Your Advisory Practice Is a Secret. That's a Problem.
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Your clients are drowning in messy books, staffing gaps, and decisions they can't make without better financial data. And you have exactly the skills to help them. So why aren't they asking.
Because they don't know you offer it.
A new report from CPA.com highlights a growing challenge inside accounting firms globally: client advisory services (CAS) are among the highest-value offerings a practice can deliver, but most clients never find out about them. Not because the services aren't good. Because nobody explained them.
For South African accountants in practice, this hits close to home. Many CBAPs are already delivering outsourced accounting, cash flow support, and financial reporting to SME clients. But they're often doing it quietly, without a name for it, without a structured service, and without charging what it's worth. As explored in CIBA's own guide on shifting from compliance work to advisory, the gap between what accountants do and what they charge is often a positioning problem, not a skills problem.
The research points to five things that separate advisory practices that grow from those that stagnate:
The first is internal conversations. The professionals most likely to spot advisory opportunities are the ones already in front of clients: those handling tax returns, reviewing financials, or managing monthly reporting. If they know what to listen for, they can open the right conversation at the right time. If they don't, the moment passes.
The second is focus. Firms that spread their advisory work across too many industries end up reinventing the wheel with every new client. The ones that grow pick two or three sectors where they have real knowledge and build depth there. For a CBAP working with retail or construction clients, this means developing sector-specific expertise that makes your advice harder to replicate and easier to price.
The third is incentives. People do what they're rewarded for. If your team has no reason to bring in advisory work, they won't. Firms that have built successful advisory practices have made it worth their team's while to spot and refer opportunities.
The fourth is knowing the triggers. A client who just lost their bookkeeper. A business that hands over a mess of spreadsheets every year-end. A growing SME that doesn't know if they can afford to hire. These are the moments when advisory conversations are most welcome. And when you know what to listen for, you start hearing them everywhere.
The fifth is showing your tools. Advisory services run on technology that's visual, intuitive, and impressive when demonstrated. Dashboards showing real-time cash flow, headcount, or profitability are far more persuasive than a brochure. If your clients could see what you can see, many would ask for it immediately.
For South African practitioners, the opportunity is real. SMEs make up the backbone of the economy, and most of them are underserved when it comes to financial management support. As covered in our feature on how the fastest-growing firms are winning, the firms pulling ahead are the ones that have made advisory a structured, marketed, and intentionally delivered service, not something that happens informally when a client asks a good question.
Your advisory capability is not the problem. Making sure your clients know it exists is.