Adding Advisory, Keeping Compliance: A Roadmap to Expand Your Firm’s Value

There’s one nagging question front and centre for every practice owner: how do you protect the reliability of compliance fees while grabbing the larger, future-proof margins that advisory commands? Mark Holton of Smithink, fresh from receiving an Order of Australia for three decades of community service, guided Summit attendees through the exact playbook that lifted his own firm from fee-pushback weariness to a thriving advisory engine. If you have wondered when and where to start, his twenty-five-year journey offers a ready-made path.

“One thing I know about advisory in an accounting firm is that it doesn’t replace anything. This is a value add.” — Mark Holton

Below is a practical guide that adapts Holton’s lessons for your own firm, complete with quick wins, pricing tips, and a client-selection filter you can apply this week.

Why Your Compliance-Only Model Is Under Pressure

Tax lodgements and year-end accounts remain the bedrock of most firms, yet margin squeeze keeps getting worse. Clients compare quotes online. Legislators automate filings. Off-shore providers undercut hourly rates. Holton’s firm felt the pinch years ago and discovered that backwards-looking services alone could not fund growth.

Advisory flips the lens to tomorrow. It tells owners how to reach targets, not just what they owed last year. That forward focus commands strategic fees which are harder for competitors to undercut.

Mindset Shift

1. Compliance answers what happened. Advisory answers what happens next and how to improve it.
2. “Advisory is looking at what is going to happen next.” — Mark Holton

Surface the Real Bottlenecks Before You Start

Firms usually blame “lack of time”, but Holton insists that is a symptom. The root causes fall into three buckets:

BottleneckTypical SymptomFix Before Scaling AdvisoryCapacity gapsWIP pile-up, slow turnaround, high debtor daysStreamline workflow, tighten debtor control, automate low-value tasksWrong people in wrong rolesPartners crunching data, juniors fielding strategy callsReassign or hire so that relationship builders advise and analysts processNo measurementAdvisory hours hidden in general codesCreate separate job numbers and P&L lines for every advisory service “The two things that kill advisory: lack of commitment from the top and lack of capacity within.” — Mark Holton

Build the Infrastructure That Lets Advisory Scale

Holton formalised advisory as its own division, mirroring the structure firms already use for financial planning or audit. You can do the same by answering six questions:

1. Which services first? Start with cash-flow, KPI dashboards, and quarterly Board of Advice meetings.
2. Who qualifies? Target the top 20 percent of clients or those “leaking cash” who will feel quick wins.
3. How will we price? Fixed monthly packages tied to outcomes rather than hours.
4. Who delivers? An advisory champion plus data analysts. Partners stay client-facing.
5. What tech stack? Cloud budgeting and scenario tools integrated with the ledger. Keep spreadsheets for edge cases only.
6. How do we renew? Every project must feed into a recurring plan-review cycle.

Follow the Seven-Step Enabler Model

Holton’s team distilled years of trial and error into one repeatable framework. Replicate it inside your firm to minimise false starts.

Step 1: Prepare the Firm

Fix capacity, structure, and resource gaps before you promote advisory.

Step 2: Unlock Client Needs

Run discovery meetings that probe five hotspots – strengths, weaknesses, risks, funding goals, succession goals.

Step 3: Create Positive Disturbance

Highlight the gap between today’s position and the owner’s future target. Urgency drives buy-in.

Step 4: Analyse with Purpose

Dashboards, budgets, and scenario tools anchor the dollar impact of that gap.

Step 5: Support Implementation

Guide clients through debtor collection, price reviews, or stock controls instead of handing them a lonely report.

Step 6: Manage Additional Needs

Wins lead naturally to estate planning, grant applications, strategic plans, or lending assessments.

Step 7: Generate New Opportunities

• Offer scenario planning so owners can “see the financial impact of decisions before they commit.”
• “How would you like to see the financial impact of key business decisions before you make them?” — Mark Holton

Quick-Win Service Bundles You Can Launch This Quarter

Starter ServiceClient Pain SolvedFollow-On UpsellFinancial Health CheckUnclear performance driversKPI dashboard and monthly coachingBusiness Value IndicationGap between today’s worth and future needsSuccession plan and annual valuation updatePre-lending AssessmentLoan rejections, punitive ratesOngoing banking covenant monitoringQuarterly Board of AdviceAccountability drift, no clear milestonesScenario modelling, tax planning, exit roadmap Select Clients Who Will Act and Pay

Holton grades every client A to D. Your pilot group should sit in B class – decent payers with one clear pain point, such as rising debtor days. They value guidance and have budget yet are hungry enough for change.

Quick Filter

• Growth mindset?
• Pays on time most of the time?
• One metric moving the wrong way?
• Open to advice and collaboration?
• If any answer is no, park them for later.

Price for Outcomes, Not Hours

Hourly billing shouts “commodity”. Advisory pricing should reflect strategic impact:

• Bundle dashboards, meetings, and phone support into a fixed monthly fee.
• Anchor price against upside improved cash-flow, interest saved, or valuation uplift.
• Reserve premium tiers for scenario work that helps owners avoid six-figure mistakes.

Track, Tweak and Prove the ROI

Create separate codes for every advisory service and monitor:

• Average fee per advisory client
• Advisory margin versus compliance margin
• Proposal acceptance rate
• Capacity usage by role

The data will guide you toward the most profitable services and flag any resource crunch early.

Protect Yesterday, Invest in Tomorrow

Holton closed his Summit session with a simple dare: grow revenue without increasing the proportion of compliance work. His roadmap makes that entirely doable.

1. Fix capacity first.
2. Target the right 20% of clients.
3. Follow the seven-step enabler framework.
4. Productise small wins and price for impact.
5. Measure everything.

Reliable compliance keeps the doors open. Structured advisory flings them wide and the sooner you start, the sooner both you and your clients reap the rewards.