Deliver More Value By THINKING About Your Clients

Welcome to this video and I'm going to share with you what is the thing that we must focus on more than anything else in our accounting firms if we want to build an extraordinary firm.

Hi there, it's Mark Wickersham here. And in this video we're going to look at what I believe is our primary focus, what we should be doing in our firms to help us build extraordinary firms. Let me ask you a couple of questions. First though, would you agree that when we add much more value to our clients as we increase the value as we do more for them, that as professionals it's the right thing to do? And I'm hoping the answer is yes. And let me then ask a second question. When we add huge amounts of value, more value than ever before, we change clients lives. Do we deserve to get better paid? And I would argue that absolutely the more value that we create for our clients, firstly it's the right thing for them. Secondly, when we price based on value, we should be able to charge higher prices and make more profit. It's a win win situation. That's what value pricing is all about. And you see we're in the knowledge industry. The reason why our clients come to us is because of all that knowledge that we've got. Whether it's tax planning, whether it's technology to help build better accounting systems, whatever it might well be. We have huge amounts of knowledge and yet a big problem in our profession is we don't spend enough time just thinking. And the reason for that is largely because of the old fashioned redundant way of pricing. Pricing based on the timesheet, pricing based on the six minute unit. It's a crazy way to price for all sorts of reasons. We must stop pricing based on the hour. Many reasons for that, which I share in other videos. But today I want to talk about one particular problem. You see, when you are pricing based on the hour, what tends to happen is we focus our minds on being more efficient. And so when we're doing some work for a client, and usually it's compliance work, let's say it's the bookkeeping, or it could be payroll or tax returns, annual financial statements. What we're trying to do is do it as efficiently as possible so that we don't end up writing time off so that we end up making a profit on the job. And the problem is I think that's the wrong thing for the client because as we said at the outset, we should be focused on adding as much value as we possibly can. And when we do that one it's the right thing. Two, we can get better paid. So we need to shift our focus. We need to shift our focus away from trying to be efficient and doing things fast and instead thinking about how can we create more value for our clients. So let me share with you an idea with you, something I believe that every accounting firm should do. We should spend more time just thinking, oh, no, Mark, we can't do that because where does it go on the timesheet? We shouldn't be pricing based on the hour, we should be pricing based on value. And so if we're going to create more value for our clients, we need to think more. And I know that for every one of your clients right now, if you stop to really think about them, you've got so much knowledge, so much stuff in your brains, you could come up with ways to help them. So here's my suggestion for you. Every single week, every week, you choose a client, any client, perhaps. Start with your a client, your best clients choose a client. And then in the week, find two hours, two hours where you can leave email behind, you can leave the social media behind. Go to a quiet place, ideally not your office or your home office. Go to a coffee shop, okay? Switch your phone off, switch your emails off. Have a piece of paper and some pens and on that sheet of paper list some questions.

And just think about that client. So at the top of the paper, put the client's name. And then the questions you will ask yourself could be questions like, how could I possibly help this client? And let's imagine a client's called Mary. How can I possibly help Mary generate more sales in her business? How can I possibly help Mary to increase her margins, her gross profit margin? How can I possibly help Mary to increase her net profit, her bottom line profit? How could I possibly help Mary to increase her cash? How could I possibly help Mary to reduce her tax bills? How could I possibly help Mary make her life easier through perhaps technology, through apps? How can I help Mary by taking away risk of things going wrong? How can I help Mary build a better business? How can I help Mary build a business that will sell for more money when she wants to retire? How could I possibly help Mary have a better life?

And when you ask yourself those questions over two hours with no distractions, with a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, spending two hours just thinking about Mary, nothing else. Just Mary. Ask those questions to prompt your thoughts and write down every idea you come up with, however crazy it might well be. Just write down ideas we're brainstorming Spend a good hour brainstorming and come up with as many ideas. Now, I'm fairly sure that you could come up with in an hour. In an hour, you could come up with easily 20, 30, 40, 50 ideas and possibly way more.

Then what you do is perhaps spend the second hour going through those ideas and grading them, rating them, which are the good ones, which are the really crazy ones, and come up with a list of the best five ideas, the best ten ideas. I know that when you do that, when you spend two hours thinking about men, you'll come up with some incredible ideas, things that can make a real difference, save her some tax, help her increase her business, reduce her costs, increase her profits, whatever it might well be. You will come up with ideas because there's so much knowledge. You've got the knowledge based on things you've learned, based on your experience with other clients, based on what's working in your accounting firm right now.

And then once you've done that, go and talk to Mary, have a meeting, let her know you've been thinking about her business and share some of those ideas. Now, the problem, of course, is how do we charge for that? Where does it go on the timesheet? It doesn't matter. What we are doing is we're demonstrating to our clients that we care about them. And here's the thing. When you come up with five or six really good ideas and meet with Mary, if she loves some of those ideas, we can then charge for implementing them. And what you'll find is that the most profitable things that you can do for a client, where you make the most money, the most profit, isn't the compliance work. You know, when you're doing tax returns, payroll, bookkeeping, it's very time intensive. There aren't huge profits. Yes, there is value, but. And yes, we make money on compliance work, but the real money is when we value price things that can change the client's life. When you find a way to help Mary save $20,000 in tax, or help Mary to increase her cash flow by $20,000, help Mary get the finance she wanted, help Mary to increase her sales, whatever it might well be, we can then price based on that value. And that's where we start to a deliver extraordinary value to our clients. And also how we can then get extraordinarily good fees. And what we do is after week one, in week two, we pick another client. Over the course of a year, you could spend time thinking about 50 clients. You could change the lives of 50 clients over a year. That's going to strengthen if nothing else it's going to strengthen the relationship it's going to make them more loyal because you've demonstrated you care about them you you're thinking about them you're looking at ways to help them make more money build a better business have a better life that's the right thing to do as professionals and when we do that we also can get richly rewarded because we then value price that work so if you like this video please of course subscribe to the channel please also hit the thumbs up if you like it please also share it and also comment as well and watch it look out for some more of my videos when you subscribe you'll get notified particularly hit the bell of when I have new videos so final point just before we go we need to spend more time just thinking about our clients it's the right thing to do and when we add more value we also can make more money Goodbye for now.

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