I am going to share with you the three S’s of niche building.

It’s critical that you start developing niches, develop a real focus and find your specialism. The specialist always makes more money than the generalist.

If you want to get better prices, win more work and earn more money and better quality clients - you need to focus and build a niche.

Let’s look at the three S’s of niche building…

You can watch the video here.

Sector

Is there a particular industry that you are particularly fascinated by?

It could be the dental industry for example. Or perhaps doctors. Maybe you are interested in the construction industry, or the restaurant industry.

There are a lot of sectors to choose from, but you should pick one that interests you.

Stage

Think about the life-cycle of of a business.

They start, and at some point the business owner may sell their business. Think about the different types of businesses, the circumstances they could be in.

It may be you...

How do you feel about selling? I’m guessing a little bit uncomfortable. It’s common in our profession.

Here’s the good news...

You can stop selling!

Instead, change your mindset. You aren’t selling to clients, you are allowing them to buy.

You are an expert in what you do. Experts don’t need to sell - people will come to you.

You don’t need to be using sales techniques. You just need to allow people to buy.

You can watch the video on how to do that here.

Some people aren't a good fit

When you meet potential clients, the goal is to establish if they are a good fit for your business. Do you feel you could work with them? Do you think they would be a good client? Do they have the right characteristics, personality and business? They will be doing the same thing with you.

You will find some people are not a good fit - it’s totally fine to walk away from those people. Make it your mindset that you can walk away...

You can’t right price the wrong clients.

Let me explain what that means…

A huge problem in our profession is accountants and bookkeepers working crazy long hours and not making enough money.

One of the main reasons this is happening is accounting professionals have the wrong mindset. We want to win every single client out there. We want to grow our firms and keep taking on clients.

But not every client is a good client.

Watch the video I did on this here.

There will always be some clients out there that no matter how much you build value, communicate value, give them choices, options, use menu pricing - all of the best value pricing techniques - they will still not value what you do.

You will never get the right price with those people because they have unrealistic expectations. They are probably just looking for the cheapest provider and that’s not what you are.

They may be the sort of person that has cashflow issues, or they may be a...

As you make your journey to value pricing, one of the very best places to start is Menu Pricing.

We know that different customers value different things, they all want to pay different prices - so let them. Give them three choices - Bronze, Silver and Gold.

Menu Pricing works.

That’s why you see successful businesses like Apple, Starbucks and Intuit using it.

I have so many stories of people increasing their prices by 20% or more. Some people say that menu pricing doesn’t work - those people clearly aren’t doing it right.

I’m going to share a 7-step framework that will help you to build really effective packages.

You can watch the video here.

#1 - Number

You need to decide how many bundles you are going to offer.

I recommend three. This is because of the psychology of the magic of three. It’s proven to be the best number with some exceptions. Unless you can prove another number works better, start with three.

...

If you want to grow your firm, and if you want to narrow down your niche by specialising, then one of the best ways to attract new clients is content marketing.

You need to be creating content and putting it out there for clients to see to build up your positioning, build a reputation as the expert and win new customers.

I put out one YouTube video and one blog post every single week.

In fact, you can check out the video here.

You may be wondering how I do that. Perhaps you feel you are too busy to write a blog post every week. The truth is - so am I.

I haven’t got the time to film a video every week.

I batch it.

I will typically, once or twice a year, do everything in one go. I will make 12 months' worth of content in a couple of days.

I start by spending a day of preparation. I brainstorm and come up with 26 topics. I think of all the things I can teach, in my case I consider what it is that accountants and bookkeepers can teach to their ideal...

If you want to get the best prices, you must involve your client in the pricing process.

Every client is different.

We all value things differently. You need to price the customer, not the service.

You can watch the video here.

There is a big mistake that I see people making in the profession, it’s a mistake that I myself made when I first started my own accounting practice in the 90s.

I didn’t understand value pricing...

I would meet with clients every single week, and I would talk about all the amazing things we could do for them. At the end of the meeting, they would ask me the price question and I would say:

‘That’s a great question. Let me go away and think about it. I will write you a proposal.’

Please don’t EVER do this.

Think about the last time you received a proposal or quote...

Perhaps you were having your house decorated, or your garden landscaped. When you get a quote or proposal sent...

We need to become better at communicating value because your clients don’t understand what you do.

Your clients are not accountants or bookkeepers. They aren’t trained - they have no idea what an accounting professional does. It’s your job to help them understand what you do, why you do it, and how it can benefit the client.

One of the techniques we can use is quantification.

But how do you quantify a benefit? How do you quantify value?

You can watch the video here.

Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s really difficult. Sometimes it’s objective, sometimes it’s subjective.

If we are talking about tax planning services, it’s a little bit easier because we can quantify the amount of tax you may save the client. When we quantify and measure the amount of tax at stake and how much we can save, that helps us to communicate the value.

It helps to calculate a value-based price.

The thing is, you don’t have to be 100%...

You know those bad clients that waste your time when you meet with them? Everyone has them.

Not all clients are good clients. Some are great, and some are terrible. Your time is precious, you shouldn’t be wasting it on bad clients. I have three tips for avoiding those time-wasters by pre-qualifying them.

You can watch the video here.

#1 - Position yourself

It’s really important that you position yourself correctly so that you only attract appropriate clients who are going to be genuinely interested in your services.

Consider how you position yourself on your website.

What type of firm are you? What type of clients do you want? Put that on your website.

#2 - Customer Intake Form

If somebody wants to meet with you because they are looking to change their accounting professional, then a great tool that some very switched on firms use is to ask people to fill in a questionnaire first.

This could be on your website, or through something...

How do you know when you’ve got the price just right?

The answer is simple - you can’t.

You will never know when your prices are right. Everyone values your work differently; they are all willing to pay different prices.

Every buyer has a maximum willingness to spend. You can’t simply ask them what that number is because they are never going to tell you. But there are ways of knowing you have got very close to their maximum.

You can watch the video here.

The first thing you need to realise is if you reveal a price to your client and they say yes straight away, you have gone in too cheap.

They probably have a number in their head that’s their maximum willingness. If you give a price that’s below that number they will take you up on it straight away and you won’t get a chance to change the price - but they would have paid more. You’ve left money on the table.

You need to start with a high price. If the client says ‘...

Building a niche is really important. I’ll give you five reasons why…

You can watch the video here.

#1 - Specialists always make more money than generalists

Specialists always make more money than generalists. We see this in every industry. The brain surgeon earns more money than the general practitioner.

#2 - specialise in a particular industry 

A niche allows you to specialise in a particular industry or type of work. You can get deeper into it and learn so much more. The deeper you go, the more knowledge and experience you get, the more value you will be able to give to your clients.

#3 - Saves time

It saves you a ton of time. For example, if you decide to do any type of tax planning, tax compliance for clients, then as part of your CPD training, you need to go on many tax courses. You need to learn about inheritance tax, estate planning, corporation taxes, personal taxes. There are so many things to...