It was great to see so many of our clients and industry colleagues at the SMSF Association National Conference in Adelaide – thanks to all of you who visited us at the Heffron stand. I’m going to tell myself it was our sparkling wit and fascinating conversation you were after, not the chance to win some great Hunter Valley wine…
But whatever your motivation, thank you for coming to see us. I often wonder how to assess the financial case for sponsoring an event like this. In our case, it’s difficult to draw a direct link between our stand at the conference and specific new business. But what I do notice is a few things that are every bit as valuable.
Our team walks a little bit taller. There is something special about catching up with clients and industry colleagues in person and this particular conference is one of the best places to do that. I love seeing my team spending time with people they mostly talk to by phone and email. I’ve come back with a renewed appreciation of how important it is – we’ve always been a relationship business and the value of “just talking” makes that so clear.
The technical sessions are strong and fundamentally Heffron is still a firm full of technicians – we love to learn new things and hear others’ ideas about common problems.
And finally it’s a time to stop beavering away at the “here and now” work and look around at what else is happening in our industry. I always come back with at least one crazy idea or reinvigorated determination to pursue something I’ve put on the back burner.
We’re back to reality now – the looming May lodgement deadline, an election, inflation over 5% and interest rates on the way back up. But hopefully the feelgood post conference glow will continue for just a little longer.
We were fortunate to be able to launch our latest changes to the Super Toolkit around conference time – our Class integration and a new tool to document Prospective Benefit Payment Instructions (dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s for clients taking payments from multiple different accounts). And thanks to those of you who’ve checked them out and provided feedback already. Please keep it coming. I need a long list of “next things” for Kate Sheringham to work on when she starts next week – in case you missed it, I wrote about her arrival here. It’s the most shared blog I’ve ever written so either you’re as excited as we are or Kate’s mum is a subscriber to Heffron Highlights.