Advisory Is A Skill. Develop It.
Move from gut feelings to measurable growth in your client conversations
When you decided to pursue accounting as a profession, you probably weren’t expecting you’d have to be so adaptable. Taxes are supposed to be as old as time or death, or however that saying goes!
But the way we deliver tax information to our clients is far more fluid. As it becomes easier for the average person to prepare their own tax returns online, more clients want their accountants to lean into their role as financial advisors.
They’re looking for a relationship with a professional who can help them navigate their finances, answer their (often-panicked) questions and strategize with them on their goals.
If you really enjoyed creating a perfectly balanced return in the comfort of your cubicle, this is really annoying! But you’re not “bad at advisory,” you’ve just never practiced it.
Advisory isn’t a talent you either have or you don’t. It’s a muscle that can be developed with time, feedback and intention. Like any skill, it gets easier, stronger and more natural the more you work at it.
No One Taught You How to Talk Like an Advisor
You already trained for the technical parts of your job. You studied tax code, memorized compliance rules, learned how to explain Schedule C to a sleep-deprived freelancer. This didn’t happen by accident; it took practice.
(And for some of us, it took a handful of CPA exams before we even passed.)
Advisory deserves the same kind of training, but most accountants never got it. It wasn’t talked about in school and you certainly weren’t being trained during tax season. Even most of our continuing education focuses on rules and regulations instead of communication.
So, when you find yourself stumbling through a client conversation or spiraling after a call that didn’t land the way you wanted, it’s not a sign you’re bad at this. It’s a sign you’ve been thrown into a situation you were never really taught to handle.
Conversation Skills Can Be Learned
There’s this idea that you either “get” client work, or you don’t. You’re either a numbers person or a people person. But that’s a trap. You’re a professional and professionals polish their skills.
You can prepare for hard conversations before they happen. You can workshop how to explain ERC without going full IRS robot. You can listen to yourself and notice your habits. You can build new ones.
This is the kind of practice that separates decent advisors from transformational ones.
Growth Can Be A Metric
A lot of accountants measure their advisory skill based on how they felt after a call. Did I sound confident? Did the client seem happy? Was that a weird silence? Did I talk too much?
Those questions matter, but they’re not the whole picture! That’s why it helps to have data.
Navi is a conversation intelligence tool built for accountants and advisors. It listens to your real client and colleague calls and gives you personalized feedback across five key areas that matter in advisory work: clarity, authenticity, engagement, action and impact.
It doesn’t just tell you, “good job” or “talked too long.” It shows you what landed, why something else didn’t and how your skills are growing over time. It turns your gut feelings into actual growth patterns so you can see your progress instead of guessing at it.
You’re Not Behind. You’re Just New.
The shift from tax prep to advisory can feel massive because it is. But it doesn’t mean you’re bad at it. It means you’re learning. And like any technical skill you’ve mastered, communication is something you can train, sharpen and grow over time.
Advisory isn’t just about knowing what to say, it’s about learning how to say it in a way that lands. That part takes practice.
Navi makes it so that every conversation is a chance to get a little clearer, a little more attuned, a little more effective.
Advisory is part of the job now, that’s not changing. It’s a skillset that you’ll keep building for the rest of your career, and Navi is here to support you as you do.
