Why your clients don't take your good advice; Understand the gap and how to bridge it. The goal is to position the accounting professional as a business advisor to improve profit and cash flow.
Many small business owners see accounting as a commodity—believing all professionals offer the same value. This course challenges that assumption by helping accounting professionals communicate their true worth. Through twenty years of research, we’ve learned that the gap between what accountants offer and what clients understand is largely due to language. Business owners often don’t act on good advice because they don’t grasp its importance. This course shows how to “speak Greek to clients”—using strategic, simplified communication to help them clearly see the value of your expertise.
By bridging this communication gap, accountants can transform their role from mere service providers to trusted business advisors. You'll learn how to educate clients on the strategic impact of your work—without adding time or cost—and shift from being viewed as an expense to an essential investment. Ultimately, this shift enables you to deliver high-value advisory services and price your work based on the outcomes you help create, not just hours or keystrokes.
Dawn Fotopulos is Distinguished Professor of Business at The King’s College, award-winning author of Accounting for the Numberphobic; A Survival Guide for Small Business, and a successful entrepreneur. She has held senior positions in banking, product marketing, and real estate development. She has been a guest expert on MSNBC’s “Your Business” and is a member of Jim Blasingame’s braintrust on his live radio show "The Small Business Advocate". She is the small business expert contributor to Entrepreneur.com and FedEx Money Matters for Small Business. Ms. Fotopulos is a veteran panel moderator for the New York Times American Express Small Business Summit Conference, a speaker at Scaling New Heights and Intuit’s Connect Conferences. She is a certified facilitator for the Kauffman Foundation’s Fast Track Programs and is beloved for her talks on Accounting for the Numberphobic. You can find a treasure trove of advice on Dawn Fotopulos.com as well as courses for accounting professionals on Hidden Profit Academy.com. Professor Fotopulos holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University and a Masters Degree in Business Management with distinction from The Stern School, New York University."
This portal is provided as a training and development resource for City of Markham employees. Every course is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, is quantifiable in hours, and is verifiable — you receive a documented certificate of completion for every course you finish, stored on LearnFormula indefinitely.
If you hold a professional designation (for example in engineering, accounting, human resources, or law), courses may be counted as professionally relevant, verifiable learning activities toward your continuing professional development. Individual practitioners are responsible for confirming that an activity meets the requirements of their professional body. For questions about the City of Markham's training and development policies, please speak with your people leader or Human Resources.
