Effective Pricing Live: Intro to Effective Pricing - Foundations and First Steps

So welcome to this inaugural session of the brand new effective pricing course.

I need to minimize something here.

There we go. Nope.

I'm very, very, very excited to be training on this topic. It's one of my favorites and it's very near and dear to the heart of my business and the success that I've had, which I'll talk about with you in just a few moments. A real quick introduction for anyone that may not have been to one of my sessions before. I'm a certified professional bookkeeper. I'm located in Southern Ontario, hence the reference and the excitement to see so many Canadians in the room today. My firm is fairly small, both in the number of clients that I have as well as the number of team members that I have. But I tend to service larger clients that require a lot of work, large volumes for them. So it does keep us quite busy still. And my company has just been awarded a platinum award, the top level award for the third consecutive year in the area where I live. And personally, I've also won top 21 bookkeeping influencers in Canada. I've been a member of Mark's Value Pricing Academy for the second time. I quit the first time, but so glad that I came back. But I've been a member for several years this time and it's changed my life. Not only because of the knowledge that Mark and all of the trainers share with us in all the regular sessions, but I honestly believe that it was effective pricing. And that gave me the final push and was the edge, the cutting edge that made the biggest impact to my business. So Mark's teachings gave me the knowledge that I needed to use the software. And then the software gave me the outlet to deliver those pricing bonuses to my clients. So I kind of like to think about it like the wrapping paper. Effective pricing is like the wrapping paper on the outside of the gift of all the knowledge that, that, that we get from Mark. Sorry, I just need to change something.

On my screen here still.

Nope, that wasn't it.

Sorry everybody bear with me for a minute. I'm trying to hide something on my screen.

Okay, I'll have to make do.

So before we get into today's content, just a couple of quick administrative announcements. As most of you know, Mark Wickersham Training Company has a partnership with B1G1. If you aren't already aware of this organization, please do look them up. It's a fantastic way to enhance your business yourself if you care to use them and have an impact on the whole world. So for the month of June, the causes that Mark's company is supporting are the four that are on this slide. I'll leave it up for just a minute while I talk about it. You can use your camera and click on the QR code to vote for for which impact you would like to support. Alternatively, when you get the information uploaded from today's session, you can also get the QR code there or click on the link. Since Mark started the partnership with B1G1, there's been approximately 350,000 impacts made so far, so that is is huge.

Also, final administrative announcement before we get started. As is usual with all of the sessions from Mark and the trainers, please make sure that your chat messages are sent to go to everyone so that all the attendees can benefit from your questions and comments. There's often a lot of great tips and info shared from your peers in the chat box, which is great, especially for those of you out there that can share information that are using it already with some of the people that aren't. And if you're posting a question for me, please do put a QQ at the beginning of your question. I'm going to be pausing a couple of times throughout the presentation to check for questions, and it just makes it easier if I can quickly scroll through the chat box, which sometimes gets quite busy, and that way I can just quickly find questions. I wouldn't want your question to get lost in the shuffle. I'll also be allowing a bit of time at the end of the presentation to go through questions. Gabby will be with us throughout the session today if there's anything technical that you need help with. She'll be monitoring the chat box as well, and she'll be able to assist you. And I'm sure at various points she will be dropping links and chats into the chat box as well. So when you get today's materials, you're going to have the recording, you're going to have the slide deck, and there's also a couple of handouts from Mark that will be available to you. One of them is.

This Getting Started checklist, which is really useful if you have not registered for effective pricing at all, if you have already registered, or once you've registered, the next handout.

Not coming up.

For me, the next handout is an onboarding guide, which will be really helpful. That's most of what we're going to be going through today and through these training sessions that we're doing on a monthly basis, but the onboarding guide will help you go through it in written format as well. There may be.

A couple of instances where I refer to something that is available to Academy members only because everybody has different levels of access to the things in Mark's program. So whenever possible, I will try to remember to let you know if I'm talking about something verbally that's only available to certain people, and that way you're.

Not looking for it.

Okay, so I want to start by sharing. This is the part I get really excited about. I want to start by sharing with you some of the success that my own bookkeeping business has had since I got serious about Mark's program and using effective pricing.

So the first time that I value price to client, I did it with the software at the same time. So I. I took all of my value pricing knowledge that I had learned as well as the effective pricing software, and I just jumped in and did it all at once. So previously I was hourly billing. I had made a couple of attempts at fixed pricing or menu pricing, but I always kind of fell back to hourly. And for the amount of work that this client needed and my calculation of approximately how much time it would have taken me to do that work, my hourly price to him would have been about $4,200 a year.

Using effective pricing and value pricing. The quote for the package that they chose came out to 18,000 for the year. So just quickly doing that math, it was a difference of an extra $13,800. That was more than three times what I pay for Mark's Academy and the knowledge on an annual rate, not the monthly rate, of course. Um, so I made it all back in one quote along with lots extra. So, you know, you'll hear some of the trainers and, and people talk about how it requires confidence to do value pricing. And, and it's not really going to come until you jump in and start doing it. So don't let that hold you back, because I'll tell you, when I got this number the first time, my confidence shot through the roof. I was all of a sudden really pumped up, and I could not wait for that next knock on my door of somebody wanting my services so that I could use effective pricing again and give them another quote. So let's talk about my second quote then. The next time that I used the software, it gave me an over 200% increase of what I would have charged that client using my hourly structure. There's a little pricing metric in the software which I'm going to show you later, that gives you these numbers when you do quotes. The third time was $22,000 a year more than what my hourly billing method would have been.

However.

It was also $30,000 a year more than what they had been paying their previous bookkeeper. So it's not just all about the software and service. It's about this client paid $30,000 a year more than what they had been paying because I was giving them benefits of things that they valued, they purchased based on value of what I was offering, not the actual service, because I'm sure their previous bookkeeper was giving them the service, but they were leaving money on the table because I came in and scooped up that extra $30,000.

To date, this is a screenshot from my software. My average pricing success metric is an increase. I'm going to round that up to 197. I'd like to round it up even a little bit more to 200%, but I know being accountants and bookkeepers, we're kind of OCD about the numbers. So I'm just going to round it to 197% so that that is my average increase compared to the old pricing method. Drop a heck yeah into the chat box if you think that that is worth learning how to use effective pricing.

Okay, let's move on. So before you can effectively use the software, and I say effectively because. Yes. Can you jump in and start using the software? Yes, you can. But you're not going to see the types of results that you can until you understand some of the core concepts about pricing and the foundations that you apply behind the scenes in the software, the part that the customers don't see in order to calculate the price that you desire and the results that you desire.

So research shows that customers want two things. They want certainty. They want to know the price up front. Rent before they commit to something. How often do you sign a blank check for somebody and just hand it over? We don't. Right. It's just our nature that we want to know how much something is going to cost before we buy it. When we look at a menu, the prices are all right there. The next thing customers want is choice. They like to be able to choose the package that suits their needs. It makes them feel special and that they're not just part of the pack and lumped in with everybody else.

The next core concept is that time billing is not efficient or. Or as profitable for our business. It doesn't give the customer certainty because we're billing based on time. So, number one, it doesn't meet that first core concept. And it's almost always going to sound more Expensive. Expensive. Because let's say I quoted a customer that my rate is a hundred dollars an hour. That's going to sound like a lot to them because at this point, I haven't used some other pricing strategies, such as anchoring, to give them something that they can reference to. So when they don't have that referencing point with value pricing, they're going to subconsciously just automatically start comparing it to. To other numbers rambling around in their head. And one of those numbers may be that they could hire an employee bookkeeper for $50 an hour. So automatically they're going to assume that my $100 an hour price is high. The other thing is people are not buying your time. They're not saying, kim, I want to hire you for one and a half hours.

To do this for me. They are buying the results that I'm going to give them, and through value pricing, they're also buying the benefits that those results are going to give them. So they are buying me to prepare their financial statements for them and help them understand it so that it gives them peace of mind that their cash flow is okay and they can sleep at night and go away on the weekend with their family without having to stay home and do their bookkeeping.

Another core concept. So.

Menu and fixed pricing is always going to be the wrong price. I guarantee you, whatever price you're using, it's the wrong price and you're going to be leaving money on the table. As you can see from those results that I just posted about my company, there was money left on the table in every case. One of the things I get asked a lot about in the industry since I started doing training is the difference of menu or fixed pricing compared to value pricing. I like to say that. And there's all different kinds of ways to explain it. That's a whole different session. I'm not going to go into details, but I like to say that in value pricing, we start to tap into the things that a customer wants rather than what they need. So if I take two customers.

Charlie and Heather, and they want, they both have identical businesses. I know it's rare, but let's just say we're comparing apples with apples. Their business both does a million in revenue. They both have five staff. They both have the same number of bank accounts. Like they're looking for the same type of service. If I was using menu pricing or fixed pricing, they both might get a price delivered to them of, I don't know, $1,000 a month or whatever it would be that would be my fixed price for the services that they want. However, in that value pricing model, when we're tapping into the things that they want, we're starting to get them to pay for things that they want rather than just need. If they're paying for services, they're paying for just their needs. If they're paying for their wants, they're paying, they're paying for value. So imagine you're booking a vacation at a resort, same resort, but maybe one of them wants a waterfront room so they have to pay extra for that. Maybe one of them wants to pay extra for a package that includes a la carte dinners, five nights of their vacation rather than the buffet dinners. Or maybe one of them wants concierge turn down service in their room at night, but maybe the other one doesn't want those things. So the one who dies is going to pay more. So instead of paying a thousand dollars for that vacation, or accounting services or whatever it is that we're comparing, they might pay 2000 as opposed to giving just a fixed price. So this is where the knowledge comes in about being able to tap into the thing they want and what they value. So in the accounting world, that could mean things like having faster response times, having a support call system available, maybe having their work completed earlier in the month. There's hundreds of things that you can tap into that a customer will pay more for. So remember, value pricing is focused on the end benefit that a customer receives more than what the actual service is.

Remember to price each customer individually and not have that fixed price for the service. They like the feeling of being special and getting their needs met and they will pay more for that.

Value pricing is not easy, people. I don't want to scare you away from it because it is totally worth it, but it does take time. When I, I mentioned that I had quit the value pricing program the first time and then came back to it when I quit the first time, it's because I wasn't spending the time. I wasn't attending any of the sessions, I wasn't watching any of the videos afterwards. I just wasn't doing the work because I did find it time consuming. The second time I joined, I, I still kind of felt the same way, but I had made a commitment to myself. I knew people that were getting results. I thought I have to do this in my business. And so I made the time. I, I started blocking it out on my calendar.

But you have to do that. You have to make the time, even if it's half an hour a day or Two hours a week or something. You have to make the time to do it, and I promise you it will be worth it. When I used effective pricing for the first time, it took me about eight hours to set up my model that I wanted to use. And that's not even setting it up from scratch. That's using one of the examples that Mark gave me. I just kept tweaking it and practicing it, tweaking it and practicing it, tweaking it and practicing it over and over and over until at the end, I was seeing the prices that I knew I wanted, and it really, really, really was worth it. I shared some of those results, I promise you.

Works. And it's never a work. It's always a work in progress. It's never finished. I tweak my models.

Almost all the time. Every time before I use it, I. With a new customer, I go through based on what I've learned in the diagnosis and the recall with them and stuff. I might want to add a question. I might want to take a question out. So I go through and I tweak it all the time. But I also continue getting better results all the time. It's always growing.

And the last core concept is the concept of optimal pricing, which, in a nutshell, means finding out how to determine what is the maximum price that a client is willing to pay. We obviously can't just ask them because they're not going to tell you. Or if they do, the amount they're telling you is not going to be the truth. So we have to learn how to figure out what is that maximum price. And Mark's program really taught me how to do that. I'm just going to pause for a.

Minute to check for questions if I can find my chat box.

Sorry.

One of my monitors stopped working, so I'm working a little bit differently than I normally do, and I'm having to chase things on my monitor a bit. So I see lots of people talking about B1G1 and that they're members already. So I love that Stephanie has a question. With the effective prices so significantly higher than your hourly pricing quotes, did you have the inner voice telling you they'll never go for that? And if so, how did you.

Absolutely, I did. So when I mentioned that it spent that it took me eight hours, it's because I was. When I said I was practicing, I built my model and then I went through it, pretending that the customer was on the line with me and picking the answers that I thought that they would choose, and then seeing what the Price was at the end. And absolutely my gut was telling me, oh my gosh, there's no way they're gonna pay this much. Let me tell you something. The way that I overcame it, I guess, is I just faked it. At some point, you have to kind of just leap in and trust the knowledge that you have, trust the expertise that you have, trust that you are worth those prices that you're asking for. And I know it's easier said than done. And that's part of why it took me so long, because I was having those feelings. But eventually I had to decide, do I want to continue when I have been or do I want to try it? Maybe it doesn't work. Maybe it does. But if it does, wow. And. And it obviously did. I've actually been pushing the boundaries where I've been increasing in the software. You can set your. I call it my get out of bed price, where no matter how a client answers a question, the price will never come out lower than that. And I've actually been pushing the limits of that price because to date, every customer that I have used the effective pricing software with has chose my premium level package. So I'm just having phenomenal results with it. And I still have those feelings because I'm pushing the boundaries and because I keep raising those prices. I still have those feelings, Stephanie, of they're never going to pay that. And then they do, and I'm shocked. I don't show it, of course, but next time I change my model again and I up those baseline prices again. So my. My baseline prices are pretty high right now, but they're paying it. So I see some heck yes in there. Thank you people for doing that.

Catherine. Wow, $78,000 a year contract. That is awesome. Congratulations.

That, oh, gosh, that just makes my heart melt to see those kind of results. So Claire has another question. Where the jobs you quoted for new to you or existing clients? So they were new to me. Mark does train on how to reprice existing clients. Myself, personally, I do not speak to that for his program. There is other trainings and talks that I've done with him where I mentioned my niche market was the travel industry. And Covid did a number on my business. I lost about 90% of my clients and that was right around the time when I was getting serious about value pricing. So I needed to quickly pivot what my niche was and start bringing on new clients. And I only had a few clients left in that travel industry and they were struggling so much. The last thing that I wanted to do was talk to them about pricing. So I did leave them on the pricing model that they were on and it was only new clients that I was using the software with. But there is ways to reprice existing clients. I highly recommend. A lot of the trainers do sessions on it. There's recordings on it that Mark has done as well and they've all had great results in it. It was just a decision that I made for my business not to do that.

Okay, so I'm going to move on.

I think my slide's not progressing.

Okay, so I'm quickly going to just talk. We are going to get into a live demo of the product as well. I just want to quickly, quickly tell you how I get the results that I do. So the first thing is that I do start with an ideal client or a niche. It is recommended is not mandatory. But the reason that I recommend it is because that makes you an expert in that industry and experts can demand higher prices than what a generalist can imagine. The salary that a brain surgeon gets versus the salary that a general family physician gets. When you are an expert in a niche, you can get higher prices. So I do recommend having a niche and knowing who your ideal client is. The next thing is I start with a quick 15 minute, approximately 15 minute call or nowadays it's usually a video meeting. For me it's a very quick, quick qualifier type of meeting. Some people do this step with a form on their website to automatically dislodge.

People that aren't good fit for them.

I'm in the process of actually building a form for my website to do that, but I still would not eliminate this step. For me, a person's personality is a lot about who their ideal client is and I can find out during a conversation whether I gel with that person or not. Next thing is I do a diagnostic review and I do charge for it. If you're not doing these already, please do start doing them and please value the time that it takes you to do them and charge for them. I won't get into the details of what I charge. I want to move on to the effective pricing live demo. I just want you to know it is part of my process. Then I do the fact find meeting. So this is. I allow about 90 minutes for this meeting and this is when I am finding out the things that they value. So I obviously have the list of services that I offer, but this is where I want to find out about those wants that they have that I spoke about earlier as opposed to the things that they need. So there are a few questions that I have that will prompt them to get them talking. It's open ended questions, it's not yes or no questions. I do get both into personal and business type questions and I spend majority of this call listening. I have, you know, I don't know, maybe a dozen questions that are my favorites that I definitely like to use that work for, for who my ideal client is. But there's literally hundreds of questions that you could use in this fact find meeting.

And the next two kind of go together. So the brochure review I do at the same time with the effective pricing meeting. If it's a service that I, that I have a brochure for, I don't have a brochure for all of my services. I certainly could, I just don't. I have it for my main services. And a brochure, just so you know, is one of the components that's available to Academy members only that are in the level 2 or above program. For people that are purchasing just the use of the software or are in Level 1, the brochure templates that Mark gives us would not be available to you. So this meeting is also usually about, about an hour and a half to two hours depending on whether I'm including the brochure review part or not. And then the effective pricing portion of the meeting is an actual screen share which I'm going to be doing with you in just a moment where they see the software and they start answering the question and they start customizing the package that they want and then they get their price delivered at the end.

So before we get into the demo, I'm just going to quickly check the chat box for any questions again.

So Mark has.

Two questions. Is the fact finding meeting based off things you've found in the diagnostic review? How much time do you spend on the review and what do you look for? So Mark, no, the fact find meeting is not based on what I have found in the diagnostic review. I do use some of what I have found in the diagnostic review though in the pricing meeting, in the fact find meeting. It's really, really just dedicated to finding out those wants that they have, the dreams that they have, how can I help them live a happier all around balanced work life balance. So those are the things I'm really trying to tap into in the fact finding meeting in the diagnostic review. The first thing that I'm obviously looking for is just problems with their books and I do give them a written report afterwards. So yes, they are paying for the review, but they're getting a written report afterwards. I tell them about the problems that they found, I give them some recommendations. I don't tell them how to fix the problems. That's what they need me for. So that's where I draw the line in the report that I give them. So that's a big part of the diagnostic review. And then yes, I do also look at things that I want to use when we get to the pricing stage. So I'll look at how many transactions they have, I'll look at how many balance sheet accounts need to be reconciled. If they have staff, I'll look at what their turnover rate is. How often am I going to need to produce an roi? What's the payroll frequency? How many payroll methods do they have? Are some people on commission, Some are salary, some are hourly. So I do start to look at things that are going to come up in the effective pricing meeting. And the reason I do that is because when we do the effective pricing meeting, I will have gone in order to save time during that meeting, I will have gone through and pre populated some of the answers based on the things that I found in the diagnostic review. So one of my questions is annual revenue and it's a range for their answers, I will have already selected that range. And when I'm in the pricing meeting with the client, I'll say I noticed when I was doing your diagnostic review that this is what your annual revenue has averaged for the last few years. Would you agree? And they say yes and we just move on. So they I just kind of do a quick review of answers that I have found during the diagnostic and so how many meetings with the client? How do they react to three to four meetings just to prospect you? I've never had any. So I have the 15 minute call slash meeting. I don't know that most people really refer to that as a meeting because typically they're, that's just sort of them inquiring about the services to begin with. So really I just have the two main meetings, the fact finding one and then the effective pricing one. I've never had anybody say that it's too many meetings or anything. The feedback that I've gotten is actually the opposite where people compliment me on my process and how professional it seems and how much they enjoyed being able to see the software and the pricing because other quotes that they've gotten from people did not do that. So the feedback that I've gotten from customers is that they are impressed by the process rather than put off by it.

Udivri has a question. So the time you leave for both fact find meeting and brochure review and effective pricing total is a total of 180 minutes. How long do you split between both meetings? It just depends on scheduling and their calendar. Udivre and my calendar obviously my pricing process from start to finish depending on their availability. And my availability could take anywhere from one week to three weeks depend it. I allow about a week for me to do the diagnostic review because I spend about two or three hours doing that. So I need to be able to block time off for that and give them the results and then the next two meetings after that. It just depends on when we can coordinate time in our calendars.

Okay, so let's get into.

The actual. I'm going to stop sharing for a minute because I do have the product open, but it's on my other screen beside me and I want to pull it in front of me.

So give me a minute here.

Okay. And now zoom window again.

Share screen.

Okay.

Everybody is seeing the.

Google Chrome window with the welcome Kim message at the top.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay, let me move this chat box.

Okay, perfect. So this is effective pricing when you first sign up for the program. And that is what one of Mark's handouts is for. I can't go through those steps to because I can only sign up once. But this is the screen that it will bring you to and it will walk you through the parts that need to be configured right away or the parts that are recommended to be configured right away. So I'm just going to do how are we doing for time? I'm just going to do a little quick walkthrough up here. When you click on your name, that's where your logout button is. This little bell is when there's notifications that have come out from the team.

The gear icon is the settings. It takes you to all your settings. Clicking on the logo, which once you've customized it would be your logo up here brings you back to your home screen. Along the left hand side is where you have your models, your home button again.

And when you click on the little hamburger button, it expands that to give you the verbiage of what those icons mean as well. So I've done the first one already. I'm going to quickly go through it again. It does let me back into it even though I've done it. But I just want to quickly show you what this first step is. So customizing the configure screen or customizing the Software. The first thing you're going to want to do is upload your logo. There's instructions at the top here about the format that it needs to be and the size that it needs to be. And if you're having any problems, there's a contact support button here. There's also a chat box down at the bottom and those messages go to the support team as well. You also want to go into this localization setting and set what your display currency is. So. So it is a required field for me. Here in Canada we use the dollar sign. Someone else may want to use euros or some other dollar sign that you're in. There is a whole bunch of date formats that you can choose from here. And then it gives you an example of what it looks like. Because sometimes I find different companies use different formats and it looks different than what I want it to. So I'm really glad that there's an example here of how it comes out. And then of course your time zone. The next thing you want to do is number formatting. So I use a comma as my separator and a period for my decimal point for the cents. And then again there's an example of how it will look in the numbers. And here you have a client search option where you can choose to have a drop down list very similar to what this is, a search window or you can have both. So that's for when you want to search for a specific client that you have quoted. This is the type of search message that you can have anytime you've made some changes. Click the save button at the bottom.

And that will make sure that any changes that you've made have saved and it will take you in. It'll check off that you've configured it. Now you may have seen at the bottom of that screen there was a couple of spots that I didn't go over here. And this is an example of the screen over here on the left of what it's going to look like when you start to get into producing quotes. And all of these are different models that you can have. But over here on the left hand side and if you scroll down, there's a lot of options of customization where you can change the colors of things. So I can go in and change that base color to red and you can see it has changed this red. After we finish going through this demo model, I'm going to quickly jump into my actual model as well and I can show you how I've customized this for this model.

Screen.

This part is not necessary to get up and running. So those are really the parts that we are going to focus on today.

So the next thing that you need to configure is your company settings. So we'll do this one together.

I've put a bit of information in here already. This is a demo model of the software. So I just said my company name is Effective pricing training. There's my address. I live in wine country. If any anyone wants to stop by, you have my address there. Now, just let me know you're coming. What's really important on this screen is if you have sales tax in your prices, make sure that you check this box off and then put in what the sales tax rate is where you live. The pricing software on the quote page is going to show the price without the sales tax. But then on the payment plan page, which is another section, it does show the tax amount and then the total amount. So it's really important in this setup page that if you have tax that you do this. The pricing success metric. That's the one that I was telling you earlier. You have a choice of whether you want to use it or not. I really recommend using it. Really, really, really recommend using it. It's so motivating. And then I'm going to hit my save button because I changed this tax rate. So I want to make sure it saves. A couple other things you'll want to do in here is go to the your details page, upload your photo here, and when you click on the upload button, it just takes you to whatever your file structure format is of where you normally upload things. And again, there's instructions here of the format that it needs to be and the size that it can be. This is also where you would go if you wanted to change your password. Uploading your photo here will put it.

In the top right corner here.

If.

You want to add a user. Maybe you're not the only person in your company that does pricing for clients. And you can go to my team and you can add another user in here.

So it's very easy to do that. And then they would have access to come in and do quotes as well.

There are a lot of other things in here that we are going to cover in future sessions. Today we're just going through some of the beginning parts.

My mouse keeps sticking.

So now you can see that part is configured as well. Before we move on, I'm just going.

To check if we have any questions.

Okay, not seeing any questions.

So I'm going to move on.

Okay, so to create your first pricing model, you can click here.

Pretty self explanatory. It's really easy to use this software and it is super, super, super customizable, which is why I am always tweaking things. So as you can see, I haven't counted these. What, what do you think that is about 20, 25 different. These are all sample models that Mark.

Gives us. So I, as I mentioned before, different people will be on different models or different versions of the software. As an academy member, I am on the model that is I have unlimited. So I get all of the models that he has except for this one at the bottom that says requires starter plan to access. I don't need that one because I'm on a level that's higher than a starter plan. So I have another template from Mark already up here that is the full version of Payroll. So let's say I want to do a bookkeeping model because this is the first one that I used from Mark. I would just click use model.

And what that does is it brings me to this screen where I edit the pricing model. So it automatically renames to Bookkeeping full model, which is the name that he had already. And then it gives the date and time that I've made a copy of that model. And then what I usually do is I put at the end my company initials and I say to be edited still, even though there's a way to make it go live. And if it's not live, that means that I'm editing it. It just very quickly lets me know which ones I want to work on still versus which ones I don't.

So I do that. I say that yes, it is recurring work because my bookkeeping is a recurring system. You can select a model icon. So this is the icon that will show up over on the left hand side for this model. There are so many in here that you can choose from. You can search by some keywords. So if I searched for example book.

For bookkeeping, I'm going to use this one that looks like Books Fall for books is the name of that icon. At this point I'm going to say no, that I don't want it to go live because I am editing it. So when it goes live, it doesn't mean that a customer can see it. A customer still only sees what you let them see. It just means it's not in an editable version anymore. I can change it back to editable, but I know at this point I want to edit it still. And then these fixed Prices print templates and payment print templates. We are going to get into this in a later session about how to set up templates. These are for if you want to print things. At the end you want to print it to a PDF and you want it to be in a nice format. You can set up templates for that that'll, that's a little more advanced in the software. So we'll cover that another day. And then same thing with the tags, we're going to cover that in another session as well. So at this point my model is ready to go edit mode. I'm going to click save and continue.

So these are all the questions that Mark gives us and there is already.

Click on edit. You can go into the question, you can see the description that he has provided. You can see the calculation type, the question type that he has provided. So these are all things that are what I call the behind the scenes work that the client doesn't see. I mean, they'll see the description, they'll see the question obviously, but they're not going to see all of this other stuff. Like if you choose that you want a dropdown box, you have to say, you know, maybe it's a question about how many sales invoices do they have. And you can say 1 to 10, 11 to 30. And then there's a value assigned to each drop down. Keep in mind when you're putting values in here, these are annual values, not monthly. It's very important to remember that when you're creating your prices.

So I'm just going to.

Say at this point, I'm going to jump over into my live model a little bit. You can toggle back and forth between the different screens. We're going to go into building your model in more detail in the next session actually where we'll be going through all of this individually, screen by screen and we'll actually build out a model together. And you're welcome to have your effective pricing set up at that point. And I'll, I'll try to go at a pace where we can do things together.

But let me just see if I'm logged into my.

Version still.

I am. Okay, so here is my version. Now you can see it's got my logo in the top left corner. Here are the models that I have that are live. So I have a bookkeeping model for service based companies, which is my primary niche. I have a bookkeeping model for construction based companies.

Kim, we're not seeing what you're talking about. Okay, one second. Then let Me stop sharing and reshare.

Okay. Now are you seeing my model?

It's got my logo in the top left corner.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, great. Thanks. Sorry about that everybody. I'm blaming it on my monitor. That's not working. So these are the models that I have that are live right now. I have a bunch more that just aren't live. So I do have one for payroll and then my. This is the one for my service based companies which is the one that I primarily use. So when I am pricing a client I will have already gone in and set up the client name, the client prospect and the date of quote. I will have already done all that part. So I'm just going to choose a test client.

So when I start the meeting with the client, I am going to be starting on this page automatically. Okay. So and a lot of these questions as I mentioned, I will have already pre populated and I'll just go through and I'll confirm with them. So Mr. Customer, what is the structure of your business? What type of industry is your business? So I may know that they are a lawyer because this is my service based model. So how many people will I be working with or reporting to? So does he have a manager that I need to report to or will I be dealing directly with him? Or if they're a corporation or a partnership, is there two people or multiple people or a board of directors that I need to report to that impacts the price of what I'm going to charge them of, how many people I have to report to. Is your bookkeeping up to date? And you can see there's a little toggle switch here that is the description area that you enter on a question. So if you. I see a couple questions coming in so I'm going to stop for questions at the end in just a moment. But when you're editing the question, when you're in edit mode, so I'm in live mode right now. The description that you type in this is where it shows up when there's a little toggle point and you can hover over that while you're doing this with your customer. So you can go through all of the questions. You can see I've broken it down into different sections. So I have this about your business section. I have a revenue and sales section, bills and expenses, government payroll and HR and then scope of work section. And I do that because I find having shorter list. Even though there's a lot of questions in here, I find myself. What works for me is having it broken down into Shorter sections like that helps the customer sort of maintain their focus during the meeting. They're not getting sort of overwhelmed by seeing a whole long list of questions that I just keep scrolling through. Once I have finished answering all these questions with the client and I click on save and continue.

Takes a minute and it comes up to my menu package. And this is all stuff that you would have built and customized already with one of the models that Mark gives you. I go through this in detail with them, and then I reveal the price. And if the price is too high, then we go back to one of the questions that they might have answered.

So we'll go through that in more detail. I want to drop over to the chat box because I see it moving a little bit.

Okay.

So Daniel has asked. I just tried to use the software for four to five meetings to date. New member academy here. Welcome, Daniel. Nice to have you. Not sure if this is a topic you'll cover, but I find myself having to give strong recommendations to smaller clients. What bookkeeping frequency is a good fit for them. Quarterly versus monthly. And I'm still trying to find out how the software pricing can display the pricing nicely for both options. So I have to create two models for this, One quarterly and another monthly. I have not run into anything like that, Daniel. And the reason why my ideal client does not require their bookkeeping quarterly. I. Even if they do, I still charge them a monthly price. My clients pay for everything before the work is done. It's all set. I'm going to stop sharing now, so I can just chat with you guys.

There.

Hello.

So my ideal client. Yeah. Does not require bookkeeping quarterly. But even if they did, and I wanted to work with them still because they were in my niche and maybe I liked them or whatever, I would still quote them a monthly price. As I was saying, the work is all paid for in advance. So even if it's quarterly work, it breaks those payments down into smaller chunks. And it doesn't look like such large amounts for them. We want to minimize that price as much as we can because the annual price is going to be high. So if you tell them, you know, maybe you're asking for 12,000 a year, if you tell them $100 a month, that's going to sound a lot less. The price psychology is going to sound a lot less rather than saying $300 quarterly. So it's all about the psychology of the pricing when you're talking about this, which you will learn now that you're a member of the academy. So I'm so glad you joined.

Okay, Sarah, do you show your screen to the client or are you working face to face with the client? I share the screen. So as I am going through those questions, the client is sharing the screen. The only thing I don't share is that very, very first page where I select the client name and the date that I'm doing the quote. I will have done that like maybe five minutes before the meeting starts or earlier if I wanted to practice with that client. And I will have pre populated a lot of the answers based on what I found out during the diagnostic review. And I just review it. So absolutely I am sharing my screen with the client the whole time. He is. He or she is seeing the questions.

As we go and answering them.

We are short on time. I see a couple more questions. I understand if anybody needs to jump off, but I do want to answer these questions if I don't get to them all.

Please note that you can always post a message in the Facebook group as well. Just tag me on it to make sure I see it. So just quickly.

She added all these or they were somewhere in here for us. I think you're talking about the models and those are provided for us by Mark, depending on what level of the software you have. Rachelle, will there be a method to print the review so you can see.

What you've input if you are changing the modules?

I'm not understanding that question. Maybe post it into the Facebook chat. Worded a little bit differently, I think. You mean. If I'm editing my model, can I print the actual model.

And Daniel. Okay.

Gabby, do I have a minute to keep going through questions or do I need to cut off right at. Right at the hour here?

You're fine to keep going for a bit longer, Kim.

No worries.

Okay, thank you so much. I know it's the first session and we weren't really sure how much time we should allow. So I want to answer since. Thank you. Okay. So Daniel, I. Oh no, I scrolled.

Up a little bit accidentally.

So Sarah, I saw that you answered Daniel's question. And yes, monthly bookkeeping would be more expensive, but I still use the same model and I still give a monthly price.

Rochelle asks how much have you tailored your models especially for cleanup and bookkeeping? A lot. As I mentioned at the beginning, I change it all the time. So what it was from when I first used it to what it is today. It has changed a lot.

There's still, I'd say probably 80% of it is still based on Mark's model. But I've just reworded things a little differently, the way that it flows from my tongue a little bit differently. Some of the terminology is different based on the country that you're in. So a lot of the edits that I've done were about stuff like that. About 20% of it is actually content that I've added or completely removed. But most of it is from the model that he gave me to begin with or gives to everybody to begin with.

The questions are very different from the ones I see on my screen. So you have entered all those or you pay for a higher level.

So this is a question from Teresa. I don't know which level you have and which model you have access to. And I also don't know if you are referring to when I was sharing my screen or whether I was sharing the test model screen. If you have a question about the types of questions that you're seeing and the model that you have access to, that would be a question that you can direct to the support team that's a little bit more specific to exactly what you're signed up for.

I see some questions from the. From the Wickersham team letting me know I'm okay to go on answering questions. So I don't want to leave anybody left hanging. So I appreciate that.

Rochelle said, or Debbie says to Rochelle that she uses screenshots and puts them in onenote. So that's a great tip. Thank you so much for sharing your tips because they really do help everybody. Brian, how do you set the prices in the software? So, Brian, we didn't get into that today. In the next session, we are that the next session is dedicated almost completely to.

Setting up a model and the pricing.

I'm going to just quickly.

Oh, I forgot to talk about this too. Sorry. I'll come back to the questions. Are you guys seeing.

This progress tracking badges window?

No.

All right.

So I'm not going to bother.

Oh. Because I'm not sharing right now. One second.

I forgot I had this slide. There's an option in the software for progress tracking badges. You earn these when you do different things in the software. There are some things that we don't even know that we get points for doing them. But some of the things that we do get points for.

Are creating a new pricing model and making it go live each time that you complete a quote, each time that you complete a proposal, getting a great result with the pricing success metric. So that's why I suggested leaving it turned on. Not only because you get to see your results, but you also get points for it. And when you do have a great result, submitting a success story that they can use in their marketing program and even just sharing it on Facebook. Everybody loves to hear about those success stories. As we heard earlier today, somebody signed a client for I think was 75 or $78,000 a year. Stories like that are really motivating.

Okay, so I'm going to jump back to questions again. So in our next session we are going to be talking about.

Ways to create the actual full proposal and we're going to be.

Talking about the pricing behind the scenes. So I know that doesn't really answer your question today, but please do come to the next, next session. We're going to get into that in detail.

Jeff has asked, just curious, do you amend your process of going through the model in any way if you are doing a face to face meeting versus an on? No, not at all. I don't do face to face meetings at all, Jeff. I am 100% virtual. But even if I was, I wouldn't change my process. I would just have my laptop in front of me doing a face to face meeting with a customer and let them be able to see the screen.

Yes. The next session is July 25th.

Thank you.

So Catherine has asked, can you copy the model you are changing and then archive the old one so it is there for reference? If needed, maybe date it with an update version date. Yes you can Catherine. And correct me if I'm wrong about that Gabby, but I believe you can make a copy of an existing model and tweak it the way that you want to. I wouldn't recommend it because you don't want to start getting tons and tons of models in there that only have slight minor differences in it because the more models that you start to get for different services that you're pricing, it can really get built up in there and get a little, I find it gets a little convoluted or maybe it's just OCD that I, I have. So I think that's all of the questions. I am going to shut down and say thank you everybody for attending as they posted in chat. The next session is on July 25th. That's when we're really going to get into some of the grit of creating the model and building the prices and mastering the numbers and understanding the price calculations. You don't want to miss that one. If you're really looking how to get into effective pricing, it's going to be at 11am Eastern. It's on the Trello board. The chat box will stay open for a couple minutes. I'll still be here. I'm just going to turn my cam and mic off, but if there is any questions trickling in, I'll be here to answer them. And Gabby's going to play some music for us on the way out, so thank you, everybody. I look forward to seeing you at the next session and hope you found today helpful. Bye.