes over a period of time.

It could be a sustained, long period of time.

It could be there could be some shorter goals you're trying to achieve to get to those long term outcomes.

It depends how you break it down.

But you should know what the priorities are for your client.

And sometimes it's a reminder that remember what.

Because what might happen, and I've had this from experience and it's difficult sometimes to bring the client back around to actually taking the action that they need to take to deliver the outcomes.

Because they've been firefighting for the whole week.

They come in with a bit of a fluster about why they haven't taken a step in interstate and they start talking about all the things they've had to deal with and they're stressed.

Yeah.

And then they can start to ask you questions that actually aren't going to help them move forward.

So it's an art to actually reminding them as gently as possible because you can't be too assertive with clients.

Sometimes you can when you need to be, but not as a regular occurrence is gently reminding them what the priorities were, what you're looking to achieve by working together and saying totally understand, totally understand where you're coming from.

I run a business myself.

I know what it's like the phone rings when you leave this room and I have to deal with things as well.

I get it.

But we need to put that to one side just for this minute and let's just deal with this one step and make sure we tell you, because remember you said you wanted to achieve this and remember you said you wanted to get to this level by this certain point.

Well, we've already delayed by a week, so let's not delay by another week.

And I think just gently reminding them and pushing home the priorities and allowing them to remind themselves what they should be prioritizing when they're having this time with you, I think is quite important as well.

Yeah, I think it's really important.

I think also you mentioned that recognition and empathy with them, recognizing that they are busy and as soon as they come off the call they've got other things that they need to deal with.

But if you don't include recognition and empathy, you don't want them to feel like a naughty school child that hasn't done their homework because you have to recognize and you have to empathize and you have to Give them leeway as well, because they're the boss in their own business.

They will cancel meetings with you if they think that they're going to be put in a position where they have to answer for not doing things.

And that's the last thing you need because you're just trying to help.

So it is a complete art of balancing the importance of taking the steps and taking action, but in a way that you're talking peer to peer, not adult to child.

Yeah.

And as well, it doesn't hurt them to appreciate or be reminded that you too are a business owner and you do have similar problems, because they look at us as the accountant and they just see the accountant or the bookkeeper.

They don't necessarily see the business owner.

So it doesn't hurt to remind them.

And it's also by doing that you are providing empathy, aren't you?

With them, you're understanding, you're saying, I totally understand everything will say.

And I have the same problems too, you know.

Yeah, I used to do that all the time.

I used to, yeah.

If they mentioned a situation that they had to firefight, that would trigger something that I've had to deal with at some point in the past and I'll say, yeah, I'll get it.

I, you know, I had to do something similar and I let them know how I resolved it.

You know, that might be helpful, it might not.

But the main thing was to say, yeah, completely understand we have to do these things, don't we?

There's also, I suppose there's also a time when a client might not during a session, they might not want to take the advice or they might feel you might receive some resistance to the advice you're giving, which is another reason why perhaps they won't take action on that.

Have you had that in the past and how have you dealt with it?

Yeah, I've had that, yeah.

One, the main one that comes to mind was client that just refused to put the prices up.

And we, we.

It was the solution, you know, what they were selling for, what it was costing then was bordering break even with what they were selling for.

But not only that, they were giving discounts which were then putting them at a loss.

And that was only on one in one marketplace.

They were giving a discount, but it was canceling out the profit for everything else.

And it was like, you're paying for these services, but they, they got themselves into a situation where they had a market and they were selling, but what they were selling and how much they were selling it for was Putting them at a loss.

But they didn't think that their market could afford any anymore.

So because they were getting sales, they thought they were being successful, but they didn't realize that they were selling to the wrong market or selling the wrong service to the wrong market.

And it was either a case of change your market, which they didn't want to do because they were getting sales from this particular market.

But they were at a crisis point where they couldn't lower their costs anymore.

So it was costing them money.

So.

We couldn't get through to them that you have to make a decision.

They just thought the more they sell, the solution will be in the top line of sales.

Well, it won't because you've got the same cost of sales going out as you've got coming in as a return.

There's no profit, so you're just going to be working harder for no money.

And they were just highly resistant because they really liked their market.

They liked their ideal client.

Well, their perceived ideal client, the people that they were selling to.

And they felt really good that they were giving them such a good deal and they were getting a certain amount of satisfaction, pleasure from giving them such a good deal, giving them such a great service at such a good deal, but not realizing it was actually costing them.

And why are they coming to us saying, well, we're not making any money.

This is why you're not making any money.

You need to either put your sales up or you need to move your market, who you're selling to.

Both, really.

You need to put yourselves up was the end of it.

And yeah, they just, they were just highly resistant because they were selling.

And it was, well, your business model is not right for you because either you're going to be a charity or you're going to be a limited company and try and at least cover your own personal costs.

But yeah, you can't do both, I'm afraid.

So, yeah, that was.

And we never resolved it.

What are you doing?

But you can't take ownership of that because exactly the same advice was given to other clients and they took it on board, they increased their prices.

So it's not something that you're personally responsible for.

You can only give advice.

And it's not for us to push them.

It's not for us to.

They're business owners, you know, they are the boss.

It's their decision.

We can only give them advice and suggestions.

Yeah, it's a very important point, actually, because not everybody will take action on everything we advise them to do because they're just not ready to.

And it might be that that person might now, later on down the line, have put the prices up and might be looking back to the conversations with you and thinking, I wish I'd have listened all that, you know, to the accounts ladies all those years ago.

But, but, you know, because that's what happens, isn't it?

People do eventually, when they do take action, they come back to you and they say, yeah, I wish I'd listened to you a year ago and, you know, done that thing you told me to do, because now I'm doing it, it's great.

But I'm a year behind where I could have been.

And they recognize the change that it's created that they could have done.

But I think also it's, it's, it's, it's good to hear in a way of a client that never took action, you know, because that's the reality of what we do.

You know, not, not 100% of people are going to take action.

Everything we ask them to do, there's going to be resistance.

But it's still around how you continue that relationship with them.

But you can always remind them that you still haven't changed your pricing.

I know you're not going to, but if you do, that will solve all your problems that you keep mentioning to me.

Yeah, the.

Is on you.

I could do no more, you know.

Yeah, yeah, we kept in touch.

We kept the, you know, we still helped, but we stopped charging him for advisory because he wasn't, he wasn't taking action.

Yeah, it's like, well, we can't put you at a loss even further.

So either you're, you know, if this advice isn't working for you until you're ready to put into action our suggestions, then let's, you know, let's put it on pause, let's put it on halt until you're ready.

And that's what we did.

Wasn't going to charge him for something that he couldn't afford.

Yeah.

And I think as well, it's knowing your clients, everybody's different.

Everybody who runs a business has a different personality, has a different way of receiving messages and of consuming the information that you're giving them and whether to take on board the advice.

Some people, you know, found this in the, in the membership before.

Some people are immediately resistant to what you're saying, and then maybe the week after hesitant, and a week after, still a little bit negative.

Then all of a sudden, a couple of weeks down the line, they've taken action.

On it and said how wonderful it is.

But it, but it takes a little bit of time with certain people to gradually, you know, gradually nudge the message home and do it in a subtle but understanding way.

So there's that, there's that type of personality, there's another personality who, who is open to.

To everything and actually run before they can walk and try and change everything too quickly.

And you have to, you have to pull them back and actually say, you know what?

I only want you to do this one step.

If you do, if you try and do five steps, you're.

You're going to run in circles and you're not going to quite get where you want to go because you're going too fast.

So let's slow it down.

And that's hard sometimes.

But there's all these different characters, and with some people, you need to put, you know, virtually put your arm around their shoulder, give them a hug, tell them everything's going to be okay.

And with other people you actually need to be assertive with, you know, because you get to that point and you say, you know what, we've had these sessions now for six months, and we're not really heading towards the targets we've set, the outcomes you want to achieve.

If you're not going to take action, there's not much point in us continuing.

So what you want to do and being a little bit more direct and a little bit more assertive sometimes it also actually jumps them into taking action because they don't want to lose you.

They actually like working with you, But.

And they haven't had.

It hasn't dawned on them that they're not actually getting anywhere.

They think by coming along and listening to you, they're achieving something, but they're actually just that, that they're gaining knowledge from you, but they're not taking action.

And taking action has to be the crucial factor in this.

Yeah, which, which is obviously is why we talk about this topic.

So.

But it's interesting with different personalities, isn't it?

It is.

And I think sometimes they can change because I'm remembering that I'm an avid audiobook listener and I would have a whole catalog of audiobooks that I would suggest when I could see that somebody was struggling with maybe a lack of mentality, lack mindset rather than an abundance mindset.

I would suggest certain books to them.

So.

And I would generally, at the beginning, when we, when we had like an onboarding session for the advisory services, I would explain that I have a lot of different resources and There'd be, there might be YouTube videos or there might be audio books and things that I would want them to listen to that would help them move along the task towards the goal because it's where I've learned from.

So if we were on the same page and we understand same strategies, same mindset, then that would help.

Some people were reluctant, some people were welcoming of the additional resources.

So.

But yeah, I mean, mindset is a big one and accepting and welcoming change.

Understanding the uncomfortable feelings are a measure of the growth that you're going through.

That's why we call them growing pains, because you're growing to the next stage, the next level and there is a physical, uncomfortable, tense shift in your body that your body just tries to keep you safe.

So yeah, it's navigating those as well.

So it was a mindset confidence approach as well.

And it is a good gauge of how successful the client's going to be as to how open they are to those kind of suggestions of reading or listening to or watching those resources, following certain people on social media, et cetera.

But yeah, it's, I find it fascinating, you know, and looking to see how people were at the beginning of the journey towards the end.

But yeah, it rarely happened with the people that resisted or didn't take action.

Say, rarely happened quickly.

It's just a longer journey.

But you can't expect everybody to take action when you tell them to do something.

It's quite a good gauge as well for you.

Measure how many did like a metric, how many of your clients are actually taking action by the next meeting.

And then you can assess whether that's the type of clients you're offering advisory to or whether it's your own advisory skills.

And measure how well you're doing in relation to how much action your clients are taking.

But yeah, choosing the right advisory clients is, is a must.

That's really important.

But that's, that's another conversation.

That's another conversation for another day.

But it make a great topic for, for this, for this podcast.

Well, I think we've covered everything, Deb.

I think that was a great, great conversation.

And these are the sort of conversations we have.

And we have these not just on the podcast, but we do hold some online sessions every Tuesday at 9:00', clock, every Tuesday morning at 9:00'.

Clock.

And we, they're called Crosswalks and Coffee because it's a breakfast meeting and it's just a nice name.

And we've, we've been running these on and off from, for, for over four and a half years now and we bought them back recently.

So if you want to come and join us on Crosses and Coffee and have a chat about any of these topics that you hear on Advisory Conversations and be in a group that is full of your peers, other accounts in the bookkeeping and practice owners that are, you know, there to be supported and also to offer support around the room, then come and join us.

And the way you can come and join us is to head to our Facebook group, which is called Advisory Teams.

So you just go into Facebook, search Advisory Teams and you'll see us there and answer a couple of questions.

Click to join, we'll let you in and then you'll be able to access the zoom links that you require to join us on Tuesdays at 9 o' clock on our crosses of Coffee sessions.

And we'd love to.

We'd love to see you there.

So Deb, thank you very much for the conversation again today.

I love our Advisory Conversations.

It reminds me so much of all the things that we've done in the past and how we've helped clients and how we've had times when we haven't been able to help clients, which is the reality of what we do.

And yeah, just thanks for joining me and we'll be ready to do another episode very soon.

We will.

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.

We'll see you next time.

It.