You need to systemize the process of communicating value. Words are so important. The wrong words will get the “That’s expensive” reaction we all hate. The right words will get the client to buy and buy at higher prices. There is so much at stake with the words we use.
You can systemize the communication by creating standard scripts, proposal templates and pricing brochures for your core accounting services.
This is a story from Jhonatan Aldama, who is getting great results from pricing. If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/K3DoPgayFJc
Jhonatan Aldama’s firm Nuve is based out of Austin, Texas. They are a virtual accounting firm serving clients all across the US and launched in December 2020.
In a recent interview together, Jhonatan shared with me some of his major pricing struggles that he faced...
This interview with Kimme Lafayette demonstrates what is possible when you have a system for value pricing. Read it carefully, there are many learning points.
Even better, watch the full interview which goes into further detail. You can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/-3CJZYRGZps
Kimme is located in Southern Ontario, in the Niagara region, and she’s had her business for about seven and a half years. Kimme focuses on bookkeeping, sales tax filings and payroll tax filings – focusing on being involved with her clients on the day-to-day stuff.
In a recent interview, Kimme told me, “When I started my business, I had been working as a bookkeeper for a company and they were changing all of their staff to subcontractors, and they dictated what my opening rate was going to be - $25 an hour instead of the salary I’d been on.”
This was a challenge for Kimme because...
This is the story of an accountant who has really mastered the value conversation. You can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/PYUcIXFWEeY
Neil Criddle is based in Weston-super-Mare, in the Southwest of the UK. Prior to starting his business, Neil had about 12 years in industry working for lots of large corporates including veterinary, financial services, construction and telecom industries, but no experience with an accountancy firm.
In a recent interview I had with Neil, he told me, “As I got further into my career, I wanted to help people, but in my own kind of way. I’m not a massive fan of following the rules if I think the rules aren’t fit for purpose for the end user. I was doing a lot of good work and getting frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t help people in the way that they would have benefited from because of political red tape and hierarchies. So I started my...
Over the course of 2021, we've added LOADS of exciting new features to Effective Pricing, some of which came from your own great ideas and suggestions.
Here are all the new features added to Effective Pricing over 2021 in case you missed any:
Effective Pricing had some updates which went live at the end of January 2021 relating to proposals. Here is a quick summary of the main changes:
In the top left you could only see 3 of your proposal pages at a time which made it cumbersome managing page ordering with lots of pages. There is now a new icon allowing you to expand or contract the list of proposal pages.
We removed some of the headings from the standard pricing tables you can embed in your proposals. For example, the “Questions” heading on the table where you show your client how they...
I am frequently told by my students in the Value Pricing Academy that price psychology is the most fascinating and powerful aspect of pricing.
In this interview with Jan Baudat, she talks about how she re-priced her clients. Look out for how she uses quantification, the contrast principle, and creates a new anchor when re-pricing.
If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/9SPxX_P3EM0
Jan and her husband Michael are the owners of QB Jan LLC DBA: FitBooks, a business cash flow management service. Together, they handle bookkeeping and remotely support over two dozen QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop clients. Jan currently lives in Cornville, Arizona (near Sedona), and is planning to move to the Weatherford, Texas area in the fall of 2021.
Jan shared with me how she used to struggle with pricing, having not put her prices up in three years, and...
In my last blog post, in this series about getting more stuff done, I talked about the importance of energy and how we can find more energy to promote productivity.
In this blog post, I share with you how to get more clarity in our lives, as well as some of the biggest time-wasting distractions that get in our way, and some tips on how to limit them.
To get more clarity in our lives, what we need to do is figure out what our goals are. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your business to look like?
Have you sat down and thought about your goals and where you want to be? Because a lot of people haven’t done that. So they’re working really hard and putting in lots of hours, but they’re not really going anywhere because they haven’t got that clarity.
One of the foundations that I like to teach is called Vision to Plan, which is a process that I’ve been doing now for 15 years. Because things...
Do you ever struggle with feeling overwhelmed?
We all do.
Because no matter how successful we are or how much stuff we manage to get done, we always want to get more done. So we start to feel overwhelmed and down for a while.
But largely we feel overwhelmed because we drive ourselves too hard. Or, sometimes, it’s because we’re lacking clarity.
In this blog post in a series on how to find the time to get stuff done, I’ll take you through why energy is so important for productivity, and how you can find more energy.
Have you ever had those mornings where you’ve gotten to your desk with a big to-do list that’s been preying on your mind, and you sit there and just think, ‘I’m tired, I can’t, this is too hard, I can’t be bothered’? And the morning drags by because you’re so tired and overwhelmed.
When we feel like that, it’s because we aren’t bringing enough...
Tax planning is a big opportunity to add significant value to our clients. Unfortunately, we often price it completely wrong and miss out on premium fees.
In my latest YouTube video (from a Live Webinar) I teach you strategies for getting bigger fees from tax planning. In this blog post, I’ll give you a snippet of the key principles from that video, but you can watch the whole video here: https://youtu.be/-3J-yiIjn08
We should absolutely NOT be pricing tax planning work based on how long the work takes, because that's completely irrelevant!
No client is ever interested in how many hours we spend doing something. The only thing that clients are interested in is the end result that we can get for them.
And the great thing about tax planning work is that we can get big results for clients.
You need to think very...
In my last blog post, I went over my top 3 tips for becoming more confident when building your online business club, the third of which was to know that you have great content.
In this blog post, I want to show you how you can come up with that amazing content quickly.
The first thing you want to do to create content for your online business club is to come up with a theme. So, what is it that you would teach business owners? And that depends largely on your expertise and what you’re most comfortable with.
For example, if you are a bookkeeper, you might be really switched on with the latest technology as part of financial systems. So you could build your business club around how to be more productive and efficient with your business.
The thing that I would suggest for most people would be some form of Business Advisory because that's where we as a profession can add huge value.
And it's not that difficult to do a lot of...
In my last blog post I went over the essential software and equipment that you need to start running your online business club.
Now, I want to give you 3 top tips for becoming more confident when speaking and teaching online so that you can start overcoming those barriers that I spoke about in a previous blog post.
In my last blog post, I told you the essential software and equipment you needed to get started. Knowing that you have the right equipment, you know how to use it, and it’s all set up correctly is the first step towards being a confident communicator online.
You need to make sure your lighting and camera are good so your audience can see you properly; your audio is good so they can hear you; and you have the right software set up to host your online meetings.
Now, occasionally stuff does go wrong, and that’s okay!
A few months ago, I was delivering a live session and we had...