Doing What’s Expected Is Not a Relationship Strategy

By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group

I had lunch a few months ago with the indirect tax practice leader at a large tax firm. Let's call him Dave. Partway through the meal he started telling me about a proposal one of his teams had lost a few months earlier, an international retail client they had served for five years.

The Work That Always Got Done

A generally strong team in Dave's practice, led by a partner we'll call Alex, handled recurring indirect tax compliance for a well-known retailer that had expanded quickly, with stores across a dozen states and several countries in Europe. They also had an online storefront. This client's operations created state sales tax and VAT obligations across the United States and Europe. The work never stopped. There were constant tax deadlines to meet.

Regular annual and quarterly review meetings happened on schedule. In those meetings, Alex’s team typically walked through status reports, what had been filed, what was outstanding, any notices received from state and overseas tax authorities. Sometimes they added a summary of relevant tax law changes across jurisdictions. Nobody ever asked the indirect tax leader at the client, Joann, what she needed to be successful in front of her internal stakeholders. Nobody showed her what AI tools were making possible in terms of efficiency and insight. Nobody checked whether fees still made sense given what technology had changed about how this work gets done and what the market now charges for it.

None of what was shared with Joann was wrong. It is just that most of it could have been generated by a good AI tool in minutes, reviewed for accuracy, and shared with the client without a meeting. Alex never thought much about it. To Alex, steady delivery and regular status meetings were the foundation of his client relationship.

Where the Client's Attention Actually Was

While Alex's team managed the day-to-day, Joann was doing something else. She was going to conferences. She was taking calls from other firms. She was seeing and hearing what best-in-class service could look like, which turned out to be considerably more than a status report and periodic tax law updates.

When an RFP arrived from the client's procurement department, Alex's team spent two days debating how to handle a handful of recent late filings. Should they proactively address them in their proposal, or stay quiet and let their relationship carry the weight?

That was the wrong debate entirely. The late filings were the least of it. The real issue was five years of tax filings and review meetings that never once asked the client what she needed to succeed personally in her role, never focused on the company’s business strategy, never demonstrated anything that pushed beyond the scope of services the team was engaged to perform. Joann's eyes had moved to the art of the possible. Alex's team was still looking at their to-do list.

What Came Out Over Hamburgers

Dave did not find any of this out until weeks after the loss. A mutual friend, who neither of them knew was mutual until that afternoon, had invited Dave and the client's CFO to the same backyard barbecue.

They got to talking, and somewhere between cold iced tea and hot juicy hamburgers the CFO mentioned almost in passing why their company had switched indirect tax providers. Good governance required a competitive process, so one happened. But finding a new service provider had been on the tax department's agenda well before the RFP ever went out.

The winning firm had asked what international expansion meant for the business's global growth strategy. They showed Joann and her team where many global tax authorities were heading in terms of compliance monitoring, and how AI-driven technology could help them get ahead of any challenges. They reviewed their fees against what the market was charging and where the future of service delivery was heading for comparable work. Then they came in with meaningfully lower fees.

Nobody on Alex's team had done any of that. They had been too busy filing tax returns.

Look Honestly at Your Accounts

If you run recurring work for a client, ask yourself when you last had a conversation that had nothing to do with status. When did you last show them something new? When did you last ask what the individual client needs to succeed in their own role? When did you last check whether your fees still made sense given what technology has changed about how the work gets done?

The filing, the reporting, the showing up on time: that is the price of staying in the relationship. It is rarely going to be the reason a client chooses to keep you.

Alex's team did not fail. They just never did anything beyond the work itself, and it took a backyard barbecue to find out that just doing the work was not enough.

Mitchell Schuckman is the Founder and CEO of The Schuckman Group LLC. He is a Professional Certified Coach credentialed by the International Coaching Federation and the author of I'll Tell You a Great Story. theschuckmangroup.com

Note on privacy: Some examples are composites. All identifying details have been changed.