Lauren: I am going to have the honour of introducing Michael Breit. He is the Vice Chair of Strategic Relationships at EisnerAmper. He oversees existing client relationships and he’s focused on really building new business relationships to help meet – help the Firm meet its growth goals.

For those of you who are not familiar with EisnerAmper, because I always like to make sure, it’s the leading full-service Accounting and Advisory Firm and among the largest in the United States.

They provide audit, accounting, tax services, as well as corporate finance, internal audit, you name it. I want to make sure we can kind of firmly kind of root Michael’s comments in the kinds of relationships they have with firms across the county.

He also leads the Firm’s Sports and Entertainment group. He was formerly Partner in charge of the New York office. And in addition, he’s a Member of the Firm’s Executive Committee. Prior to joining EisnerAmper, he was the partner at Ernst & Young for 20 years. 

Most importantly though, he’s got some hidden skills. He is very much a resonance man. I was doing a little research and he speaks three languages at least – that’s what I could find. He speaks English – which I think is what he’s going to use today – and Hebrew and Spanish. So a very well-rounded individual and I know an amazing Modern Revenue Leader.

So Michael, you have our attention and you have the floor.

Michael: Lauren, thank you. Wow. What an introduction. I don’t know what to do. I’m very, very humbled. But Lauren and Kelvin, thank you. Thank you for this platform.

And Sekou, you are a hard act to follow. You said that you were going to give tidbits and they were – believe me – extraordinarily profound. And I’m going to take the same thing that Sekou started – with the three things. The three things that are most important to me, to EisnerAmper.

When I – when we came into the pandemic, we always said, you know, look, we have so much technical knowledge at EisnerAmper and we speak with our clients. We can’t lead with our technical knowledge. We have people who are at home, who might have childcare issues, an elderly parent. We have to go with our emotional intelligence, our EQ.

And Kelvin, you might know this. Our mentor together at Ernst & Young, the Head of Sales, Larry Charney, it came just from him. “Lead with the EQ,” which is almost the same thing that Sekou said, “Be empathic.” Your clients are going through some challenges. Find out how they are. Show that you care. And we said that not only to all of our partners, all our managers, all of our senior managers. So, that was Number 1. 

Number 2 was that when I got the job as Vice Chair Strategic Relationships, 15 months ago, it was only 45 days before the pandemic happened. And my boss, CEO, [Charlie Winston? 00:02:45] said, “Michael, I want you to instill a sales culture within the entire Firm.

Now as a Professional Services Firm, when we started out over 50 years ago, it was only the two Founders that brought in the business. And later on, more Partners brought in business. But as accountants, as Kelvin and many of you know, we’re not naturally born salespeople.

So, what we had to do, we had to have a lot of training in sales. But still, when I came into the job, there was this notion that only the Partners sell. And I eliminated that. I said, “No, we can’t have just the Partners sell. We have people who are on the ground, doing the audit, seeing the operations, speaking with the CFOs, the controllers and finding out the problems and finding out some of the holes and how we could fix them.”

So instead of training 200 people virtually on sales, we trained 900 people. We wanted all our Managers, our CA Managers, our Directors, getting those go-to-market skills in a pandemic, knowing how to sell virtually. So, we changed the paradigm around.

We said, you know, “Instead of just the Partner selling, we’re all selling right now.” And that has changed everything. Because now, everyone has this business development mindset. And that’s really what I tried to do. And guess what? Not only will we retrain 900 people this year, we’re going to go up to 1600. So that was Number 2.

And Number 3, is we lead by industry. So I’ve always been a Sports and Entertainment guy. And if you really know the Sports and Entertainment industry, you’re going to really connect with potential new business. Because they’re going to say, “Hey. He really knows what he’s talking about.” 

We recently got one of the leading largest hedge fund launches on the West Coast. And why did we do that? Because our Business Developer, not only knew the fund, but knew the bank they were dealing with, knew the Law Firm they were dealing with and recommended a fund administrator.

So, when that Business Developer connected with the CEO, he knew exactly what he needed for the business. He knew all his partners. We developed relationship with the bank, the attorneys, the fund administrator and got the client.

So, if you could be as wired in, in a specific industry in our business, that’s the holy grail. That’s how you win new business. You step in to choose the CEO, you help them and then you help them with their operations. Then, all of a sudden, you don’t need to sell anything. They want to buy things from you. And that’s the Manna from Heaven. Once you have a potential prospect, you’re not selling, they’re buying from you. That’s when you know you’ve reached your Manna.

So, those are my three things. I know they’re not nearly as profound as Sekou’s. And I will leave you with that.

Note: The following text is transcribed from the event audio. It’s largely accurate, but in some cases it may be a bit off due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It’s intended as an aid to understanding the event, but it shouldn’t be treated as an authoritative record.