Advisory Work Must Be Priced by Value, Not Hours

Technology pushes us to handle more advisory work, which allows more value pricing. 

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

As a professional in the industry, you may find some of what you do easy. Just because you find it easy doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable and worth more than the time you put into it. If it were truly easy, your clients would be doing it themselves rather than paying you.

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Undervaluing ourselves and what we bring to the table is a chronic problem plaguing accountants and CPAs. Why do I say this? Because people pay more for the luxuries they value. Let’s look at a comparison:

Today, the MSRP of a Cadillac Escalade is over $81,000 while the MSRP of a Chevy Suburban is slightly under $60,000. If these automobiles were priced according to the time it takes to make them, plus the cost of their parts, the difference between their retail prices would probably be far less. To maximize profits, GM spends a lot of time and money researching how much their customers value their different products. Certainly, the brand makes a difference, but the Cadillac also offers a more luxurious package. It doesn’t cost GM a lot more money to offer these luxuries, but their customers place a much higher value on them, and GM understands that value.

Pricing according to value really isn’t a radical concept!

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Maybe What You Need Is a Marketing Audit

two people seated across table, comparing notes and charts

How to get started.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

Great marketing tactics can take time, money and a great deal of sweat to plan and execute. CPAs who appreciate the power of marketing are frequently anxious to jump right into the implementation process without doing any planning. But do they really know what the marketplace wants from them? Sometimes gut feelings are right, but few firms can afford to act on intuition alone.

MORE: Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Four Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign | Five Reasons to Implement Change Orders | Make Your Practice Better | Eleven Marketing Strategies for Smaller FirmsFive Questions for Developing Your Marketing Plan | You Only Have Four Strategies | The Damage That Traditional Fee Methods Do
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Investing marketing dollars with confidence requires a thorough understanding of your practice, its people, the marketplace and your competitors. An audit-based marketing plan lets you do just that. This post provides both the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to (1) perform a marketing audit, (2) develop marketing objectives and strategies and (3) implement the plan through an integrated approach.
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Bissett Bullet: Do I Know You?

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “What is your LinkedIn connection strategy? Do you have one?”

By Martin Bissett

A vast number of connections on your LinkedIn profile page may look impressive but there is a compelling argument for knowing at least the vast majority of your LinkedIn contacts personally.

There will of course be people connected to you that you have never met in person. You may have worked with them remotely, may have presented with them on a virtual panel or you may have engaged with their content and identified them as somebody with whom you could build a mutually beneficial relationship; but there IS a genuine connection there.

Your LinkedIn network is a potentially valuable referral source and time spent nurturing those relationships is time well spent. The better the relationship you have with your connections, the more likely they are to champion your firm when someone in their network is in need of a recommendation.

Today’s To-Do:

Take a look at your strategy moving forward. Start to be more selective about who you connect with and prioritize people you know, would like to work with or who can introduce you to your ideal clients.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You

woman handing document across desk to client

Understanding this is part of mastering the art of sales.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

No matter how good your marketing tools are, there is one tool that needs to be especially sharp, and that is your salesmanship. All the marketing tools we mentioned previously will be of little value if you don’t know how to “ask for the business.”

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You need to understand the selling and buying cycles. They are critical for your success.

While there are many ways to make a sale, I prefer the Consultative Partnership Approach (CPA) to selling accounting and consulting services. This approach is based on three key principles:
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Ten Keys to Crafting Ads

And why some ads don’t work.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

Certainly, the current crop of ads tends to be better than the earlier ones, although we had such weirdies as “Accounting Is Our Passion.” (“Passion” is the current fad word). I thought passion to serve clients is more to be desired. How many words will be wasted to explain the link between their passion and their ability to meet your need?

MORE: Eighteen Things Advertising Can Do for Your Firm | How Hard Do You Work to Keep Your Clients? | When Clients Think They Know Marketing | How to Put Target Marketing into Context | Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Accountants vs. Lawyers: Who Wins the Marketing Battle? | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility
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Then there was “Financial Restructuring Without the Bitter Aftertaste,” for a law firm. The copy’s OK, but the illustration of three executive with faces screwed up (presumably from the bitter aftertaste) looks as if they’ve been drinking doctored Kool-Aid. Pretty inviting, isn’t it? A good rule is don’t try to be funny in public until at least six strangers, none of whom is related to you, laugh at what you’ve written. Nothing sours an ad more than unfunny attempts at humor.
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Bissett Bullet: Speaking Their Language

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Identifying an ideal client and sharing a definition of that ideal client internally is only worthwhile if it is consistent with and supported by your marketing.”

By Martin Bissett

Your firm’s messaging must speak to the needs of your ideal client, do so in their language and demonstrate exactly why you are best placed to help them.

Without educating the general market as to what you offer and how you have helped similar businesses – communicating that through social media posting, the firm’s website or other means of advertising – you are relying purely on the market’s perception of an accounting firm to dictate whether they reach out to you or not.

Today’s To-Do:

Ask a friend or family member to look at your website and social media. Ask them based on what they see there, what it is that they think you do for your clients. If they get it right, your messaging is on the money. If they don’t, the assumptions that they made are likely to be the same ones that your prospective clients are making.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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Bissett Bullet: Remember The Golden Rule

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Please do not talk to your clients and prospects about services but rather the achievement of their desired objectives and outcomes.”

By Martin Bissett

Despite us having discussed this subject earlier on, nevertheless you will already have forgotten about it because it takes time to form a habit. Remember the golden rule. People buy outcomes and people buy you. Is your approach from a personal meeting perspective and a firmwide marketing perspective, demonstrating that you are the right person to work with and that you are focused on creating outcomes that they want to see realized?

Today’s To-Do:

If your website talks more about your services than it does about your results, change it today.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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Four Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Promote your consulting services as products.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

We’ve discussed marketing tools, how they can be divided into three main types (one-way messages, two-way messages, and one-on-one messages), and what each type will accomplish. In this post I will examine using email and show you how to make it effective.

MORE: Three Types of Marketing Message, and Which Is Best | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | How Does Your Firm Measure Up? | Six Questions Before Asking for All the Referrals You Deserve | Five Rules for a Marketing Orientation
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Email marketing is a strategy for a firm to send promotional messages to people in mass quantities. To start email marketing, you need to select an email marketing tool/service, build your email list, decide the type of campaign you want to use, write persuasive messages, make a schedule, run the campaign and measure the campaign results.
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