If you’re working with and marketing to small business owners, there is one thing you must remember when working with them.

And it’s not about price, or extra services, or payment schedules… In fact, remembering this point, and truly ingraining it into the mindset of you and your team helps set-up your firm to be:

• Advisory focused
• Value driven
• Fully empathetic with small business owners

Like most simple truths or principles, it seems like a ‘duh’ statement when you hear it, but almost all accounting and bookkeeping firms never put this into practice … or fully recognize the power of the statement …

Small business owners live in the future

Accounting and bookkeeping feels like it’s in ‘the past’.

How to Position Your Accounting Services to Business Owners

So let’s put in this in a more actionable statement: Small business owners have future ‘goals’ for their business… whether growth, profit, work/life balance, anything.

Business owners often live in the future… whether it is out of fear or desire of what is coming up in their business. In fact, most people operate in the future… when you tie your service to their future goals, you become an advisor.

When you focus on past actions, it becomes a discussion on price (because it’s harder to understand the ROI of something that already happened!).

So am I telling you to not look at financial statements or accounts in the past? Of course not!

What you do for the client doesn’t necessary change… Rather, it’s HOW you explain your value to them.

And you’re better able to position your value when you help connect WHAT you do with the business owners FUTURE goals.

Do they want to improve profits? Talk about running industry analysis reports and helping them determine a sound pricing plan (even if you have to loop in an industry consultant!).

Or perhaps they have inventory issues that’s causing profits to bleed from the company … Dig into their financials and help them understand areas that can be dramatically improved … and the way to do that is to have a professional TRACK financial metrics, and alert them when something is going off course.

So let’s break it down into an even more tactical example (even if you don’t fall into this category, pull away the principles and apply them to your firm … )

1. ABC & Associates provides bookkeeping tax returns for small business owners
2. When they do a consultation, instead of talking about all the services they offer, they instead do a ‘profitability analysis’ of their business. This typically brings up areas in the business where the owner is losing money, by simply not having a better grasp on a few metrics.
3. The consultation pulls out the financial goals the business owner has for the next 12-18 months
4. The consultation has a mutual agreement that this issue needs to be fixed in order for the business owner to reach their financial goals, and by not solving these issues, it could potentially cost them $XXX,XXX/year.
5. The service provider (ABC & Associates) then outlines a ‘financial plan’ that includes bookkeeping that is tied together with monthly financial reports that are custom fitted for the owner.

This formula (diagnose → connect pain being a barrier to the desired outcome → prescribing a fix) can be applied to any business, and positions your service with the business owner’s needs.

Align your services with the future of their company, how you help them get to their desired size or profit margin. In doing so, you move away from a price comparison service provider and instead be a potential advisor who ‘gets’ their business.
Related Articles:

1. How to best present the value to your Accounting Firm client
2. How to present value pricing and advisory service to clients?
3. The Accounting Firm’s Blueprint to Creating A World-Class Team (Without Recruiting)

For this month’s Interview Spotlight, we’re excited to highlight our interview with Jason Blumer, Chief Innovation Officer at Blumer and Associates and Founder of Thriveal CPA’s.

As most of you probably know, Jason wants to disrupt our industry. Through his work, he puts into place strategic, creative initiatives for accounting practices and does the things in the industry that others say cannot be done.

But before we dive into how he is transforming accounting, let’s start with his background.

Jason’s Background

Jason’s accounting career began 11 years ago when he worked with his father at their CPA firm.

As he learned about the world of accounting, he realized that many professionals in the community were embracing creativity and seeking alternatives in what is a traditional accounting firm model.

It was from this mindset where he decided to create his own firm, Blumer and Associates. At Blumer, the company’s aim is to “turn agency owners into mature business owners”. Blumer offers coaching, consulting, virtual controllership, taxation, accounting & payroll, and technology services. But just being a CPA firm owner was not enough for Jason.

Alongside the creation of Blumer and Associates, Jason decided to launch an accounting community focused around creating entrepreneurial, risk-loving and technology-focused CPA firms.

This accounting community is called Thriveal and has grown to approximately 70 members in four countries over the last 4 years. Inside the community, you will find like-minded accountants looking to develop their own firms and provides coaching and consulting services.

On top of everything he has done, Jason decided he also wanted to launch two podcasts focused in the accounting industry. His first podcast is Thrivecast that he co-hosts with Greg Kyte for the Thriveal community.

His second podcast is Businessology that is directed towards creative professionals. Jason’s experiences with the accounting community, through his social media and personal interactions or otherwise, over the years has led him to conclude that people desire to do business with people they know.

People are interested to discover what regular, real people are doing and to learn from their efforts. So he was motivated to launch Thriveal, a virtual firm, to facilitate information sharing and to foster a communal environment for the accounting world.

Disrupting The Accounting Industry

Here are Jason’s top 5 Disruptive Business Considerations that you should implement within your CPA firm:

• Adopting value-based pricing versus hourly billing and other value-added services
• Running internal processes efficiently
• Making the business virtual
• Leveraging technology such as eliminating paper files or moving the phone system by utilizing the cloud
• Eliminating the hierarchical management structure within a firm: Make the CPA firm “flat”
• Reconsidering the business dress code
In expanding on considering alternative management structures for firms such as the flat firm concept, Jason points to the ROWE concept.

The ROWE Concept

ROWE stands for Results Only Working Environment. Rather than have a management hierarchy, with ROWE, the working team is entirely autonomous.

The team members, who are still employees, do what they desire to do in when approaching work. Each employee is paid on a percentage of revenue brought into the firm.

The role of management would then be to empower and support the efforts of these employees to serve their clients well.

The Division Of The Accounting Industry

Jason sees the accounting world divided in two ways:

1) Accountants who are firm owners and
2) Accountants who work at firms.

More often than not, it is the firm owner who is the change agent. If an employee at these firms wants change, Jason believes that eventually, the person will have to take the risk of going out on their own to create the change. That person has the power and leverage to change.

Hourly Billing vs. Value Pricing…Is the Change Worth it?

There is a constant debate going back and forth within the accounting profession. Should we offer the typical hourly billing structure or turn to a more radical approach of the value-based pricing module?

When it comes to hourly based billing, the offer seems to be much simpler.

“With hourly billing, you can work for anybody and have the added benefit of starting the work within 5 minutes of them signing the engagement letter.”

However, when you offer value based pricing, it becomes much harder to determine what the offer will be. Fortunately, there is a well-documented community of practitioners who are leading the efforts, notably the Thriveal community and Ron Baker’s Verasage community.

3 Key Factors To Consider When Implementing Value Pricing

It’s important to keep in mind the following key factors when setting up a successful transition into value pricing:

1. Successful value pricing starts with value conversations (both in the initial consult as well as onboarding)
2. Onboarding will typically take longer in value pricing, so not having a well-defined onboarding and engagement process can prolong this experience, and hurt cash flow
3. Value pricing is about finding alignment and asking the right questions (covered below).

How To Onboard A New Client, Using Value Based Pricing

In order to determine what the right price should be, Jason recommends that you have an in-depth conversation with your prospective client to see if this will be a good fit for both your firm and your client.

Here are a few questions you want to try and nail down during this prospective client conversation:
• Is this a right fit for both of us?
• Do you match our firm service offerings and client type?
• Does our firm have the capabilities and competencies to serve your needs?

Key Considerations When Turning To A Value-Based Model

Though the Value Pricing Model is starting to make waves in the accounting industry, there are a few things to consider before making the jump:
• A well-defined process is needed before transitioning into value pricing
• Cashflow can suffer from value pricing since onboarding can take longer, which is why a good process needs to be in place
• Start small, try implementing value conversations with new clients

Just remember to align mutual business interests for value pricing to be successful. And you will be quickly on your way to implementing value pricing.
Relevant Value Pricing Interviews:

Ron Baker on Implementing Value Pricing
Kirk Bowman on How to have value based conversations

Do you find yourself struggling to “sell” your accounting prospects on why they should choose you?

Or worse, get clients that try to undercut your prices?

There’s a simple way to counter this positioning, and it’s having a specific type of testimonial.

Testimonials and reviews are the quickest way to build credibility in your market… here’s a simple formula to help you create ones that connect with your clients and prospects.

If you’re like most firm owners, referrals and word of mouth is a big component of growth. However, most firm owners are simply ignoring on the biggest marketing assets they have … potential reviews and testimonials!

Now for those that already have a few listed, keep reading, because the strategy I’m going to share below can help you sharpen your existing reviews so they actually connect with readers (instead of having their eyes glaze over)!

The formula is derived from one of the most influential frameworks known to modern society, and we call it the ‘Hero’s Journey’. Whether it’s Harry Potter or reviews on your website, the formula is the same:

• Before (the struggle)
• During (the process of change)
• And after (the new person or result they archived).

In practice terms, a common testimonial might read something like this …

“I’d spend years working with other financial service providers, only to be met with lackluster reporting. Because of this, I had no idea we were well below the industry average, and we were literally losing money every month!”

“With ABC & Associates, they were able to get us onto a new system in under 30 days, and in total, only took 35 minutes of our time. Now, we instantly know when our margins are off track, and we’re on pace to increase our margins by over 25% within the first 6 months!”

Notice how this testimonial had a ‘before, during, and after’. It PAINTS the picture of the journey, connects with the readers/ prospects existing pain, and helps them understand where the end outcome could lead them.

Now you might be asking… how do I get these testimonials… ?

Well, you follow the same framework.

You email or call your clients, and ask them to jump on a quick call so you can highlight their success on your website or to other clients. Then ask them…

• Before: “What were you doing before working with ABC & associates… what caused you to begin searching for a new provider?”
• During: And how was your experience working with us, getting setup with ABC & Associates?
• After: What do you think has been the biggest benefit you’ve seen since working with us?

Simple as that! Be a good listener, keep asking questions. Then take the answers and edit them for readability, and hit publish!