Joe Woodard: Move Beyond Reports--Deliver Results | The Disruptors

Dashboards and statements aren’t enough—accountants must help clients turn data into action. The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrJoe Woodard sees a disconnect between what accountants think they’re selling and what clients want to buy. Many accountants still think they’re selling time, but as Woodard points out with a vivid analogy, that’s not what clients care about.MORE STREAMING: Baker: Find True Purpose to End Burnout | Brolin: The W.I.N. Leadership Formula | Gertrudes: How EOS & “Unreasonable Hospitality” Reshaped GrowthLab | Vilms: The Power of People in a Tech-Driven World | Dickerson: From Diagnosis to Disruption | Kapilovich: Treat People Like People | Martha Yasso: From Wall Street to Main Street | Jackie Meyer: Tax Plans in 90 Seconds? Believe It | Erica Goode: Build a $200K Firm in 15hrs/Week |“If I'm going into CVS and I need Tums,” he explains, imagine if CVS charged you more because “I hung around in their store for twice as long to buy the Tums as I needed to, I took a circuitous path. Maybe I looked at some of the kids’ toys for an upcoming birthday party where they’re going to charge me twice as much for the Tums.”This absurd scenario mirrors what accounting firms do to clients when the cost of delivering the service depends on the time it takes to do the work, so “the value of the product changes based on some arbitrary time metric,” Woodard says. “As long as that’s the case, there’s always going to be a resistance to the billing for selling the wrong product.”However, even among firms that have adopted value pricing, a disconnect remains because the focus is on deliverables rather than outcomes.