I was at a conference recently talking with a group of partners and directors about advisory.
The pattern was familiar. All the ownership and responsibility sat with them. They were having 100% of the advisory conversations, making 100% of the offers, and carrying 100% of the weight. And if they were lucky, they were reaching 10% of their client base.
Then one partner said,
“That’s not really a problem for us. We have a process. Clients complete a series of online steps and forms before they even get to talk to us. So we only speak to the ones who make it that far.”
At that moment I felt pure exasperation.
Oh no. They’ve completely missed it.
But later, after the conference, it became clear.
The problem wasn’t them. It was me. I had blurred the lines.
If everything is advisory, nothing is delegable.
How Advisory Typically Shows Up
After the conference I started replaying the conversations in my head.
When most accountants hear the word advisory, they picture complex technical advice, high-stakes strategy meetings, delivering insights, making big decisions, offering additional services, running paid packages. In other words, partner-level work.
So of course it stays with them. Of course the team doesn’t step in. Of course it only reaches a small portion of the client base.
If advisory equals delivery and big decisions, it feels too important to distribute.
What Advisory Actually Is
That’s when I realised what I’d done.
I had been using one word to describe four completely different things:
- Advisory mindset – who you are in the room.
- Advisory conversations – how you open and guide dialogue.
- Advisory process – the structured pathway from first invite to ongoing engagement.
- Advisory service types – the level of advisory being delivered.
Those are not interchangeable. But I’d been talking about them as though they were.
And when they’re blended together, advisory feels heavier than it needs to be.
Efficiency Isn’t Engagement
The partner who mentioned the forms wasn’t wrong. They had built efficiency. They had created a filter.
But filtering clients before they speak to you isn’t the same as engaging them.
Efficiency reduces workload. Engagement expands reach.
I don’t believe every client should buy advisory. But I do believe every client should experience it.
Not every client needs a paid strategy package. But every client should, at some point, be invited into a forward-looking conversation. A question about where they are now. A question about where they want to be.
Filtering limits reach. Conversations expand it.
Turning It Into a Team Sport
The bottleneck isn’t that partners are doing too much. The bottleneck is that advisory hasn’t been clearly separated.
Invite conversations feel the same as delivery conversations. Diagnostic conversations feel the same as sales conversations. Reporting feels the same as business improvement.
When everything is labelled advisory, it all feels high-stakes. And when everything feels high-stakes, it stays with the partners.
But once you separate the layers, something shifts.
Some conversations are invitations. Some are exploratory. Some are structured and detailed. Some are ongoing delivery. They do not all carry the same weight. They do not all require the same authority. They do not all need to sit with you.
When that becomes clear, advisory stops being a solo effort and becomes a shared capability.
If you’re only reaching 10% of your client base, it isn’t a capacity problem.
It’s a definition problem.
Fix the definition, and you unlock the team.
Where to From Here?
If this feels uncomfortably familiar, don’t try to solve it on your own.
Don’t spend the next two years building your own advisory process from scratch. You don’t have that kind of time, and your clients shouldn’t have to wait that long.
This isn’t about adding more work. It’s about defining advisory properly so it can be shared properly.
Your clients deserve to experience advisory conversations. Your team deserves the clarity and confidence to step up. And you deserve to stop carrying it all.
The first step is simple. Book a conversation.
Let’s break down what advisory currently means in your firm, where it’s getting stuck, and what the right next move looks like for you and your team.
Clear definition. Practical structure. A path you can actually implement.