How to price and sell your advisory service & frame offers to win more clients

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1,049 growth-minded accountants.

This is post #4 in my five-post series on creating and delivering advisory services.

Here's what you can expect:

• Feb 18th: What is Advisory & Why Offer It?

• Feb 25th: Crafting Your Advisory Service (What Does the Market Want?)

• Mar 4th: Marketing Advisory Service

• Mar 11th (today): Pricing and Selling Your Advisory Service

• Mar 18th: Fulfilling Projects and Building a High Caliber Team

(NEW) Want to book a call? Several of you have requested my time to help think through growth challenges you are facing. My time is limited as I have my own firm to run, but I do want to help so I have decided to open up one paid call slot per week. First come, first serve and new slots open on a rolling 30-day basis. Scroll to the bottom of this email to book.

Let's go.

Today I'm going to tell you how to price and sell your advisory services.

My previous emails taught you how to identify your ideal client's pain points and build a solution. I also showed you how to market your services and build your brand.

Now, it's time to close deals.

If you can get your pricing right, and implement a systematic selling system, you will scale faster and more profitably. You will also get to a point where you hire a salesperson and remove yourself from the selling process.

Unfortunately, many accountants don't know how to price advisory services and don't implement sales systems.

Switching from hourly to fixed pricing is scary, and salespeople are viewed as cringy

Accountants struggle with pricing and sales because they:

• Have been billing hourly and haven't learned how to price effectively as a result

• Are scared to commit to a fixed price and "lose their shirt" due to unknown scope creep

• Think prospective clients inherently understand what they are getting

• Don't want to sound like a used car salesman

But pricing can be simple, and implementing a solid sales system doesn't have to be associated with negative feelings.

Here's how:

Step 1: Use your historical hourly data as a baseline to set fixed prices

Want to know a dirty secret?

No one knows how to price, at least initially.

When you enter a new niche, or roll out a new service, you have to test the market to understand what people are willing to pay for your services.

You can then collect feedback and iterate price/scope accordingly.

But you still need a starting point for pricing your advisory service. I recommend keeping it simple: estimate the number of hours it's going to take and multiply it by staff's billing rates.

Now you have a fixed price to test.

You'll know your price is right if you close roughly 30% of all sales calls with qualified leads.

Track your close rates for three months. If you are closing more than 30%, raise your prices. If you are closing less than 30%, you either have a pricing, value, or sales effectiveness problem. 

Point is: collect data and make tweaks once every three months.

Years ago when I first rolled out our tax advisory service, I was charging $1,500 for a year of support. Today, that service is $5,000. It took me years to dial in the price and scope to be exactly what the market wanted.

Be patient and give it time.

Step 2: Implement a strong sales system

A strong sales system enables salespeople to efficiently talk to the right prospective clients and close deals.

It starts with lead qualification. 

A basic qualification system is an intake form on your website. The form may ask qualifying questions such as "what are your annual earnings" which will allow you to weed out the worst-fit prospects.

Advanced qualification systems track a lead's action across your website.

As a lead interacts with your webpages, content, and takes certain actions, the lead is "scored" in your CRM.  All of this helps to make your sales rep's time efficient by only getting on calls with leads having the highest scores (those who are ready to buy what you have to offer).

And then we get to the actual sales call.

I like to think of a sales call as a sales "consultation." The goal is to identify the prospect's biggest pains and why they think they need you to solve those pains. It's a structured conversation that should lead to a purchase if you have a fit.

But most accountants mess this up because they don't know how to sell.

Instead, they hold a 30-60 minute "free advice" call and hope that the prospect likes them enough to sign on. But "hope" is not a business strategy and this is ultimately a huge waste of your time.

Here's what an effective sales call looks like:

• 5 min - build rapport

• 10 min - "tell me why you are here" & identify biggest pain points

• 5 min - ask the prospect what life looks like if they no longer have those pains (people buy "transformations" so take time to explore how life has changed when the pains are removed)

• 5 min - explain how your service can help, frame solution according to pains

• 5 min - root out objections

• Close - "anything holding you back from signing?"

In my opinion, the most important aspects of the sales call are understanding exactly why the customer believes they need to solve their pains and always closing the call with "it seems like we're a good fit... if I sent a proposal over now, is there anything holding you back from signing today?"

Fleshing out all objections before the call is over is critical to your success.

And that final question will help you do just that.

Step 3: Frame your services better

When you are selling your service, always keep the focus on the prospect.

You should refrain from talking about how great your company is beyond a 20-second elevator pitch. Instead, keep the prospect's specific pain points and end result front of mind.

But that's only half the battle.

When I was conducting the sales calls for my firm, I recognized that most clients have a very narrow understanding of the services we provide. They think tax advisory means "phone calls about tax questions" and tax preparation is "a completed tax return."

There's a lot more behind the scenes that goes into high-quality service. And it's our job to communicate everything the prospect gets by becoming our client.

For example, I bet you send plenty of emails back and forth with clients.

Do you charge for your time? Or is it included in your service? Because email support is a level of customer service that is valuable, whether you've intentionally thought about it like that or not.

How does this translate to framing your services on a sales call?

I would say: "During our advisory engagement, we're going to have a planning phase where we craft tax strategies applicable to you, and then we're going to have an implementation phase for ongoing support. The engagement lasts 12 months and as an added bonus of working with our firm, all email exchanges are included in the price of the engagement."

See what I did?

I'm framing something I'm already doing as an added bonus of working with my firm. And it works especially well when your competitors don't know how to frame their own offers.

"... as an added bonus, you'll be first in line for tax prep."

"... as an added bonus, you get a scheduling link that allows you to easily book with me any time."

"... as an added bonus, you get my cell phone number."

"... as an added bonus, our team will reach out to you proactively X times per year."

You want to "stack" service expectations on top of your basic service scope. This creates an offer that is hard to refuse.

Step 4: Document the process as you go

If you can follow the first three steps, and if you document your sales process and call structure, you will be at a point where you can hire a salesperson within 3-6 months of running this process.

But the timing of actually hiring a salesperson largely depends on your lead flow.

If you read my prior emails in this series about how to market your services and build brand, lead flow shouldn't be a problem for you (though it may take 6-12 months to have enough organic leads consistently flowing into your pipeline).

You want to get out of sales as fast as you can.

Any good salesperson will be able to follow the structure you lay out, and even make it more effective. The sooner you remove yourself from various functions of your business, the sooner you can spend the majority of your time on marketing and business development opportunities.

And that's when your firm will start to see tremendous growth.

Upcoming Posts in this Series

Over the coming weeks, here's what you can expect each Saturday:

• Mar 18th: Fulfilling Projects and Building a High-Caliber Team

  • How to manage relationships and projects

  • How to build a high caliber team to deliver these services

Whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you.

→ Work with me 1:1 to grow your firm (one opening per week, 9am EST on Friday)

See you again next week.

Cheers,

Brandon

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