Communicate a scheduled tax season to your clients and team

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My last column about how to spread out the tax season received plenty of comments and questions. The most common question was: "How do I communicate this new tax season schedule to my team?" Let's address those concerns here. 

Almost everyone agreed that it made sense to spread the workload over the course of the year rather than cramming it into 10 stressful weeks starting just after the Super Bowl. That way, clients would have more time to gather and prepare documents, and accountants could go from being commodity service providers to trusted advisors. So how do we make the leap?

Let's start with your clients: When you announce the new tax season to them, let them know it's a new benefit you're offering. Explain how the new scheduled tax season will allow you to provide better ongoing advice for everyone. And when you're talking to clients year-round instead of for just a few months in the late winter, they're more likely to think of you as a trusted advisor.

When announcing the changes to clients, you can use phrases such as "scheduled tax season" or "proactive is better than reactive" or "scheduled is better than unscheduled." You could conclude with: "As a value to you, our valued clients, we're moving to this new tax season schedule." No one will argue with that. In fact, 80% of clients won't care when you get their returns done as long as they're not paying late fees or penalties for extending.

Communicating the new tax season to your team

As with any kind of change that's announced in organizations, some members of your team may be resistant to the new scheduled tax season. There will always be people afraid of the unknown or inherently uncomfortable with change. If they have a fixed mindset, they just want to maintain the status quo, even though they'll complain every year about how chaotic and stressful "busy season" is. These are the same folks who resist any new tool you bring in, any new pricing structure you introduce or any new way of doing things. This is the time to pull them aside for a private conversation. Let them know the future of tax and accounting is going to be littered with change. They will need to start leaning into change and learn to become part of an anti-fragile firm.

As I mentioned in my article "Becoming an anti-fragile CPA," change is our friend, because change is going to be impacting everyone. If we can adapt to change faster and more confidently than other firms, then we're going to win. Explain that's how we're going to get better because growth = change. 

Some members of your team have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. They will love the new scheduled tax season and will be gung-ho about it. But the majority of your team will be somewhere in the middle: "Sounds interesting," they're thinking to themselves. "I've got a few questions before we plunge ahead, but let's work through the nuts and bolts."

Explain to this cohort the benefits of a scheduled tax season. They'll have more sanity throughout the year. They'll be able to move a lot of work to their client service associates because a lot of it involves organizing data and gathering documents. It's not necessarily going to involve delivering advice. It's going to be lining up a proactive professional calendar, which means they can spend more time as the trusted advisor for clients.

Again, when you roll out the newly scheduled tax season at your firm, 10% of your team will hate it because it's too scary. That's who you'll need to have the hard conversations with.

Another 10% will love it no matter what. Find a way to make those folks your champions. For the 80% in the middle, they just want to know how it's going to be done and that you have a plan in place. Tell these folks: "We've heard you loud and clear. You don't want to be rushed all the time during tax season. You don't want to be burning the candle at both ends. You're frustrated that you can't have meaningful conversations with clients. So, we're moving to a proactive, advisory-style scheduled tax season."

Remind them that since they're already scheduling their books, their closes and so much other work throughout the year, the firm is moving tax season right along with it. Reinforce how the new scheduled tax season will create more stable work and allow them to have more of an advisory-type of relationship with clients under less stressful circumstances. It's a benefit for everyone.

You'll find the 10-80-10 ratio applies to your clients as well as to your team. Some clients will be resistant to change no matter what you do. But the vast majority will be onboard as long as you communicate the change clearly and reassure them that you have a well-conceived plan for rolling it out. Again, for both clients and team members, the messaging must be consistent: "We've heard you loud and clear. The traditional 10-week tax season is way too stressful and compressed to continue doing it year after year. That's why we've introduced this new solution which we think you will enjoy. It should be better for all of us."

And there's no better feeling than setting and exceeding expectations.

As mentioned last time, there are always hiccups when you introduce a new way of doing things, but once you get the kinks out of the new scheduled tax season, you'll never want to go back to the old way of doing things. What are you doing to make the next busy season less stressful and more efficient? I'd love to hear from you.