The Wize Way

Episode 107: UPFRONT PRICING: Crafting Winning Pricing Strategies in Accounting & Bookkeeping

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 107

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In this week's episode of the Wize Guys Podcast, Brenton Ward with Ed Chan and Jamie Johns deep dive into the topic of upfront pricing and how you communicate your pricing to your client. 

In the spirit of addressing the problem and not the symptom, learn about the potential problems that you can experience when setting up your pricing and the proper way to present your costings to your clients.

Unlock the secrets to a winning pricing strategy in accounting and bookkeeping, and be inspired to implement these strategies, ensuring your firm not only survives but thrives in the modern financial landscape. Tune in now!

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Brenton Ward:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. The topic to discuss today is quite an interesting one, given that there's a fair bit of noise in the market from time to time on this topic of upfront pricing and pricing in general. There's a little bit of a theme here going on as well, and I think it's just because Ed wants to take the back seat and let Jamie do all the work. But we're going to put the spotlight on Jamie again today. So it's a really interesting topic and the reason we've chosen this topic is we've had a good few questions here and there over the last couple of months as to upfront pricing.

Brenton Ward:

There's a fair bit of noise in the market, Ed, and sometimes controversial noise, especially around the traditional sort of time- cost billing. Some commentators say that it's unethical because it incentivizes accountants to take longer to do the work, and then you've got the other side of the fence saying that value pricing and upfront pricing are unethical and immoral because you can charge a client through the nose. So I want to cut through the noise and start with you and get your feedback and your thoughts on pricing in general. Where do you sit and what do you tell firms when you mentor about pricing in their firm?

Ed Chan:

Thanks, Brenton. First I'd like to say that point about dishonesty. Let's park that for a minute because you can be dishonest by doing time cost and putting too much time on the job, that's true. But you can also be just honest about fixed pricing as well. So let's just start the conversation by saying that we're all honest and based on the honest people who are doing the job. Where do we sit with the pricing model? So the argument is should you time cost or should you fix price? That's always been the argument.

Ed Chan:

My response has always been that it's not what you do but how you do it that defines the success and the what. When I refer to what you know, that's you do fixed pricing or you do time costs, but how you do it, the how is how you communicate it to the client because if you don't communicate it properly to the client, you'll get in trouble with time costs or you'll get in trouble with fixed price. So, in the spirit of addressing the problem and not the symptom, because I've always believed that the what is the symptom, the how is the problem, if you address the problem, which is how you do it, which is the way you communicate it with the client, you won't have a problem using either one, and we use both here at the office, and it just depends on the client and what they're comfortable with and so forth. But let me just give you a quick example of the problems you can get into if you don't do the show properly, and then I can hand it over to Jamie the pricing With time costing. Of course, the problem is that clients don't like surprises, that's all it is. And it's no different to you. Know, if you took your car down to the local mechanic and he didn't tell you how much it's going to cost to fix it and you came to pick it up and then he said it's two and a half thousand dollars. And then you complained and then he tried to justify his fees by saying, well, I replaced the motor here and this and that and this and that, and it may be perfectly legitimate, but the problem has been he just didn't communicate it with you or to you. Now, that's all it is.

Ed Chan:

So the problem with time cost often is that accountants jump in and they do the work they do it legitimately, and then they send the bill to the client and of course, the client reacts because it was a surprise and they weren't expecting it. So in time cost, you have two types. You've got the amount that is the same each year, so they pretty much know how much it's going to cost. So if it's a little bit over and under, it's not going to make too much difference to them because they really know. But it's the other ones where you know how long is a piece of string. So if you were sent down to do an audit on the company and you don't know what it's going to take one hour or one day, or three or four or five days and that's where the problem is.

Ed Chan:

And the way I communicate with the client is that I say to them look, I think it's going to take me two days to do this job and I'll let you know after a day of being in there and doing it exactly how much.

Ed Chan:

You know not exactly, but around about how much it's going to cost or how much time it's going to take, and you know after I get into it I can.

Ed Chan:

I just constantly communicate with the client as to how much time I've spent and what the expected amount that's left finished the job off, and he or she can tell me at each point of that time, whether they want to go ahead or not, and I've never, ever had a problem with that, as long as I position it properly from the start. And the other example is when someone gives you a set of accounts and it's an absolute mess and you've quoted for the job up front, and then when you get into the job, you realize it's such a mess. Then you have to go back to the client and manage their expectations, and it's in that management, or the poor management of the client's expectations, where the problem is. So you can get in trouble either one if you don't manage the how. The how is where the secret is. So rather than spend all our time with arguing about fixed price or time cost, let's spend our time training our staff and training ourselves on how to deliver it, which is what this webinar is all about.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely, the third layer to that pricing debate and conversation around value pricing. Did you have any comments on that element?

Ed Chan:

Value pricing. I know that's been bandied around quite a bit. I think value pricing is a function of the way you run your business. And if you run it like a business where you've got staff and the staff are making money for you, as opposed to being a practice where you're doing all the work, now, if you're doing all the work, then obviously you've only got eight hours in a day to do the work. You only earn eight hours. So the only way you're going to earn more money is to increase your price, and you can't increase your price unless you can justify value, and hence you know this is arguing about value. But if you dig deeper, you find that the person who's arguing about that is because they're the only person that's just trying to earn more money out of the business, and so they're trying to look for more value-added stuff so you can charge more hourly rates. But if you run it like a business business which is what the Wize Mentoring is about if each staff member was to make you and I'm making up to thirty thousand dollars in profit after you've paid their wages and everything, and if you had, you know, staff, then you make $300,000. And if you've got 20 staff, you make $100,000 in profit. Then it's a business as opposed to practice and the value pricing still comes into it because you can then separate the higher level of services, like the advisories for the higher charge charge-out rates compared to, say, the bookkeeping and the bass is that a lower rate. It's the scalability of that business where you make more money and it takes emphasis away from you know, having to increase your prices or argue value pricing.

Ed Chan:

One last thing, I wanted to say is that we took that value pricing to its logical conclusion and every professional out there was to price something based on the value they bring you.

Ed Chan:

It's really a slippery slope because imagine if you went to your doctor and he said I price by value, I don't price by 15- minute lots, I price by value. If you had melanoma and he picked up on it, imagine if he came back to you and said well, what value did you put on your price? So I know that's a really silly example, but extrapolate that out to its logical conclusion. And every person did it on value pricing. I'd hate to live in a world where you don't know what you're going to get because it's based on what value you put on it versus everybody else putting on it, and it's not a clear black- and- white thing. If they run their businesses properly, rather than having it as a practice where they can't scale and the only way they can make more money is to value price or to justify what they're doing by a higher price, and if you run your business properly, there's less need for that.

Brenton Ward:

I guess reiterating there is quite a bit of noise around this topic. So, bringing it back to the Wize model and what makes sense, to running a business again, I think, as opposed to running a practice and focusing on the balance sheet rather than the P&L, I think it's really important context. So thank you for setting the scene. Now Jamie's session, because he is someone who's implemented this very successfully with Sky. So, Jamie, we're going to hand it over to you and let you set the scene in terms of the foundations for upfront pricing and also fixed pricing, but give us a little bit of context around the whole strategy for you.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, thanks, Brenton. The first thing to say, I think, is what we've discussed today has really sort of probably taken me 10 years of blood, sweat, and tears around the whole sales process. So we tested a lot of things and we looked at results and outcomes and at the end of the day, you know what counts is what clients you convert. It's all about, particularly in sales which is part of pricing up front and the fixed fee model is what clients you can convert. So you know, focusing on results and that's how we come to what worked and what didn't and what we're discussing today. So three of the biggest things in terms of the context is, I think, context. With this pricing is 95% of it. So if you get the context right what we're talking about then when you do finally go to get the client to accept your proposal, your fixed price proposal, or your upfront payment, it'll be because of your context.

Jamie Johns:

The first part of that in terms of the context is about yourself. So why you and why the client? What I just want to say there is if you don't believe in the firm that you're working for, if you don't believe in the values, if you don't believe in the product, in the help that you're trying to sell the client, then the clients will pick that up Because, at the end of the day, I ask everyone what is the client buying? At the end of the day, I'll argue that they're buying you. So if you're not rock solid in your belief around your firm, your products, and what you're trying to do, which is help the people and not just be there to make money, then clients will see through that, because we're only human at the end of the day. And the second question is why them? Why the client? Because at the end of the day, it's to help others and because at the end of the day, it's to help others. And that's how I've always directed my practice. I've always tried to give more than I could. So it's about why you and why the client and clients will see through any cracks that appear there in the sales process.

Jamie Johns:

The second point that is really really important today, Brenton, is speed. But as soon as you get a lead that comes into the business or a prospect if you're not onto that lead straight away, and the quicker you can get the corner proposal, the more chance of your conversion. Everyone knows I think Practice Ignition just raised $26 million. And what is Practice Ignition? Practice Ignition is a fee- generating machine, a proposal- generating machine that does it fast and helps you productize all your services, if you like. And you can see there that the percentage of customers that expect a call within 30 minutes it's like 90%. So at Sky, I'm always onto the managers about giving the managers time as soon as a lead comes in. You must get onto that lead within a couple of hours. The longer you leave that lead, surely enough someone couple of hours, the longer you leave that lead, surely enough someone else is probably getting a proposal that's what I found fascinating about that slide.

Brenton Ward:

Actually is what's defined as immediate and it's 30 minutes after the life cycle starts, so that leads generated, which I think explains one of the big disconnects in and probably a little bit off topic but the disconnect between marketing and the sales division and accounting firm because a lot of the big disconnects in and probably a little bit off topic but the disconnect between marketing and the sales division and accounting firm, because a lot of the marketing activity that can happen promotes and generates really good activity and good leads, but then there's a disconnect coming into the sales division as to when those leads are actually picked up. They normally sit in an inbox for way too long. Then this obviously kicks in.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, and look over the years I've just been a machine at chasing leads. And if you don't chase leads, if you just give up I think it's an important point if you just give up on the first contact point, then you're 80% not going to win. You know some of our biggest clients. I've actually had one client where he said to me contact me in six months' time. And I contacted him in six months' time to the day and they're a client in Sydney, one of the biggest clients we've got. So don't drop the ball.

Jamie Johns:

And another thing I want to say it's not no until it's a no, because a lot of discussion in our weekly tactical meeting is oh, that client's no good, oh, he won't return my call. It's not about you, it's about when the client's ready and it's about they could have anything going on in their personal life, their business. But until it's a no, it's a no and that's a massive thing to remember, because you'll give up. I was insane. I never gave up on the lease until they told me to go away. I would just say to people that do you want me to go away? Because I'll go away Nine times out of ten I'd say nine times no, no, I'm just not ready, you know. So you use your weekly tactical, use your CRM to chase these things, and speed is critical and then follow-up is even more critical.

Ed Chan:

Often we think that we're annoying people, but in fact you know they do appreciate it if they are genuine and it's just as Jamie says. You know they're just the timing isn't quite right, but they do feel that you care if you do follow up. So don't think that it's a negative thing to follow up and they will tell you that if they're not genuine and they don't want the follow-up. But you know exactly what Jamie says just follow up. Follow up because it really does show that you care and you really want their business yeah, well, it's a good point.

Brenton Ward:

I only had only had a lead who had followed up five or six times over the last couple of months, and my last email to them was at the sake of starting to annoy you, I'll put this as one of my final follow-ups and then you can let me know if you'd like me to continue doing so. And they came back within 24 hours and said no, I really want you to keep touching base, I'm just really busy. So it's a really good point. You just have to be persistent until they actually say go away, I don't want the business.

Jamie Johns:

Critical guys too. To measure the conversion rate, you must have it in your weekly tactical meeting, in your CRM. How are we converting? So accountability, you tie back to all this as well.

Brenton Ward:

So talk to us about modality, Jamie, because something that we may not necessarily think or talk about all that much, but something you place a huge importance on leading up to getting to the pricing point and also the sales process. So talk to us about that via email.

Jamie Johns:

So what this is all about is the way that humans communicate. Humans have been around a long time, let's face it, and we're social beings. And here's just one study that a UCLA professor found that 55% of our communication is body language 38% is the tone of our voice and 7% is just like the words we say. So over the years, and even some of the accounts I'd mentored, where the accountants had sent the proposal on an email and it was a new client, then their chances of converting that client were so limited. It was ridiculous and we tested this and what we found was that every time we stepped away from this process, it reduced our ability to convert the client. And the reason is because of the facts, in the research 55, 38 is body language and tone of your voice.

Jamie Johns:

And if you think about that when you've got a new client, what are you trying to do? You're trying to build rapport, you're trying to build trust, sprinting. But if you're just going to meet someone and send an email with a price, it's no good. It just doesn't maximize your success in trying to bring on board that client and build trust and build rapport. So the modality you know as human beings is getting in their face, you know best, face-to-face. Second, a Zoom call. Thirdly, a phone call. And fourthly, in their face, you know best, face to face. Second, a Zoom call. Thirdly, a phone call. And fourthly, like you know, maybe an email. So that modality we found and tested and whenever we stepped away from this, we always limited our chances of converting.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah.

Brenton Ward:

I think this is one of the most important points and I'd like to touch on it when we get to how you got your team on board with the upfront pricing strategy. Because I think we often use our email as our security blanket, especially when it comes to sales because we don't like being considered or positioned as a salesperson.

Brenton Ward:

But I think that's a really good thing for this discussion around pricing and upfront pricing. A hundred percent right for this discussion around pricing and upfront pricing is 100% right. I mean, we need to have our ducks in line, as you say, to get to a point where the client's in a position to accept the proposal for upfront pricing because it does need some priming and some foundation set to get to that point. So let's talk about, if we can, some of the benefits of the upfront pricing fixed pricing model. You obviously did quite a bit of research and analysis and looking at the market, listening to different coaches and different people on the topic. What made you guys decide to one do it and then what are the benefits you've seen from doing it?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, over the years, the pain points and everyone will know this is I hated debtors. I simply hated debtors, and we won't say why. But yeah, look, I hated debtors, and the benefits to receiving an upfront payment or a fixed monthly fee are simply massive. I mean, you reduce your debtors to nothing. Often you'll go into negative whip, depending on the timing. So the benefit is whenever you're going to the bank for finance and talking about key performance indicators, we always talk about lockup.

Jamie Johns:

You know, what your lockup is? It's your debtors and whip. And if you move your firm to upfront pricing or fixed fee pricing, then you know lockup is absolutely minimized and your cash flow is fantastic. Think about when you pay all your staff, when do you pay your rent and when do you pay your team. You know it's all cyclical, but if you don't have this type of model, then it can be more ad hoc, whereas with upfront or fixed front pricing and it's all scheduled, then you know it can really run like a finely tuned machine, your business in terms of cash flow well, that's a really interesting point.

Brenton Ward:

Actually cash flow points, obviously the obvious benefit of it reducing debtors and whip. It made mention there of going and getting finance for, say, your growth plan, which you guys are heavily involved in, looking at acquisitions and different things like that. So having implemented this strategy over the last couple of years has actually, in hindsight, now benefited you when you go to the bank and ask for money to buy the next firm.

Jamie Johns:

The other point there Brent is too, with the clients. Ed mentioned earlier about managing the client's expectations. Now, none of us like a surprise. Ed said that now, if you price everything up front or have a fixed fee and you have the ability to do that, I remember when we started doing it, the complaints that we had about our fees basically went to nil because clients knew what the price was going to be it was a fixed price or it was an upfront price. The ability to manage the client's expectations is critical to onboarding the client and keeping the client for the long term as well, because it's all about, as Ed said, managing the client's expectations.

Ed Chan:

There is a thing here that, psychologically, most people prefer to ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. And what I mean by that is that it's really hard to have the discussion up front, or have the argument, if you like, upf ront, and to ask for permission up front. Most people prefer to not do that and then ask for forgiveness when the proverbial hits the fan. And if you're going to do this upfront pricing, you've got to get over that, because it is also about filtering out the bad people, because at the end of the day, if you ask them, if you price it up front, you separate the people who know that they've got to pay you, they've got this mindset of you know I'm going to pay you when I finish versus if the person's got this mindset of I'm going to just drag you out as long as I can, six or seven, or I may not even want to pay you, but I'm just going to be tricky and dishonest, but just make use of you.

Ed Chan:

Then it's better to have that fight up front and that filters out all the bad ones from the good ones and that comes to their intent. So it just also highlights what their intent is, because, at the end of the day, they've got to pay for it. Are they prepared to? Often the debt collection strategies and often you would have had from tradesmen who would you like to pay cash or credit or by check. They ask that question of you up front, but what they're really doing is setting up expectations, managing your expectations and, you know, preparing and positioning the fact that you expect to get paid. So this all comes down to all of that. Its debt collection is right up front.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely. So let's talk about some of the fundamentals of this whole strategy. Then, if we can, Jamie, coming back to the research and the trial and error that you guys have done at Sky over the last couple of years, implementing this documented now the step-by-step process of your sales process into your pricing and then into converting and delivering on the service. So talk to me about the importance of having this process documented and what are some of the core elements of it.

Jamie Johns:

So quite a few years ago, going back now, I met Jack Daly. Some of the WizeT ribe members may have heard of Jack Daly, but one of his points was at the conferences that said to write a sales playbook. So a sales playbook was every step that you need to do that maximizes the lead or prospect to a paying client Version rates like 80% plus can you document those steps that you're doing? And so I went away and wrote basically 10 steps, or what Jack Daly, or what the Americans I think, would call a sales playbook. And then, on top of that, I also read another book called Pricing with Confidence, which was about giving clients options or packaging. This ultimately resulted, Brenton, in the development of these 10 steps. Do you want me to quickly step through each of these very quickly?

Brenton Ward:

There are a couple in here that I wouldn't mind drilling into, but if you wouldn't mind just giving us a quick overview of the steps, we'll run through these so you know part of the sales document and the sales process you go through is these 10 steps.

Jamie Johns:

And the first one's why us, why your firm. So you should tell your prospect why you're the best. Any awards you've won if you can get involved in winning any awards, you know whether it's in your local area, or you know Victoria or your membership bodies, or you know chartered accounts, whatever. So just tell them why you're the best and just be transparent as you can on that, because you believe in your firm. The second one is who's going to be looking after you as a client and what's your team. Ed always said, don't just have one person. So in the sales process, who's your senior client manager, or who's the assistant client manager, and who is the team of people that are actually looking after my file and my account? And so you specify who's responsible, who's your contact point. Don't be wishy-washy about it. Tell them who looks after the file. Then you should say in the sales document what other services do you offer and have that there so you know that could be bookkeeping, that could be helping them with finance, that could be asset management. So have a list of the other critical services you offer so they can see that. Then obviously you have your proposal and your packages and we'll touch base on some of the packages and how Sky has presented them over the years. And you know they can take bronze, silver, gold, or platinum, however. You want to sort of pitch it like that. What about the added add? What are the value adds? So what are the things that come with the packages packages? And so keep creating value, the perception of, oh yeah, I get this and I get that, and then you can have your optional extras.

Jamie Johns:

The old say do you want fries with that? It's a classic saying. I think we get from McDonald's, but you can use that because it's important never to judge what you think the client wants. Time and time again, every time we put something in front of the client we didn't know that they wanted their wheels updated. So tell the clients what other things you can add. And then, in points seven and eight, go into some of more detail on some of your more complex packages, and we'll touch base on that as well, but just go into more detail to explain exactly what it is. And that's probably the higher- end type service that you can offer the other one. There were reverse engineer industry's worst practices and over the years, when I have business coached some of our own clients, you know whether it's a plumber or whoever it is. What we did was we decided what's the worst thing accountants do and then we tried to guarantee against that, and we'll have a quick look at that as well, and that again explains.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, I think that one's super important.

Jamie Johns:

You know, back years ago, when I went to every client going back now and sat with them face-to-face and said you know, back in those days it was like why will you pay me up front? Which is pretty gutsy, you know it was this reverse engineering seven-step process that really convinced clients of why to pay us up front. Obviously, you want step 10. Do you know what to do now? Yeah, where do I sign? Yeah, make it easy.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely, and I think by documenting that and have seen in the sales playbook, it makes perfect sense that you know every team member should be focused on if they're sales facing, focused on following each one of those steps every single time, and you can see why when they don't, how the sale doesn't convert for sure.

Jamie Johns:

Every time we stepped away from this and testing and testing, every time, I always found our conversion rates went down. Alternatively, we always left money on the table. If we didn't follow this step, we always left some service that the client potentially would have taken, but we didn't show them, for example, or we didn't give them a package for the bookkeeping, because they might have said, oh, you know, I'm doing my own bookkeeping, but they didn't even know we could do it. So never, assume yeah.

Ed Chan:

What's really good about the packages is that you've only got one thing to offer them and you quote it one thing up front and they generally always feel like maybe I should shop this around, maybe this isn't quite the best price, or the best thing that I can and I'll just go get another quote or just go interview another accountant. When you present three options in front of them, it feels like to the client that you've done the shopping around for them and they're going to save a lot of time. So often people don't like being just given one thing because they feel like you're just corralling them into what you want. But if you put the options down and they don't feel like they're being pushed into a corner, they've some choice and often you end up selling the bigger package to them just because you've presented it to them there is a good bit of science behind how many options you should have, which we'll get into in a second.

Brenton Ward:

I think, Jamie, you kind of included that in the sales playbook itself. But yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you're basically showing the client, that you save them half the time from going to shop around because you've got the options there and one of them must suit your circumstances right for sure. Now just to touch on this again. I know we did speed through those 10 steps, but Jamie has well- documented each of those steps in the sales playbook, which is uploaded into the bulk in step 15 for you to download and make your own. So I wouldn't mind diving into a couple of those points there that I think are really important to the pricing piece, Jamie, the first one being the value adds that you offer as part of the package. So why is this really important to the upfront pricing element and what do you mean by value adds?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, at the end of the day, you want to look after your really good client and I guess we throw around the A and B class clients and so the high-end value clients that you really want to service well.

Jamie Johns:

And so, fundamentally, what we decide I get the client managed to do is to decide who they should have an AGM with or an annual general meeting.

Jamie Johns:

So this formally schedules a communication policy with the client, because it's so easy to go through the year with all the technology we got these days and just use emails and text messages and zero and not actually get to talk to them face-to-face, which is where that communication and where that rapport is built, as we saw earlier. And so what we'd like to do for some time now years ago, we set up let's have an AGM with all our business clients, or the clients that we really think we should have an AGM with, because often you'll get the complaint well know, my accountant never communicates with me on, is never proactive, never tells me what I should do. You know, we've always got this you know thing in our industry like well, I want my account to be proactive and not reactive so what big push by a lot of the commentators as well exactly so that one of the ways to tackle that is you know you got a lot of clients to deal with is to schedule an AGM, and it's formally scheduled with your practice manager.

Jamie Johns:

Basically, what you do it's BAMFAM, so you get in there and you run through a couple of processes you can use the business scorecard that we're provided. So you can use a business scorecard or a life scorecard, and those little know discussion points that you have in your AGM force clients to take stock and say, well, where's my business at? Is my business actually where I want it to be? Is my life actually where it wants to be at? And your business and your financial health around that is a massive part of all that. So one of the things that are great, you know a conversation kick starter is what we sort of use is the business scorecard and the life scorecard, and then, bolted on top of that within your AGM you know an hours meeting is a wealth check, and then also a business health check.

Jamie Johns:

Now, the wealth check, there are a couple of products you can use there. There's one that we're providing, the vault that I actually develop, which is just a spreadsheet. Other people have used a product called My Prosperity and I think people have probably heard of that and there's another great one that's out there now. That's been around for quite some years, that we've got on the screen. There is the SVX Group. They have a personal dashboard, they have a business dashboard and it's very similar to my Prosperity and the pricing is different. So everyone can have a look at that.

Jamie Johns:

And then the business health check one of the things I really love within about 15 minutes you can do what's called a value builder system score and it's a pay-as-you-go sort of type system, no subscription or anything. I love the value builder system because it will basically give you a value of the business in about 20 minutes and it also gives you a score there. You can see on the screen what these things are. They're just value adds because clients walk away and say, wow, you know what, I know roughly what my net worth is, I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses, I know where I'm at and I know where I need to get to. And if the client can walk away from that around their wealth and around their business, wow, you've just done an uppercut, you've done a great job. It just packs the client with value, and then from that it's BAMFAM Book, a meeting from a meeting.

Jamie Johns:

Do you want to catch up about this? Do you need to see the financial planner? Are you seriously considering doing monthly board meetings or mentoring, for example? So it just opens up all these other aspects for the other services that you can potentially offer. But if you don't do this, if you don't sit down and have these conversations, you won't talk about them. Jeremy, do you charge for this? We build it into the package, ed. We build it in as part of our packages. That's right, but you've got to pick and choose which clients you want to do it with, because with some clients, ed, you know it could be a complete waste of time because you'll know that they'll never do it. But you know you've got to be careful, though, because if you often assume what a client wants, you can be going down the wrong path.

Ed Chan:

Actually, it's a good segue into what I'm going to say is that often when we grew up if you like, we grew up from Division 4. If you remember our org board, the Wise Mentoring org board we grew out of Division 4, which is production, and then we came out and we started to run a business and then our whole mindset is from the production area. So we think that we've got to charge for everything that we do. But you've got to separate out when you run a business, you're no longer on the conveyor belt and no longer in the factory. You're now in the office and you're managing the five divisions, which include sales and marketing, and what I call the invisible money versus the visible money.

Ed Chan:

The visible money is your pay-to-go, but the invisible money is the goodwill and you've got to invest into the invisible money with the client and often these things the trusted advisor, these value add is part of that invisible value and the balance sheet.

Ed Chan:

So, getting yourself out of taking the practitioner's hat off and putting the business hat on, you've got to not charge for things that are balance sheet value and the retention of the client and the long-term, the lifetime value of the client.

Ed Chan:

That's all what I call the invisible balance sheet value, and we've got to invest into that. Now, of course, if you're not running your business properly and you're constantly in the P and L, you won't be able to do the balance sheet investment and you won't be able to retain these clients for a long time, which the lifetime value of a client is five years, but you want to retain them for 10 years, and that value is quite, quite a lot. So if you run it like a practitioner who thinks that, you know, the only way I'm going to earn more money is to increase my prices, so I'm going to put this argument about value pricing in there, instead of running it properly, getting a house in order, getting the production doing the production, that frees you up to do the balance sheet discussions with the clients, and this is what Wise Mentoring is all about. You know getting the balance between the P&L and the balance sheet discussions with the clients, and this is what wise mentoring is all about. You know getting the balance between the P and L and the balance sheet.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, these meetings used to be my favorite meetings, the AGM, because you could quickly tick off so many things and be proactive. You know, have you got the right entity structure? Just so many things, insurance wills, and just you know, if you follow the process, it's just tick, tick, tick, and tick. And you know, if you follow the process, it's just tick, tick, tick, and tick. And you know every year you can just quickly update their net wealth, what new assets they got, what loans they got, how's their business performing. It's just a couple of so many things and you can just be seen to be so proactive. And then a lot of other services come out of it, obviously, which you charge for, but at the same time, you're obviously generally helping the client keeping their financial affairs together.

Brenton Ward:

And I think it's a good point that you made in terms of factoring in the AGM into the pricing of your packages, having structure around the AGM to make sure that it doesn't blow out and we're not just going on a blank agenda each year. So we've also got that, I think, pretty well documented for everyone to download in the vault as well if you want to start conducting those AGMs. Jamie, I want to talk about the packaging side of things, because I think this one is a little bit shrouded in some mystery, because coming up with pricing for packages is definitely an issue for firms, because you know how you price it, what should each package be priced at? But let's go back to the start- up from pricing and packaging pricing are somewhat different, but in the same sort of ballpark. So how did you guys evolve to this fixed- fee packaging model?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, I guess the history is years ago had different coaches and various ones. I converted sort of the practice to upfront pricing for every client and I went through that process and we'll talk about that a little bit more with what we do with existing clients. And then we sort of moved to the model. Because of all the benefits that we discussed earlier around cashflow, client management, expectations, and all those benefits we block up whatever we move to monthly fixed fees and these packages, even the benefits just presenting these packages to the client so that they knew exactly what you know as a firm you could help them with. And so we came up with, you know, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. There's a whole heap of other. You know theories around. You should only have three packages and all this sort of thing, and that's all fine, but you've got to do what works for you and you've got to test and measure theories around. You should only have three packages and all this sort of thing, and that's all fine, but you've got to do what works for you and you've got to test and measure what works. So what we did, Brenton, we came up with the bronze, and everyone can see what's in the bronze. We came up with the silver, then the gold. We developed our own sort of in-house product which is basically a dashboard that we called Skyhub and it just has the client's key performance indicators that we track for them and they can access that anytime. So it was just like another product that we came up with that was important to the client. And then, obviously, once we were confident that we could do monthly board meetings which most of the WISE tribe members are probably doing now, and seeing the layout of the board meetings and the concepts that we teach in wise are definitely applicable to your own clients who want to go to that next level, who want to grow their business, who want to have their business run without them, just like we all do. And that became the platinum and so further to that.

Jamie Johns:

Then, as we developed and we worked out that we could do offshoring and set up a team offshore and make the bookkeeping profitable, then we wanted to add another layer to our pricing and there's a couple of different ways to do that. You can offer a discount, as you can see there, on the price, from $2,700 to $2,160. So we can then go to the clients and say, look, you know what, as a firm, we can do your bookkeeping as well. And so here's the prices. There's your price for your bronze and your silver, your gold and your platinum, and all of a sudden you can see the difference in the prices there. You can add the bookkeeping on. But you know what the benefit is if you're doing the bookkeeping by the time it gets to doing the tax return. You know you just get so much efficiencies because your team is doing the books and often what would happen is we'd get a big write-up on the tax return because the bookkeeping was done. Well, yeah, it was just done.

Jamie Johns:

The way the accountant wanted, I guess, is a simple way to put it. Look, the only variation I've had with my senior client managers is they've gotten rid of the bottom four boxes there. They've left the top four boxes and they've just gone back to the client with a one-liner and said well, we can do your bookkeeping for fifty dollars a week. That's another one that works. And then the client just has to work out well, hang on. Well, maybe I just choose bronze, and if I can do the bookkeeping for $50 a week or $100 a week, it's not hard to work out what your cost is.

Jamie Johns:

But what we experienced over the years Brenton is a small percentage of clients will take up gold and platinum a very small percentage. But if you don't have that there, you'll never know that's what they want. Recently we had a client who sold a perfume business and they did 12 months of platinum before they sold the business. They wanted to prepare the business for sale, so they did 12 months' worth of the platinum. But you know what, if we hadn't put that there, we wouldn't have realized that's what they wanted. So never assume the client won't take gold or won't take platinum. And for accounting firms, the bookkeeping is absolutely a fantastic one, particularly if you can get your offshore team set up and then you know the bookkeeping bolts really nicely onto the taxation work and the compliance work.

Brenton Ward:

And have you found that some of the science that's shown is that often people if given, say, three or four options like they normally go middle of the road as an option? So you're pretty much almost steering someone towards, say, the silver or the gold because when given those multiple options, they normally select that just based on pure decision- making. Have you found that to be the case?

Jamie Johns:

Absolutely yeah. I've always found a lot of clients these days will take up the bookkeeping and as soon as they say that they're doing the bookkeeping themselves, you get into the discussion, AGM, about how you withdraw yourself from the business, or what's the first thing you withdraw from it's administration and accounts. Then the question comes to be okay, well, if you can earn $150 in your business, why are you doing your own bookkeeping when you know what's going to cost you 80 an hour? So I've just always loved it ever since we could do the bookkeeping and the payroll. I've always just loved that to bolt that onto the packages to help the clients that you know get off the tools, so to speak, and grow their businesses and you know work on their business more than they work in their business.

Ed Chan:

So yeah, Jamie now you've got some clients who are smaller and then other clients who are larger. So how do you accommodate a client that's smaller to a client that's larger in terms of their activity, in terms of the amount of processing, because these packages have fairly set what we're looking at? So how do you accommodate the larger ones to the smaller ones?

Jamie Johns:

So what you mean is how do you know when to package a client that might only have, say, annual fees of $1,000 versus some of the fees of $5,000? Is that what you mean?

Ed Chan:

Yes, so you're processing their BAS and some clients might only have 100 transactions to process and otherwise 10,000 transactions to process in that month?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, great question. So, in the voice of what we developed over the years is bookkeeping. I mean, there are two aspects to this right? There's the bookkeeping side of it, and if you follow the bookkeeping calculator that we developed, the bookkeeping calculator lets you put almost every type of activity of bookkeeping that you need to do, and that includes reconciling transactions. It includes the volume of transactions and it also includes how often do you need to touch the file.

Jamie Johns:

Does the client want their bookkeeping done? Does it want it done daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly? Do they want the payroll done? Do they want you to look after accounts, receivable and payable? So it's really, really important now that you scope out the job so critically so that you get this right and you're not just shooting from the hip when you're talking about the pricing and the packaging. If everyone looks at the bookkeeping calculator that was developed in there and not only that, ed you can choose the gross profit on that calculator and it gives you what sort of like you know the monthly cost is, because at the end of the day, you know you've got to make the bookkeeping profitable and you can also put your cost in there as well ed so it's just a quoting mechanism is it fair to say for each proposal you send out.

Brenton Ward:

This table isn't static. It's based on so the size of the business, so the turnover between a million- dollar business and a million-dollar business and a $10 million business. They're going to get different prices in the package.

Jamie Johns:

Absolutely. Some of the industry commentators I know on their websites Oh, there are only four packages and that's it with us. We customise every package because every client is different. Every client has a different volume of transactions. We have a template in the Wise Vault that we developed over the years called Who Does what because when you do the bookkeeping with cloud accounting, some clients get asked to do nearly everything other than the invoicing. The invoicing is the only thing that they do because we can't do that. So it's a partnership. So at Sky, Ed we customize these to every client based on who does what and the scoping of when you price it and when you quote the job.

Ed Chan:

Okay, just to summarize what you said, just so it's clear to the people that are listening what you see in front of you is representative of an average size client. If the client's much bigger than this, obviously it's not going to be like if you take the bronze one. It's not going to be, you know, 225 dollars per month.

Ed Chan:

It could be 450 dollars per month oh, three thousand dollars a month, yeah three thousand dollars a month and then that goes up as you go to the right, so as you go to the silver, gold, and platinum. That's right up based on the size of that client. So Exactly, and of course, looking at this, if you're a client and you got offered, looking at that package you're offered, you know on the platinum side is $8,700. And then on the bronze side is $2,700 a year, you would go okay, I'll go middle of the range. It makes the silver one really cheap. Yeah, this is all part of the sales playbook and the psychology behind it.

Jamie Johns:

You know, pricing and sales yeah, absolutely one of the most important things in fixed pricing up front, and pricing getting paid up front or monthly fixed pricing is the scope. You know we will walk away from the client if they don't give us read-only access to the file if they don't give us the information so that we can actually price the job. I always say to the client and the new clients and the prospects of leads what a builder needs to quote a house to do a tender. They need the plans, they need the plans done by the architect and then we're happy to quote it because I reckon I've had less than 1% of the time. A couple of leads come in and they won't give us access to the Xero file and they won't give us a copy of last year's tax return. So we just say, look, sorry, we can't do it, it's just too risky.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely so, Joe. I want to move on from packaging and talk about this process of reverse engineering industry worst practices because I think it's really interesting point. So you guys have created almost like a seven step guarantee here, based on reverse engineering. So talk me through this look.

Jamie Johns:

I can't almost remember where I got this. I think it might have been from John Willow, who wrote um built to sell and a couple of different books. But then I had. I had many different coaches over the years, including Ed. It was really a formulation of that.

Jamie Johns:

So the question begs if you look at any particular industry, what's the worst thing that industry does? What's the worst thing that accountants do? They're not proactive. We hear that all the time. I get the unexpected bill. I never know when my work's going to be done and how long it's going to take my work to be done. I don't know when to drop off my work. You can sit in a room with 30 accountants and you'd probably come back to the same seven things we've got on the screen. So what I did with the team some years ago was say, hey, how about we reverse, engineer that and guarantee that we won't do that and get everyone on board in the same direction? Ed sort of really finished it off for me when he said Ed spoke about what's called a loss leader.

Jamie Johns:

Everyone knows what a loss leader is, but the worst thing you can do with a new client or a new leader prospect is to put a big barrier in front of them. And so if we quickly run through the seven steps, one of the things that we had as a loss leader then and working with Ed was, you know what any new client we got, we'll move you to the cloud for nothing. You know, depending on the size of the client, but generally overall 80/ 20 rule, we'll move you to zero, to the cloud, because we get the single ledger and we knew from a fact from using Xero zero we'd pick up 30 efficiency straight away and it was just quick and easy and you know we don't have to explain what the benefits of the cloud are. So you know, our first step was single edger, and don't charge the client for that, just get them over to it. And you know, okay, we want to take a hit the first year, but every year we get a 30 efficiency and away we go, but put a value to it like that's normally.

Ed Chan:

You know, five hundred dollars a day.

Jamie Johns:

For fifty thousand dollars. There's no joke, 50,000. It was the back of the house and the front of the house.

Ed Chan:

It wasn't one of our clients, was it Jamie?

Jamie Johns:

No, it wasn't Chan & and Naylor, Ed Ed. However, But we priced the setup implementation of this client at of $9,000 to move them to the cloud. Now we said if you sign a one-year contract or a two-year contract, then we could discount that down or eliminate it. So there's another thing you can do that the tribe should look at. But the second point there is obviously scheduling schedule the work, and we've always been on about that. When do I drop my work off?

Jamie Johns:

The next point was collecting information upfront. Don't kill the client with a thousand lashes. Give them a checklist that they can get all the information to the practice manager. Quote upfront and fix the fee. That's what we're talking about. Tell the client how long it will take you to do it and what's your turnaround time.

Jamie Johns:

We had a policy of no cost and phone calls and you've got to monitor that. You've got to control that and educate the clients that they don't abuse that. But that was part of our guarantee. And then, of course, as we touched on earlier, Brenton, the annual general meeting, which was the wealth check and the business health check as well. So that was really the guarantee. And years ago when I went to clients and asked them to pay me up front, they said well, what's in it for me? This is what's in it for you. I asked one thing, and that's to be paid up front, and so 97% of the clients all went to payment up front, and then, later, we moved to the monthly fixed packaging, as we've discussed today. Absolutely the important thing, then, is to get the team to live it, from everyone in the team to live that guarantee.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, so, Jamie, talk us through this transition from cost billing to up and pricing and what you've faced in Sky.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah Well, with new clients it's easy. It's just the way your firm does business. They won't know anything different. So you won't find any pushback, or with your monthly fixed fees, as long as you've got the context that we spoke about. If you take the client on the journey through the sales process and follow the sales playbook, you'll be 99% right. You'll be fine.

Jamie Johns:

The tricky one can be with existing clients. If you've had existing clients who have been on- time billing or some other billing method over the years, then I actually went through this with my total client base quite some years ago. The way that I did it was use that guarantee I would sit with clients and you must do it face to face. Do not do it by email, do not do it on the phone. I scheduled a time to go and have lunch or catch up with a coffee with every business client that I had, and it took me about a year to do it. This goes back quite some time, back a few years now, but must do it face to face and I sat with a client and the clients would ask me what's in it for me, you know, and so I had to explain to them what was in it for them and what was in it for me. It had to be in the spirit of win-win.

Jamie Johns:

And I had to pick new clients too. You know, some clients are crystal glass, some are rubber, rubber cups. So you wouldn't want to go to a client if you wanted a total upfront payment, for example, and that always paid you in arrears and the emotional bank account was negative. You're asking for trouble. They're all the things. To remember. The new clients, it's easy. The existing clients, who would change? You must get your approach right. As Ed says it's always in the how, how do I go and take the client from the old way to the new way? It must be face-to-face, it must be a win-win spirit and just be assertive and articulate why you want to move this way and what's in it for the client. Why do they win?

Brenton Ward:

AWhat if clients object to annual contracts? How do we get around that? So, for example, we get pushback from clients wanting to see what it's like first and see the value, rather than signing straight up to an annual plan or committing to an annual sort of fixed fee package. They want to experience the value first. Have you had or ran into that challenge at all?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, what you could do is you could roll out the whole process, and it's an important point. So say, for example, that you bought a parcel of fees and bought a firm and they were all on- time billing. So the question then comes well, how do we move them across? Obviously, you're not going to make any changes in any sort of retention period, but perhaps after about five years in or four years in, then you've got to start dripping on the clients and educating the clients that this is our model and this is the way we want to go. So what I mean by that is let's look at an example, a client who traditionally might be on time billing. You're going to say to the client now oh, tell you what, joe, I'm going to start giving you a quote before we do your work, okay, so that you're not asking for up front. So it's a slow transition. And then you say well, joe, I'm going to schedule your work and I'm going to turn around your work in this amount of time frame, right, and so what you're doing is you're giving, you're giving, you're giving, you're giving. And then eventually you keep investing and giving. And then you say to Joe after four or five years. Oh, joe, look, you've got all these benefits from our firm over all these years and we're starting to look to a fixed monthly fee. Okay, so you can't just go in there, depending on the client, depending on the client base, and just try and make changes overnight. That will not happen. You cannot do that Right. So you've just got to do it by increments, drip, drip, drip, drip, and then when you get to the point where you ask the client to say, pay you, you know, a fixed monthly fee, then you'll find that pushback will be limited. It'll be 80 20 rule. In saying that.

Jamie Johns:

You know we've got one of our largest clients which are like 50 or 60 000 in fees. They're still on- time billing. We went to this particular new client and his previous accountant had fixed feed him and he felt that he got burnt because he paid in advance and the other guy wouldn't give his money back. You know, when we went to do the tax return, so he'd been really burnt. So that he felt by this process and he just said to us straight out I'll pay you by the hour, time billing and that's it. And we took that client on because it was such a large client. We're not going to sit there and say no. So you know Brad Sugar's the famous business coach who built Action Coach International. He says personalize the exceptions, systematize the routine. So that's sort of the approach, brenton.

Ed Chan:

Yeah, and it's also fair to say that clients will come over at different times. And just because one may push back, it doesn't mean that everybody else is pushing back.

Ed Chan:

Don't fall into the trap of, you know, thinking that. Don't fall into the trap of managing for the minority, whereas the majority will go with what you want and the minority will push back. And, l Jamie said, it's the 80-20 rule and some people come over quicker than others, but it doesn't mean that you give up on it and the late adopters will just take a little bit more time to get used to the new way of doing things. But eventually, when they do come over, they're very good clients because they don't chop and change. They're very steady, predictable and stable as well. Yeah.

Brenton Ward:

Okay.

Jamie Johns:

Great.

Brenton Ward:

So I'd like to kind of finish on your team and help your team on board and adopt this strategy. How did you go about that and what were the challenges you faced there?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, great question. So what you should do with your team, particularly if you've got up-and-coming assistant client managers, what we used to call it is double back the meetings. So back in the day when I was a senior client manager, I would always bring one of the guys in, I'd bring Tim Paul Ash, I'd bring them into the meetings and they would see the process that I would go through. So we'd always double back the meetings. I think Peter Locandrio said this in a recent weekly tip that you said, Brent. He said he brings in the senior client manager or the up-and-coming senior client manager and double back the meetings and they just watch and listen and they learn and that's the education piece. So you're educating a team.

Jamie Johns:

Yes, it might cost you an hour or two in that time, but we know that we're on this journey to remove ourselves from the different divisions and to create senior client managers and assistant client managers and a big part of their time is sales. A big time of the part is the sales process. So with my guys, I've seen them at times miss a step in that sales playbook, and every time, every time I missed a step in that sales playback, I saw that it limited our ability to convert the client, or we always left money on the table, or we left a package that should have been taken up when we didn't quote the bookkeeping and then we found out later that they actually wanted it, because a week later they weren't happy or something. So yeah, double back the meetings is the critical thing, and then you'll know when to step back and not be involved in the meeting because they'll have a playbook to follow and just keep weekly tactical meetings critical. Weekly tactical meeting accountability.

Brenton Ward:

And was there anything around that sort of coming back to an earlier point we made around hiding behind email and the modality of presenting these new packages or the new way of pricing to clients that you encouraged your team to do? It? Was it more so again around double back in the meetings, having that sort of routine in place?

Jamie Johns:

I think they call it supervision by wandering. I would just ask the question when you've got that new lead in because you think about it, the meeting rhythm and routine, every weekly tactical meeting, when you're going through the CRM, and if you're the partner or whatever, and you've got your senior client managers, oh Joe, when are you seeing them? Oh, I'm seeing them, you know. Oh, I'm seeing them. You know, Thursday we've got a meeting booked, you know. So the weekly tackle meetings and your daily huddles are the life- bloody business. They're the glue that holds everything together and the accountability. So just ask the question, Brenton.

Brenton Ward:

And because you've got that systematised, it can't be overlooked, it's just part of the system okay, Jamie, do you find that, uh, during the month of June, a lot of time is spent talking with clients, slash putting proposals together for the next 12 months starting 1 July? Or would it be best to structure the monthly arrangements with clients so they finish at different times during the year?

Jamie Johns:

Look. Part of our solution was, to be honest, Practice Ignition. Once the guys started using practice ignition, our contracts start at any time, not just, you know, July. Every year we, you know you were onboarding clients in March or onboarding clients in October. Practice ignition sort of tends to be able to have the ability to manage all those fixed price agreements. T he second point to mention there is some of the advice that I find really helpful that comes out of the Linked Academy with Will and Ruben. Some of that stuff I haven't seen before and if the Wize Tribe has a look at that, they have some great advice on how to structure your fixed price agreements versus your time billing and keep a handle on the whip and the write-ups and the write-offs and all that type of thing, because as your firm gets bigger you've got to try and be all over those KPIs as well.

Brenton Ward:

Okay, anything to add on that one. Ed, you're a little bit more removed from that process, but I think on the team side of things any suggestions?

Ed Chan:

As the leaders of the organization, your job is constantly to educate and train, and the more training you can do, you're investing in your balance sheet. You're investing into your balance sheet. You're investing in your people. But if you're there grinding the work and doing the P&L stuff, then you're not investing in your balance sheet. So our partners don't charge out any time, because all their time is balance sheet kind of stuff and they get their staff to do the P&L stuff. They're the ones that earn the income for the business and do the charging at the time, whereas the partner, you know making sure that you build an extraordinary system and don't build around yourself, and that's the biggest mistake people make.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, I think the biggest tip takeaway is to do your own sales playbook. Like, have one of your agenda items or your projects as your own sales playbook. Like, have one of your agenda items or your projects as your own sales playbook for your firm and test and measure it.

Brenton Ward:

Absolutely so. Thanks, guys, great session together. Really appreciate, as always, gents, your sharing, wishing you all a nice afternoon.

Jamie Johns:

All right, thanks, Brenton. Bye everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Bye everyone.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of The Accountant's 20-Hour Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you in the next episode!