Are my Accounting Prices Too high?

So, you’ve just increased your prices, you’ve now had a few client meetings, and perhaps they’ve not gone as well as you’d hoped. The client’s not jumping for joy, they’re saying you’re too expensive, or you’re charging more than my previous accountant or they didn’t expect to be paying that much and perhaps you’ve not had them signing your proposals instantly or even at all.

And so when that starts to happen what the logical thing to do is, to think well, I’ve increased my prices, now people aren’t accepting the price, therefore I’ve got my price wrong, so let’s bring the price back down.

The problem is that perhaps your price is now where it needs to be, but it’s other aspects of the equation that’s causing that client not to sign up. So, it’s unfair just to consider price, when you need to consider the full equation at work here.

So, what I’m going to do is take you through each aspect of the equation. I’m going to give you some questions to challenge each of those aspects to make sure that they’re as robust as they should be. And I’m also going to give you some pointers to improve it, so we can start to take price out as the key culprit.

Key Aspects of the Equation

#1 Source

So the first factor we need to consider is source.

• Where are you getting these leads from?
• How good are these leads that you’re actually getting?
• Are they coming from a Google search?
• Are they being referred to you by other people?
• Are they being referred to you by existing clients (who are also paying low fees)?
• How good is your overall marketing?

ACTION POINT:  Check out the Profitable Firm. They’ve got loads of fantastic resources you can go and get from their website that’ll really help you to see how good your marketing is and how it can be quickly improved.

#2 Priming

The next thing is something that we call the priming phase. You need to prime your clients to your way of thinking, you need to educate them and invest in that client relationship first.

• Have they downloaded an ebook from your website?
• Have they read your articles
• Have they watched your videos?
• Have they attended your events?

#3 Discovery Call

The next step is the discovery call. A discovery call is a 15 minute phone call, where we get to understand a little bit more about that client and to make sure that we’re a good fit for them.

• Do you have a Discovery Call?
• Have you got a minimum monthly fee?
• Have you read “Selling to Serve”?

ACTION POINT:  If you’re interesting in knowing more about the priming phase or the discovery call phase, go and check out my book, “Selling to Serve” and map out our entire priming and discovery call phase including scripts in that book, go and grab that and I’ll be able to help you with those.

You can also check out The Gap’s “8 Questions for Effective New Client Screening” for the questions to ask that establish your expectations prior to sealing the deal.

#4 Experience

The next part is the experience.

• Where are you meeting your prospects?
• Are you in control of the experience they have?
• Is that experience world class?
• Are you sending them confirmation of the meeting via text, via email?
• Are you sending them a little video of where they’re going to be coming to and how to find your office?
• Is there a car parking space ready for them with their name on the parking space?
• Is there a sign when they come into the offices with their name on, their company name greeting them either on a screen or on a board or something like that?
• Is the meeting room professionally laid out?
• Do every member of your team know everyone’s name who’s turning up, so we can say hello to them by their name and make them feel significant and special when they arrive?
• Are there no distractions?
• Have you sent out an agenda before that meeting so they know exactly what they’re going through?
• Are you controlling that meeting in its entirety in terms of time and the agenda when they get there?

ACTION POINT: Check out the webinar I did with Karbon called The Red Carpet Blueprint, where we walked through our entire experience that we have in our firm and I’ve seen happening at other firms as well.

#5 Meeting

The next part is what is the actual meeting like?

• What is the quality of the meeting?
• What is the level of conversation you’re having with those clients?
• Are you using our GLOSS Method where you go through their goals?
• Are we understanding what their real challenges are?
• Are we really getting under the skin of it and not actually just responding to what they’re telling you they want, but really getting under the skin of what they need?
• Are you presenting the value of your solution, or are you focusing on your services and your products?
• Do you have the confidence to have that level of conversation with them?

ACTION POINT:  Watch the GLOSS Method video, where we’ll guide you through that process as to how we have in depth, meaningful, deep conversations with our clients to unlock the full value for them and for us as well.

#6 Price

So only now are we at the point of price.

• Are you using GoProposal and our pricing methodologies to price?
• Is your pricing clear and transparent?
• Is your pricing based on practical, logical factors, such as what their annual revenue is, how many transactions they’ve got going through their accounts, how many items you’re going to be reconciling for them, the number of staff that they have on payroll, service level, quality of record keeping etc.?
• Are you presenting the price while you’re still with them and have their focus?
• Are you charging for everything?

ACTION POINT:  If you’re not with GoProposal, signup now and let us just give you the pricing to use. If you’re with GoProposal and want to reimport the original pricing, login and navigate to your line item page and hit ‘Import Line Items”.

#7 Proposal

The next part is the quality of the proposal.

• Does it look absolutely world class?
• Does it present your services and your fees in the best possible way in the correct order?
• Have you included testimonials in there?
• Is it fully branded?
• Have you included full page graphics?
• Can your client sign the proposal during the meeting if they want to?

ACTION POINT:  If you’re not with GoProposal, signup now and they will look absolutely world class.

#8 Follow Up

Follow up is key.

• Do you follow up for as long as it takes (at least 15 times)?
• Do you send valuable content to them?
• Do you send a loom video of your proposal?
• Do you set the buying criteria and send them a checklist to help them to make an informed decision?

ACTION POINT: Sign up for a free Loom account to do a screen recording of your proposal.

#9 Onboarding

The next one is onboarding.

• Do you map out your onboarding process very clearly?
• Do you have a brochure of your onboarding process?
• Is your onboarding process world class?

ACTION POINT: Grab a free copy of our onboarding process which we have at MAP.

#10 Delivery

And the final factor is the delivery of your service.

• Are you fully sold yourself, on the quality of your delivery?
• Do you have clear processes mapped out for all your services?
• Do all your staff stick to that single process?
• Do you have practice management software in place?
• Are you delivering your services to the best of your ability?
• Are there any ways that you can improve them, deliver them faster, deliver them with greater clarity or improve the information with greater insights?

ACTION POINT: Check out Senta and Karbon as they are the best practice management software we’ve seen on the market.

Conclusion & Action

Before you read this, you might have felt that price was your problem, and now you think you’ve got far more problems than you thought. Don’t let that be the case. Just to ask yourself, “how could each one of them be improved?”

You don’t have to get them all to be perfect. Just think, “How can I make this one level better?”

Don’t think about perfection, think about progress.

The only firm you’re competing with is your firm last month

Just start to figure out ways you can improve these things, aim to improve them by one notch and I promise you, price, all of a sudden will start to fade away from this being the main culprit and you’ll start to get clients converting at the price that you deserve to be charging, so that you can deliver the level of service that your clients actually want to pay for.