THE RADICAL CPA

The Three-Step Formula for Setting Your Monthly Fee

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Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

How to create price packages.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

Packages are the first step toward productizing your services. Your packages define your services as discrete offerings with defined parameters around what they include and what’s excluded.

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The secret sauce to creating a fixed price package with a value add consists of combining several variables:

Deliverables + Client Persona = Well-Priced Packages

Client-Specific Price Point + Market Price Point = Well-Priced Packages

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Some Clients Just Don’t Fit

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businesswoman smiling at two clients, man and woman

Your team has to talk to them every day.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

A friend who owned a business services firm in the marketing industry once told me he would rather face waterboarding than resign a hard-won client. However, even he cast a big one aside after his key employee returned from a client meeting in tears. Some things just can’t be tolerated. Your job is to determine where the line should be and to make the decision before a bad client has the chance to negatively affect your company.

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A client’s fit with your firm is every bit as important as their behavior and payment practices. After you adopt a new client-centric, value-based business model, some clients won’t fit in. Some will want to stick with the transactional model of the billable hour. They may not be comfortable with your new direction. Some clients may not even want to pay for your smallest service bundle despite the enhanced service levels it includes.
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Four Things to Learn When Assessing Clients

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Businesswoman using calculator while reviewing something on laptop screen

Seven steps to setting your price.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

How much would you pay for a bottle of water in the checkout line of a grocery store? Maybe $2 or $3, right? You know it costs more per unit than buying a case of water, but at that moment it’s worth it even though it’s the same bottle of water. Now, let’s assume you just made the long trek back to your hotel room in Las Vegas. They have the same bottle of water sitting there for $10. You’re thirsty and don’t want to walk to find a store, so you pay $10 for that bottle conveniently located in your room. The water isn’t different, but the value at that moment in time is subjective.

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When we think about price, we really need to think about worth. What actually are you bringing to the table? Lots of training. Many years of experience. Vision into similar businesses. It took you years to get here; don’t sell an answer to a question the client asks for the three minutes it took to answer.
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How to Ward Off Scope Creep

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Everyone must know exactly what does and does NOT fall within the lines of scoped services.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

There’s a time to increase scope and a time to let it slide. Let’s explore these two options.

It’s professional responsibility to inform a client when a request is out of scope. In this instance, you have two options: either make it a separate engagement or include it in the existing service package. It’s important to have everyone on the same page about what is within scope and what falls outside of it.

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It would be best if you always built into your pricing agreements a 20 percent buffer to protect you against pricing mistakes. This doesn’t mean you should do work outside the scope for free, but if a client asks for a service not included, you could decide to let it go if the amount is immaterial.

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When to Change Your Price

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Five issues to consider.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

What is the lowest monthly fee paid by any of your clients? You probably don’t want to bring on any new clients at a lower fee, so use this as your new business baseline. No one enters your firm without paying this baseline monthly service fee.

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However, the question remains whether the client will be billed on a fixed-price or value-priced basis. Here are five issues to consider as you make this decision:

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The Right Questions Lead to the Right Clients

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Seventeen things to ask when scoping.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

Using subjective questions helps you assess what the prospective client considers valuable. This means understanding which services and solutions they see as having the biggest impact on their financial health. It also gives you insight into where they are hurting most in their business.

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This process is time-consuming because it sets the stage for your relationship moving forward. Take your time and collect all the data, documentation and subjective input so you can gain a holistic view of the customer’s current situation. Let’s take a look at some of the questions you can ask and why they are important.

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How to Choose Which Clients to Scope

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It’s all about risk.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

Scoping is a time commitment, so know that the client is worth the commitment and they have the revenue to back it. Start by setting a minimum price point you will charge for the assessment process. If the client falls below your threshold price point, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to scope them, it just means the process will be less complex and can probably be done within an hour.

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For smaller clients, it helps the process if they arrive at the assessment with all the necessary information. You can look at their QuickBooks data and tax returns to get a strong sense of what they need and how long it will take to deliver. Scoping a small, straightforward client will become second nature with time. But be careful about being too casual when scoping smaller clients. If you miscalculate, you are still opening your firm up to risk.

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Assess Your Client’s Needs

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Make this a formal process.

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

A client assessment is an onsite or virtual session where you observe the client’s accounting system on which you’ll be working. This is your opportunity to see how they run their business: their software, their processes and who does what. This is when tasks and responsibilities are clarified and assigned. Both the client and your firm need to understand their responsibilities in this new partnership.

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This assessment also allows you to fully understand the client’s service needs. It is a real-world assessment of services, budget and the work required to provide deliverables. It will also allow you to understand what it will take to onboard them. Again, this assessment goes both ways. It’s worth assuming you have competition, so take advantage of this time to impress the client with some consultative advice demonstrating the value you bring to the table – this is especially true if you are charging for the assessment.

One of the key benefits is the ability to limit your risk and as you:

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Rule #1 of Scoping for Alignment

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Plus three more basic steps. 

By Jody Padar
Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA

How often have you heard the old saying about having two ears and one mouth because listening is twice as important as talking? Hopefully, often, because it is as true as anything I’ve ever heard. Scoping is all about listening, so when you make a presentation, you’ll know what you’re talking about, and the client will know you know.

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Here are four basic steps you can follow to make sure you and the client are in alignment when the time comes to start a new project or present to a potential new client:

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