Closing the Deal - Legal Accounting Wednesday

So I'm here by myself. I don't know where Sarah is. Anyway, we're going to talk about closing the deal, or I'm going to talk about closing the deal and how that happens. It's Legal Accounting Wednesday. And how you can do that, um, trying to be able to get to close a deal and how to close on a sale, basically. And what I want to do is I want to start from the beginning of really in the discovery call to be able to step through that part of it, because it's pretty critical when you start to do that kind of work and you start to present to the client. So that initial call is, is really important, and there's a big science behind There's a lot of science behind that initial meeting that you have with somebody. And sometimes you meet somebody and that first contact with someone is really going to be what takes you through the whole engagement. So if you have a bad first experience with somebody, it can actually carry you through. It can actually carry through the whole engagement. So it's not just going to be that piece of it. It's also going to be The part of, you know, that will follow you through. So if you have a bad or stumbling beginning point, it will absolutely probably follow you through and you probably won't get the job. So you can mop that up sometimes, but— oh, I think Sarah's joining me.

Hi.

I was like, she's not coming. She didn't tell me she's not coming. I am coming.

I'm so sorry. I just—

that meeting ran pretty far over, so So I know you're the only one I can ever see. Actually, I can see it this time. That's interesting. So we are live, and I've already started to talk about, uh, what it's like when you first try to— this is about closing the deal and tips on closing the deal, but I also think that it initially— the getting the job done starts at the very first conversation you have with a client, right? So when you The first phone call, the first time, like, we like to do Zoom. It doesn't always happen. A lot of times we find the attorneys will hop on the phone before, or they'll come on and they don't put their camera on. And I think back to a client we had pre-COVID, just pre-COVID, that we popped in multiple meetings with them and they never had the camera on. And then they found it to be fun, and then they ordered cameras, thankfully right before COVID and they were like having fun with all the backgrounds. Remember that?

Oh my gosh, that, that was actually fun. I enjoyed those sessions. Because it's cute. It was cute to see how it all worked.

It kind of sometimes didn't work, but a few times it was a little interesting. But with, um, actually with closing the deal, we can begin with some— I found some pretty cool sales facts because we're accountants, we love facts, right? So, um, one of the facts is that if 92% of salespeople state that they give up on candidates after prospects tell them no, So if you have a client that you reach out to, you have the first initial contact with them and then they say no, that's the end. That's where the lead actually dies and you just never reach back out. And I don't— I think it depends on how busy you are. I don't know how you can still keep it in your mind. And we use 17hats, so you could actually keep it in a list and maybe tag it. So later on you might want to reach back out, right? Maybe reach out at, um, Beginning of the year, maybe things didn't go so well. I just had a client come back to me that she was freaking out that none of her books were reconciled, and she went somewhere else for less money and found out that, uh, that wasn't the case. So it says 80% of potential clients say no 4 times before they say yes. Then I'm not sure if that's really with accounting, but that's a fact in sales world anyway.

Well, isn't it true? Don't you say if you are winning them all, you're doing something wrong, Linda? You've said that before. And I feel like the no isn't no, like personal no. It might be behind it is so many layers.

Well, I'd like to take the credit for that comment, but it was actually at the Intuit Advisory Board. Maybe it might have been at QuickBooks Connect, but it was Michael Lee who said you should only get about 50%. So if you're winning every single client, in all likelihood, your prices are too low. So you want to not— you don't want to win everything. You don't want to not win anything, but you also want to— you want to— you want to win some, and then you'll kind of know your pricing. And that'll get into pricing, which is something we're going to be talking about on Friday with our group, is we're going to be talking all about how to raise prices this week. So it's a great topic, and it was requested by the group. But let's get into the— just in the discovery part of it. So, okay. We're still on— it's still tips on closing the deal. But if you start out your conversation with, uh, in our case attorneys, but it can be any client. If you started out with a compliment, hey, I, you know, nice to meet you, uh, Mr. and Miss, uh, Ms. Attorney. You know, we checked you out to see what practice area you were. We scoped out your website. It really— your website's gorgeous. Now we can't say that with all attorneys because some of them we go on and we're like, oh, that's their website. We'll get into that later once we, you know, get hired as As their accounting firm, because we can, we delve into some of the advisory things that would kind of fall into marketing. But don't you think that's a great idea to maybe start with a compliment?

It, yeah, it is. It's like, it's a pleasure to meet you, or thank you for like, we made time together. Sometimes it's just, sometimes it's the fear of the client trying to figure out how to make time or the prospect making time. I also feel like What we have as number 2 is also part of the initial conversation when we start with them, right? We are listening, we're validating, we're understanding, we, we hear what they're saying, and we're being careful about the next steps of that process and making sure that when you're talking about it at the end, that you're bringing in those key parts that were important to them or that you felt were important as well. It goes both ways. They might not feel it's important, but it is important. Linda catches those really good.

So thank you.

You do good moments there with that.

If you were starting out with, you know, hi, you know, we checked out your website, it could be any compliment. It doesn't have to be that. Yeah. People buy from people they like. So if you start out your conversation like that and then you listen, what would be the next question you would ask after that if you wanted to find out? And with law firms, obviously, but would you be— what would you ask them as a question? Because I know our— I know a lot of our group wanted to watch this This week's law.

So, so we're talking about on closing the deal.

Closing this, we're still in the discovery. So the title is closing, but we're still in the discovery.

So we're in the discovery. So what, so a lot of things is what brought you here? What can we do to support you? What is the area of concern? Because sometimes it's just concern, or sometimes it's like, I'm done doing this by myself. I've been doing it for years by myself. I don't feel like I can trust anyone else. Okay. Then we— that's the empathy side, right? That's where we really kind of, we feel it. And we also have to acknowledge that what they do best is whatever they're doing in their business. So if they're the accountant, if they're the attorney, whatever that is, you do that best. The rest of it is stuff that we can complement and do well for you. That's what we do. This is what you do. Honoring your kind of lane, but coming together as a team, keeping that team-focused feeling.

Um, yeah, speak to their pain points. So their pain point might be, in our case, my IOLTA is not balanced and it really bothers me because I'm acutely aware that there's a problem here and I need to fix it because my license could be on the line. So that's a pain point that we run into a lot. That's an urgent pain point. And we, we pretty much, you and I do a really great job, I think, at putting the client at ease. We can tell them, Mm-hmm. we can handle this. We do this all the time. This is our specialty. We love to find right to the penny. So that's what we love to do. We're, we're aware that when we start to dig in, a lot of times we've seen it so many— we've done so many accounts now that we see patterns. And just saying the words like, we see patterns, and they're like, oh. And then you can even maybe mention a couple of patterns that are typical. Like, we see wire fees sometimes, and they're pulled out of the IOLTA account because they weren't, you know, the trust account, because they weren't— it wasn't set up right and the bank pulled it out. Those are the things that we'll find and we'll fix for you. We'll tell you what they are and we'll have you do it. And then you— one of our favorite lines is, and then you can sleep at night, because they're not sleeping at night when these are the problems when they start to come to us.

It's so true, Linda. When you're saying patterns, I think of it as touch points too through the process. It becomes our pattern also and how we talk with them after, how we follow up with them. It's, it's those patterns. It's those process points after, while we're in the middle of learning about your business, learning what your pain points are, learning what all these little nuances. And it, you really, I mean, let's face it, you know, right away when someone's taking your time because they want to do it themselves.

Yes.

Sniff that out, right? As you've done it long enough, you can sniff it out. Then you've also got the value of, is this a valuable prospect? And it goes both ways. So please remember, this isn't just about you being interviewed for the position. It goes both ways. Is this client going to fit well for you? Will you enjoy working with them? Is everyone receptive to the information? There's another pattern moment that you're saying. It goes both ways. And, and when you're asking those questions and you're diving in, you're kind of getting to the to these processes, or hopefully you're aligning with what is the agreed way to handle it.

Yeah. And I think too, when you're working, if you're new— so I mean, we've been doing this for a while, we've had businesses before, so we have our own businesses which we've been doing for a while. So we come from— we step forward from a place of confidence. But if, say, you're new, can you remember back to when you were first new and you were really nervous when you had to get on with a client? This is what we can see sometimes in some of the members of our group. They're brand new and they don't feel like they, they look at us like, oh my gosh, they know everything. And that's why we always tell them, we'll help you, we'll, we'll support you, we won't let you— you know, we're your, like, we're your safety net, basically. But for that person, you kind of have to, in the beginning, I think you have to kind of step forward in confidence, even if you're not feeling confident, kind of fake it till you make it.

Mm-hmm.

So that way you can get the client. And I can remember, this is gonna be shocking to you, Sarah, but I can remember when I used to do discovery calls, I would command the conversation. I would be like they would tell me one thing and I'd be all over it, and then the person didn't get a chance to talk. And I still got the work back then. But I think if you can be impassive, and I think if you can stop talking about yourself, they're not there to hear about you. They want to hear a little bit about you, but they don't want you to take the whole conversation. They're calling you and they want to relieve their pain point, whatever that happens to be. And then if you think about it, if you can put in your head, he or she who talks the most makes the least. So you can put that in your brain. That's how the conversation should go. Maybe it will help you to get there. So you want to— if you're working mid-market, which is our favorite, you want to find that decision maker. So when you're doing the discovery call, you want to find the decision maker. You don't want to be talking to somebody who can't make the decision. Because then you're only— you know what's gonna happen? You're gonna have to talk all over again to the next person, right? That's what happens. So, um, you want to accept the opinion of your client, right or wrong. You want to be like, yes, give them that. I think it's super effective sales technique if you can get along with the person and let their voice be the powerful tool in, in the conversation, in that discovery.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you want to care about your client for sure. And then maybe in the case of us taking a little bit of ownership of the problem is we can step in and say, we have this expertise that we can help them with, right? Yeah.

And you said it really well in the beginning. We like data. We like to measure things.

We do.

So it's kind of that way in the process. You're sort of— it's a measuring of value, of perception, of the problems. It's a mix. It's a briefcase of things like we have here.

Right. So when you're getting to this point, so we've had the discovery call and they've now paid us for a file review, and now we're going to present our findings, whether we send it off in a packet through 17hats, or if we have that, um, you know, we don't have a lot of time here. So we have that, we have that meeting with them to go over any questions they might have on that, or maybe we actually present it to them live. What would you suggest for a great tip there? Because sometimes the price can be— if they're hiring you as an expert, and I'm just saying this as because we've niched down and we're specialists, we're not going to be the same price as somebody who does all different kinds of accounting, right? We're going to be that person that can do— we can provide more value. So if they get that shock of the price, how do you kind of soften that? Below of it?

I mean, I don't know. Yeah, Linda, I would say like, I mean, I know what I do, but I'm me personally, but in your, in your kind of tenure of having done this, what do you feel like is— do you have like a tip that is, that's worked best for you through this?

Like, I do, actually, because sometimes if somebody's coming to me with a really, a really messy file and their trust accounting is, is a mess, and we're probably going to have to go back to the beginning of time to unravel it because we've looked at the records and we know that there's stuff uncategorized and their chart of accounts is a hot mess and there's a pile of things. And so the number is quite large and, and we're actually looking at maybe starting a whole new file. Um, a lot of times, and this is going to sound terrible, but for a way to Actually get them to understand. You can tell a horror story about somebody that you know that had trouble because their trust account— so you kind of soften the blow of the fact that we're going to fix it, we're going to fix it quickly for you, we're going to get it in line, you're hiring a professional firm. Tell a story about somebody who maybe hired somebody else to do it because they went for a lesser price, and then we ended up redoing it. So those are the things you can kind of drop the seeds so they'll think about it. And yeah, I think from our conversations that we have with the attorneys, I don't think many of them walk away saying these people don't know anything. They know we know what we're talking about. And most of the time, by the time they get here, they just want relief of pain. They want things fixed. Typically attorneys are very, uh, I find, want things done really quickly. They're not looking for, oh, I'll do it 3 months from now. So you have to kind of be prepared for that, but you put that in your pricing. Yeah, they're very instant, right? Because that's how they work in their world. Yeah, it's into the whole psychology, psychology of an attorney. And, um, we did a whole hour talk on that because it was actually a pretty fascinating week at the lab because it was like diving into the— and everybody kind of shared stories, which was a lot of fun. But yeah, I mean, but yeah, typically here you're closing the deal, you want to do your research, so you've, you know, you're putting your quote together. You want to deliver a product that is professional. And a lot of times our professionalism shines through with our NDA and the fact that we have Licio in place. So we've protected them from the bad world.

We have our tools. We have, we have our system. We have our tools. We, we come across with understanding, sincerity. And we ask, ask a lot of questions. If you, if you're unsure, but you want some clarity, just ask for clarification type questions. You know, you don't have to know it all, but you want to understand where the breakdown is or where the pain point is. Like, to your point, find the patterns, you know, delve into that. You can always come back with more questions later as you're doing your discovery or as you're preparing things for the next meeting.

And truly, you don't want to put too much pressure on someone that they feel like if they don't sign right then at that minute, although you could offer a freebie in the deal if you wanted to kind of get that signed right away. If you're needing clients, you could do that. You could offer a lesser price if you don't feel like you're at the level that you want to be at, but because we all start out a little bit less than that. But, um, sorry. But I mean, if you look at it that way, I think that those are the things in closing a deal. I think leave them with something to think about as after you, you put this down in writing and you explain it and you kind of, you can take them through a tour of the file. I've done that that in the past by using Loom. And I'll just, instead of writing out all the things that's wrong, I actually visually take them through it. And that will— that's pretty dramatic because you're in their file giving them a view of everything that's wrong. And don't leave anything out. Let them see that there's a ton of things wrong. So that will help lessen that blow and justify the cost to A, get it done quickly, B, because of the importance of it, especially in our world, it's important for compliance. And, um, and C, we're going to get it done quick for you. We're going to turn around and start the following week. And we're going to, you know, get that project off and running, which is the things that they're really looking for. And I think those are the things that if you can put in place, and of course we've got plenty of tips, we use 17hats. There's plenty of ways that you can start a project without actually starting the project. You can have like little workflows there set up so that you're doing things in the client side. They're seeing that you're doing things, you're asking for things, but it's the same things you always do. So you can put that in a workflow so that it looks like Here's the QuickBooks file and here's how you can start to learn QuickBooks if they're coming from an outside platform and you're doing a data migration. So those are some of the things. But yeah, it freaked me out with not showing up. I got to tell you.

I'm so sorry. I didn't know this session went— yeah. Anyway, so, well, but to recap kind of what you were saying, Linda, I think the big thing is when you're doing your homework there and asking a lot of questions, you're just validating some of the things. And if you need to go back, it's okay to go back. If you need to take a little bit of longer time, it's okay to say that because you are doing your homework. But there's value to your time too. So it just— you're trying to put your best foot forward. And that's an honorable thing. Obviously, don't take 3 weeks to do something.

Don't be honest, right? We're big on— we always talk to the team and we're like, when can you get it done by? Then we go back to the client, the team will say, I can get it done by Friday. And you're like, we're gonna have it done by Monday or Tuesday. Because we don't want the client, we want to, we want to blow their mind and say, hey, we're done today, instead of saying we need to the next Friday. Because that, that always leaves— you don't want to end a job like that, especially if you want to turn it into ongoing. If you're doing a big cleanup, cleanups turn into ongoing. You want to leave with that happy— that person not only got my work done, they did it professionally. They used an app called Liscio that was simple, that they could import the documents in, and it was really easy to use. And, and then they did it very professionally with an NDA. And those are the tips that Really set you forward so that you come off professional before you even really get going. You know, you're at the discovery phase, which is important.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, we have more to touch on this week in our Friday private, private group. I'm looking forward to the discussion and doing some—

We're going to do a workshop style because we're going to actually dive in and we're going to start raising prices right. And we're all going to do it. We're going to do it workshop style.

We're going to have homework. We'll have to do a follow-up.

When I did the one When I did the one where you were away and it was about letter engagement, everybody's like, oh, thanks for the homework, Linda. We got to change our letter of engagement. We didn't— we dived into what it should say. And then we went— you asked them when you came back who did their work, and everybody's like, we thought about it. I'm still gonna ask.

Including me.

I know, I know. Like, including me. I was like, I didn't do it. A lot of great tips on that too. So if you're not in the Law Lab, we'll put some links in Uh, fun group. We get into some interesting discussions, and this week is raising prices. So if you want to join us, we'll put the link in and join our group. Join the fun.

I won't be late next week, I promise.

No, I'm gonna be late. I'm gonna do that too. Okay.

Oh, I'm so sorry about that. It was nice to hang out with everybody. It's always a pleasure hanging out with my partner.

So always. All right, well, um, we will see you all next week.

Sounds good.