Month: November 2026

In an earlier piece I described the 1-2-3 method: five deliberate choices per week, three steps, upstream. Here I make it concrete, using one segment I approach myself: accountants. Not by chance. The accountant is the sharpest example of the shift from my first blog. Their artefact, the annual accounts, is precisely what automation and AI are taking over. And so their entire value shifts to the conversation.

Why now: the accountant beyond the numbers

Digitalisation, automation and AI are changing the accountancy sector at record speed. Productivity rises, administration fades into the background. But the client is no longer satisfied with an explained set of annual accounts or a dashboard that looks nice and says nothing. They have already seen those numbers themselves, and an AI summarises them just as well. What they are looking for is someone who helps them understand what the numbers mean, and what they now need to decide.

Jeroen Meens calls it the great unbundling: no sudden disruption, but a thousand small threads, technology, platforms, standardisation, that together pull apart the integrated role of the accountant (Meens 2025). Anyone who wants to keep creating value has to get beyond the numbers. In a classic annual-accounts conversation, only about thirty minutes actually go to the numbers themselves; the rest is about tax, the future and strategy. That is exactly where the growth lies, in that conversation. And that is exactly where most firms are weakest.

The job-to-be-done: valuable conversations, not another tool

If you ask the accountant what they really need, the answer is rarely ‘another tool’. Their actual task, their job-to-be-done (Christensen and Raynor 2003), is this: enabling themselves and their staff to have valuable conversations, from but above all beyond the numbers. That is the lens through which I select and write. Not ‘which accountant can use my service?’, but ‘which accountant feels this task most acutely?’.

Step 0: selection, digitally mature because that is the tipping point

Five accountants per week, deliberately chosen. My most important criterion is digital maturity. That seems counter-intuitive, but it is precisely where the tension sits. A firm that has not yet digitalised does not feel the problem yet: it is still busy with the administration. A firm that is fully digitalised and satisfied does not move. But the digitally mature firm sits at the tipping point: the efficiency has been won, the time has been freed up, and that is exactly where the question forces itself in: what now? That is the moment when my message lands.

Besides maturity, the same two criteria apply as in the generic method: the sweet spot of shared connections (Granovetter 1973; Burt 1992) and real context. I read what a firm says publicly, how it is structured, what drives it. Only once I know something real about them do I earn their attention.

Step 1: the tailored letter, with two reasons, and the postcard

Step 1 is a physical package: a personal, handwritten letter with a postcard. The letter never opens about me. It opens with two reasons why I am contacting this particular firm, reasons that fit no other firm. The first is what I recognise in who they are: their structure, a statement, their ambition. The second is the tension I see: the next step, beyond efficiency, has not yet been taken. This is what such a letter looks like.

Sample letter

Dear [name],

‘Automation is an aid, not a solution in itself’, you said publicly not long ago. So you know exactly where the limit lies. The efficiency has been won. The next step has not yet been taken, and it does not lie in better tools. It lies in better conversations.

Value emerges in conversations. Not in your strategy, not in your tools, not in your software. But in the conversation you have with clients. From and beyond the numbers: not presenting the annual accounts, but asking what they mean for the client, where he wants to go, what is holding him back.

Not every client deserves your best conversation. That question forces another: who are you yourselves, and what firm do you want to be five years from now?

Soon I will send you a LinkedIn connection request. Accept? Then I will gladly call. Do not accept? Keep this card. The moment will probably come.

Marc Neyrinck · neyrinckneirynck.be

The postcard does something different from the letter. It makes the value of the conversation tangible in a single image. The front carries one sentence that captures the tipping point. The back points to neyrinckneirynck.be, which as a landing page answers the question ‘what is this about?’ before I call. Not a sales page, but a verification screen: who is this Marc, and is this worth my time?

Postcard concept

Front: “Your annual accounts are done. Now the conversation begins.” (alternative: “From numbers house to co-pilot.”)

Back: a short line plus QR code to neyrinckneirynck.be. “Two engines, one mission: the COCKPIT method for the conversation, ClariTalk to make it measurable.”

Step 2: the connection, they choose

I do not push. The letter ends with a choice, and the recipient makes it themselves: accept the LinkedIn connection request, or keep the card for later. That is not a politeness formula, it is the principle from my first blog put into practice. The accountant stands on equal footing and is in the driver’s seat. Whoever chooses to connect enters the conversation as an equal, not as prey. Scarcity instead of volume: someone who feels they were deliberately chosen responds differently (Cialdini 1984).

Step 3: the conversation, about them

If they accept the connection, I call for a conversation. No pitch. A conversation about them: their firm, their clients, their challenges. I lead with questions, not with an offer (Rackham 1988): what is changing in your world, where do you want to be in five years, which client deserves your best conversation? It is exactly the conversation I teach them to have with their own clients, from and beyond the numbers. I do what I sell. That is the strongest demonstration there is.

In my very first contact I already do what I teach them: a conversation that has value.

Why this works on equal footing

Every step follows from the first blog. The accountant is the professional whose artefact, the annual accounts, lost its self-evident value. Their answer is the conversation beyond the expertise. My approach respects that from beginning to end: I select whoever feels the task most acutely, I open with what I understand of them, I let them choose, and I have a conversation that is sensemaking (Adamson 2022), not a sales pitch, because value emerges in the interaction, not in what you show (Vargo and Lusch 2004). A handwritten letter instead of yet another email, five names instead of two hundred. That is how you approach a sector that already knows everything: not by selling harder, but by showing in your very first contact how a valuable conversation feels.

In practice: five firms per week. For each: digitally mature, two real reasons, one handwritten letter with a postcard, and then waiting until they choose. No campaign, no bulk. Instead, week after week, a handful of conversations that ripen at the right moment. From and beyond the numbers, exactly as I teach it to them.

References

• Adamson, Brent. 2022. “Sensemaking for Sales.” Harvard Business Review 100 (1): 48–57.
• Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Christensen, Clayton M., and Michael E. Raynor. 2003. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
• Cialdini, Robert B. 1984. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: William Morrow.
• Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.
• Meens, Jeroen. 2025. “De grote ontbundeling van de accountant.” LinkedIn, 26 november 2025.
• Rackham, Neil. 1988. SPIN Selling. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Vargo, Stephen L., and Robert F. Lusch. 2004. “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 68 (1): 1–17.

Series · Value in the conversation · Add Business