Partner POV

Kathleen O’Toole, MBA, MST

Partner and Chief Marketing Officer
PKF O’Connor Davies

Kathleen joined PKF O’Connor Davies as Chief Marketing Officer in 2014 and leads the firm’s creative marketing and business development initiatives. She plays a direct role in cultivating client relationships with a proactive approach to thought leadership, events and client communication that elevates the firm’s technical expertise.

How important is building strong client relationships to your firm’s overall growth strategy?

Simply put, our brand is built on the strength of our client relationships. When I first came on board, I was amazed by the ability of our partners and service teams to go beyond technical guidance and build personal connections with clients. As client needs and the marketplace changes, we are constantly having conversations about how to continue evolving and providing exceptional service. Everything we do is centered around our solid relationships and adding value where we can.

What opportunities are other firms missing when it comes to client relationships?

One thing that we pride ourselves on is proactively communicating with our clients. This is most prevalent during the busy season. What I hear from clients is they can feel lost in the race to the deadline, and they want confirmation that their emails and voicemails have been received and all is in good order. The small effort to send a quick email or make a phone call goes a long way.

The biggest vulnerability for sustained client service excellence is failing to communicate with clients throughout the entire process. We are here because of our clients and their experience informs everything that we do. It is easy to lose sight of that in a hectic week, but it is with great risk that we forget that.

When the COVID-19 outbreak made personal interaction effectively impossible how did you continue to connect with your clients?

During the pandemic, we, like so many firms, converted to mostly digital communications overnight but also realized we needed to be there for our clients more than ever. First, we reached out to every client by phone to let them know they were not alone and that we would be in touch frequently with information that was relevant to their business and the economic landscape. We also understood the necessity of being there for the business community regardless of their client status, so we ramped up our thought leadership and started producing content at an unrivaled pace and sent it to anyone who asked. We got incredible feedback, with people on our social channels saying our content was the“safest port in the COVID storm.” By also launching a robust webinar platform, in an unexpected way we were connecting with our clients and the business community at large, as effectively as ever.

Have you maintained that approach in our post-pandemic marketplace?

We are in the business of helping people and sharing our “smarts”is our chief go-to-market strategy, so we have only pressed down on the accelerator. We publish quality content two to three times each week and, on average, we touch clients with a marketing delivery a minimum of two times per month. We are also very respectful of their time so we capture their preferences in our onboarding process so they only see content of interest to them.

How do you manage to produce so much content in the highly technical accounting world?

It is truly a community effort. Collaborating with the marketing team to produce thought leadership is highly encouraged by everyone from our executive team down. We host a weekly brainstorm and everyone, at all levels, is welcome to pitch ideas, discuss what we see in the marketplace, and participate in the process. We have experts in so many fields across the spectrum and do our best to instill a “help us, help you” mindset among those with business development and client service outlooks. Whether our team member is an entry-level associate or a partner, if they want to be a thought leader we are here to help. Our clients count on us to keep them informed.

Interview by Kristofer Lenz