004 | Showing Your Worth: How To Explain Your Pricing & Value As An Accountant With Ross Jeffries

 

Have you ever found a new prospect who is genuinely interested in your services, but when it comes time to discuss your prices, you FREEZE UP?

Do you fear the “what do you cost” conversation?

In this episode, Ross Jeffries joins me to discuss how you can build up your confidence so that you can begin discussing your prices with ease and without fearing a negative response.

It’s tough! I’m sure there have been times when you’ve been discussing the needs of your client, and when the price comes up, you allow them to dictate the conversation. This episode will help you put an end to that FOR GOOD!

It all comes down to building unending confidence!

Ross provides real and practical tips that you can begin putting into action TODAY!

If you’re ready to confidently stroll into your next sales meeting knowing your value and worth and proudly stating your prices, without worrying about the outcome, then this episode of The Abundant Accountant Podcast is a MUST LISTEN!

Enjoy, and thank you for listening and tuning into The Abundant Accountant Podcast!

To share your thoughts:

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Special thanks go out to Ross Jeffries for taking the time to chat with Michelle. Be sure to join us next week for our next new episode.

 

So many of my accounting professional clients come to me because they are tired of giving away their knowledge and expertise away for free. If that sounds like you, I invite you to join my complimentary Masterclass created just for accountants who want to build a practice with premium clients who eagerly pay you what you’re worth. Sign up NOW at abundantaccountant.com.

 

Here are a few key secrets we talked about in this episode:

• Michelle introduces Ross Jeffries.
• Ross shares a quick synopsis of who he is and what his specialty is.
• Michelle gives an overview of what this episode is all about – knowing your worth so that you can help more people and increase the revenue for your firm.
• “A confident person is not conflicted.” ~ Ross Jeffries
• What does a toy robot from 1966 have to do with building confidence? Listen to this episode to find out!
• Ross believes that in order to sell with confidence, you must be aligned.
• The first step to not allowing your clients to dictate your prices is to not be conflicted and be in alignment with your worth.
• The second thing you need to know about confidence is that it is a thing or activity you do, so that it can become a quality later.
• Ross shares three practical tips to build your confidence and how to apply it to your sales conversations with your accounting clients.
• When you embrace uncertainty and even enjoy it when it comes to sales, you then have the confidence that is independent of the day’s events.
• Michelle and Ross share an example of how mixing paint colors and never quite getting what you want is similar to how some sales conversations will go. By being okay with the unknown you can build your confidence.
• Before you ever discuss what your rates or prices are, you should find out what your client’s needs and problems are.
• Meditation is a great way to embrace uncertainty.
• One very important way to feel confident is to realize that NO client is out of your league. There are NO “big” clients, only those that offer incredible value to you.

 

Learn More & Connect With Me Here!

• Read The Abundant Accountant Blog
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• Follow Michelle on LinkedIn

 

PS. So many of my accounting professional clients come to me because they are tired of giving away their knowledge and expertise away for free. If that sounds like you, I invite you to join my complimentary Masterclass created just for accountants who want to build a practice with premium clients who eagerly pay you what you’re worth. Sign up NOW at abundantaccountant.com.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Showing Your Worth: How To Explain Your Pricing & Value As An Accountant With Ross Jeffries

We have a special guest on the show. This guest is an author of a book called Subtle Words That Sell. Let’s welcome Ross Jeffries to the show.

Accounting professionals, I am the wizard of Subtle Words That Sell. That is my book. I’m here to share my knowledge with you so you can show your worth and explain your pricing and value as an accountant.

Thank you for introducing what we’re talking about. We’re going to go over how you show your worth, explain your pricing and value as an accountant, a CPA or an enrolled agent and not allow your clients to dictate your pricing. Ross has a lot of great points on it. I said, “Who’s not the best guest to bring on other than Ross Jeffries himself, the author of Subtle Words That Sell?”

As the Pitch Queen, I frequently heard a lot of accountants losing out on sales because they don’t know what they’re worth or what they should charge their clients. This is a major concern because they get this amazing accountant as a client and then they don’t have the confidence to show the value and pricing that they want to charge when they’re taking on a new client or going through a discovery session with a client.

Their clients pick up on the fact that they don’t have confidence and that’s where they’re lacking. In this episode, we want to help you know your worth so that you can help more people and also increase your firm’s revenues. Not only this show is about creating a life of abundance but also about creating that firm you want to grow of the abundant clients you want to work with.

It’s not taking on all the clients in the world. It’s taking the right clients and having the confidence to also share with them their prices. Ross, from your point of view as it relates to showing your worth, how to explain pricing and value to prospects, an underlying conversation here is this confidence piece, what do you feel is the number one thing that an accounting professional needs to focus on when they are meeting their clients for the first time?

First and foremost, let me say that I have different definitions of confidence. The first thing I would say is a confident person is not conflicted. There’s not a part of you that’s holding back while another part wants to move forward. May I tell a brief little story as an illustration of this principle?

A confident person is not conflicted. Click To Tweet

Yes, we love stories here on the show. I like to hear stories so it makes sense and I can tie in what you’re talking about. Just so everyone knows, Ross is techy and technical. He will tell us and share with us all sorts of awesome technical words that if you put them into a story will help me and every person here reading.

I’m going to tell this story. When I was eight years old back in 1966, I’m a seasoned gentleman. Being of the Jewish faith, it was Hanukkah time. My sister bought a toy robot for my little brother, Stevie, who is six years old. I like to break my brother’s toys. It was a naughty little habit that I did. The toy robot back in 1966 could do three things. You could make them move forward, move backwards or make their eyes blink.

Being a little schmuck of a kid, I pushed forward and backward at the same time. The robot started to shake. The motor began to burn. Blue smoke came out of its butt. The robot toppled over face down and did a huge face plant because the robot had two equal and opposite powerful commands moving through it. One command said to move forward. The other one said to go backwards. This is what happens when we go for the sale. Part of us says move forward and the other part says, “No, don’t do it. We’re not ready yet. We’re not worth it. We don’t have the value.”

Confidence means you are not conflicted. You can’t sell from your heels. This is a very famous saying but I don’t remember who said it. “If you’re back on your heels expecting to get hit in the face, you can’t throw that punch forward.” It’s true. The first thing is you must be fully aligned. You cannot be conflicted. Imagine a tiger pouncing on its prey. The tiger doesn’t go, “Maybe I’m not worth that prey.” I don’t mean to say that your clientele is your prey. You’re in service to them. You are a technician who’s serving them.

I like that story so everyone can remember when they were a robot. There’s a good quote that I love from Bernard Hopkins. He’s a professional boxer. He says, “If you don’t know your value, somebody will tell you your value and it’ll be less than what you’re worth.” For each of you reading, you might be able to resonate with this because you’re working with a prospect. Maybe your monthly services to do their bookkeeping and payroll is, let’s say, $2,000.

You know that in your head but because you’re lacking the confidence, the $2,000 never comes out of your mouth and the client says, “I’m willing to pay 600.” That’s what it means. The clients are dictating the show where we need to focus on working on the confidence level, which Ross is sharing with us. Thank you, Ross, for being here. Step number one is not being conflicted. Every part of you is in alignment. It’s important that not only you’re not conflicted with yourself within but that every part of you is in alignment as it relates to your firm. That’s the first thing as it relates to confidence. Ross, what’s the second?

The second thing is to recognize that confidence is not a thing or a quality per se. It’s an activity that you do. If I were to do a course, I’m building confidence and I said to you, “Who wants to be more confident?” You would raise your hand. I’d say, “Great. I have 10 gallons of confidence fluid up in my hotel room. It’s $500 a gallon. How about I drill a hole in the top of your head and pour it in?” You would get the idea.

 

Confidence is not a thing or a quality, even of something you have. Later on, it becomes a quality. In the beginning, it’s an activity that you do. It’s what you are saying to yourself, what you’re visualizing, what you’re doing with your breath and what you’re doing with your motion forward. Remember, confidence is not a thing, a quality or a fixed quantity of something like porridge in an orphanage. It is something that you do. It is a series of activities that you do.

That’s good news because it’s easier to change what you do than to shift or change your identity. This is a very important principle of personal improvement. This is why I don’t like affirmations per se, because if you say, “I am a closer,” and your unconscious mind has 10,000 examples of where you’re not, you’re going to get into trouble. If you say, “I claim my skills as an excellent closer or an excellent salesperson of my accounting services,” you’re giving your mind a direction to move towards rather than a fixed sense of identity that it may not agree with.

I have a question because as an accountant reading, they might be thinking, “Ross, that’s interesting but how do I apply that to my firm? How do I apply it to maybe increasing my prices a little bit to my next prospect that I’m going to see?” Can you give us an actual practical thing that we can implement? As you say, it’s something we have to do. It’s a series of activities you do. What 1 or 2 things can someone change in their everyday life that would address the second point as it builds confidence?

This is going to seem ridiculous but never underestimate the power of the ridiculous and the absurd to break through ridiculous and absurd limitations because it works. One of the little pieces I know from one of my disciplines, neuro-linguistic programming, is we talk about different processing systems. Visual, that’s what you visualize in your mind. Auditory, that’s what you say to yourself or hear in your head. Kinesthetic, that’s body sensations, feelings.

 

Within that auditory thing, what you say to yourself, there’s a little submodality, which is called, in this case, tone. Here’s what you do. If you talk to yourself on the inside and say things like, “I’m not worth it. I shouldn’t ask for that much money,” you change the tone to something like, “I’m not worth it. They’d never want to pay me that much money.” That sounds ridiculous. When you change your internal tone, it changes how you feel about everything.

Change your internal tone of voice in your head that doubts yourself that says, “I couldn’t ask them.” Say the same thing but put it in a very deep voice like, “I could never ask them that.” I know that sounds ridiculous. I thought it was ridiculous when I first tried this many years ago but it works. The answers that come from outside the box allow you to kick the box to the curb. I’m not here to show you the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to remove the tunnel. To remove the tunnel, you have to do things that you may not be comfortable with.

What’s the second thing they can do?

The second thing they can do is take on a different perspective. Instead of trying to grab every client, they can think to themselves, “How many unqualified prospects can I eliminate now?” Look at the difference in that frame from, “I’ve got to get that client,” to, “How many unqualified prospects can I eliminate now?” Make it a matter of you qualifying the prospect rather than the frame of, “Please, give me your business.” You’re qualifying to see if this is someone you want to work with. That’s why you never ever negotiate your price. You are not the low-price bargain. You are the high-value premium. Always get that. If you can’t get that, get out of the business. Get a job at McDonald’s.

Not the CPA corporate job at McDonald’s. For everyone that has heard Success Unfiltered, my other show, or is new to this show, it’s true. Changing your internal tone and looking at things from a new perspective but part of having abundant life and firm is coming from the place of how many unqualified prospects you can get rid of in a day. When you can start saying no to more people, which we will talk about in more depth in future episodes, that will increase your value. Putting these two things into practice will ultimately increase your confidence as well.

Ross had one more thing as it relates to building confidence to not only explain your pricing and value to your prospects but so you can do it with confidence. They’re not going to tell you your price and you’re not going to be on the bargain shopping. Ross, what is the third element as it relates to building that confidence?

I’m going to make this one easy and simple. There’s a distinction here that I call performance confidence. Performance confidence means you’ve done something well say 1,000 times so 1,000 you’ve walked the tightrope in the circus. With 1,001, you can naturally expect you’ll do well. The problem with many people who haven’t yet done well at something like making sure they’re paid what they’re worth is they’re waiting for that confidence. They won’t perform until they have the confidence but they can’t get the confidence until they perform.

Rather than waiting to be super confident, I want you to take on what I call willingness. Willingness is exactly what it sounds like, the willingness to take the step, even if you’re not certain. Embracing uncertainty is more important than a futile chase for certainty. Whenever you chase certainty, I want you to think of a dog chasing its tail. It can never catch it.

Embracing uncertainty is more important than a futile chase for certainty. Click To Tweet

Many people have what I call the vending machine theory of sales. You put in your $0.50 of prospecting, $0.50 of getting rapport with your potential client, 50% of your value proposition and 50% of your closing technique. It comes with the candy bar of the sale. I have to learn the paint theory and it goes like this. Selling sometimes can be like learning to paint but the canvas keeps moving, changing shape and disappearing. Sometimes when you dip the brush in the paint, a different color comes out. You need to be able to embrace uncertainty and a little bit of chaos.

When you can embrace uncertainty and even enjoy it, you then have confidence and a motivation that is independent of the events of the day or your feelings at the moment. That is super important. That is a million-dollar little gold nugget I threw your way without any technical words. I hope the Pitch Queen is happy with me and doesn’t smack me.

I’m not going to smack you because I’ve never heard it that way before. I love the paint theory. I was painting not too long ago. I was in Maui. My best friend lives in Maui and her son. I had to babysit. Imagine this. We get out all the colors. We put the purple with the white and we got lavender. We got the blue and the yellow paint, mixed it and got green. Every time we dipped the brush in the paint, it would always change and the colors never came out the way I wanted it. It’s very similar to the sales process.

For each of you, just so you know, that’s pretty much all I do all day. I do podcasts. I have a lot of phone calls with people and I do a lot of what Ross just talked about. How many unqualified prospects I can eliminate in a day is always my goal but I embrace uncertainty. I believe that confidence is just that. It’s becoming independent of the outcome that happens. When I was painting with the kid, it didn’t look anything of what I was trying to create but I was not attached to the outcome and I just embraced the moment.

I believe that working with your clients, through your discovery sessions and sharing with them that you charge $2,000 a month, $3,000 or $5,000 to manage 5 different business entities, do their payroll and do their bookkeeping or whatever service it is that you provide to your clients, if you can embrace the uncertainty, your results will be significant. Ross, what are 1 or 2 things that each accountant, CPA or enrolled agent reading can implement in their everyday activity to put into practice what we’re talking about?

For me and you, it comes naturally. Let’s pretend everyone’s learning how to ride a bike here. Everyone reading, especially if you’re your own business, signed up for a 24/7 sales career. In your accounting undergrad programs, in your Master’s of Tax programs, in your CPA course or exam preps, sales wasn’t covered in that. You’re responsible to answer the phone and deal with the question that you get a lot like, “How much do you charge,” and all these things when you don’t know technically how to handle it.

Don’t ever have that discussion about what you charge until you first find out their needs and problems. One of the things that I learned from the mentor is to ask, “What are your big challenges,” then put the phone on mute. You don’t say a word. When you can specifically address what they brought up, then your price becomes a secondary thing. You need to learn to do that. That’s first and foremost.

 

The second thing is to make them understand the net value proposition. Whatever that might be, you make it very clear and you say, “As you think about what it would be like to enjoy all these things, what you need to know is your investment in my services. Here are the services I’ll give you and your investment. What I’ll be giving and providing to you is the following.” It’s not about what you’re asking, it’s about what you’re giving. You set that frame.

I’m glad you reiterate everything that I talk about. For each of you reading, if you go to TheAbundantAccountant.com, you can sign up for my masterclass where I discuss exactly what Ross was talking about and that is how do you answer that dreaded question, how much do you charge, without actually answering that question? If you want to learn more, head over to TheAbundantAccountant.com to enroll. Ross, what are 1 or 2 things that each CPA, enrolled agent and accountant reading can do to work on embracing this uncertainty?

You’ve been in sales for quite a while. I have as well. I have embraced it by taking action. If you don’t know Mel Robbins, she has this thing called The 5 Second Rule. She talks a lot about how confidence is built on taking action. You have to take baby steps of action each day to get to your level of confidence that you can go into client meetings, charge whatever you want and people will pay it to you all day long. What are 1 or 2 things that people can do to embrace uncertainty? Do they have to paint with a kid every day? What else could they do?

It’s not for everyone but one of the things that I do to embrace uncertainty is meditation practice because meditation teaches me to accept whatever is coming up in the moment. I like to meditate, believe it or not, when those leaf blowers are going off. They drive me crazy. They give me migraines. If I can sit there and allow that to flow through me, I know I can put up with anything.

Meditation practice allows you to be okay with what is and that trains you to be okay with uncertainty. You can sit there with the leaf blower going off 15 feet underneath your window. Develop a meditation practice. That’s so important to be able to accept anything that arises. The second thing I would say is to learn to see the funny side of it. Understand the perspective of it that one day you’re going to draw your last breath and so is the person who’s frustrating you or whom you want something from. Learn to have a sense of perspective.

When I’m going into a difficult situation, I do the following. I ask myself, “What was that person wearing the moment they were born? What was I wearing the moment I was born? What’s the last thing they’re ever going to do? What’s the last thing I’m ever going to do?” In between, we’re trying to figure it out. Keep your sense of perspective. That’s an important one. The final thing is you always have to get up to the plate before you can swing the bat and you have to get up to the bat before you can hit it out of the park. It’s very important.

You always have to get up to the plate before you can swing the bat. And you have to get up to the bat before you can hit it out of the park. Click To Tweet

Remember this. There’s no such thing as being someone out of your league. There’s no client out of your league when you’re willing to step up to the plate. There are no super big clients. There are only incredible value opportunities for you. There are no super big clients. There are only incredible opportunities for you to provide amazing value. Do those mental reframes and you’re going to be okay.

Thank you so much, Ross, for joining us here on the show. It was an honor to have you.

It’s always a pleasure to address your audience and interact with an absolute genius like you. You are a brilliant businessperson. I learn a lot from you.

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What an amazing show with Ross. I know he always calls me a genius but he’s a genius, too. If you want to get his book, it’s called Subtle Words That Sell. It’s coming from a place of service and abundance. He and I are extremely in alignment with everything we talk about. It’s almost a little bit scary. Remember, if you can take 1 or 2 things from what you read in this episode, put them into action.

For me, it stems from the one of doing my painting and being so frustrated that it looked nothing like the flowers I was trying to paint that day and being okay with embracing uncertainty, how maybe every day you go about your life, you can see what area was not certain to you, how you embrace that and getting confidence because it will translate into your business.

We did talk about three main points. One being not conflicted and every part being in alignment like he was explaining that toy, going backwards and forwards and how it happens all at the same time. That little voice in our head can drive us nuts. Becoming outcome independent so not being attached to the outcome and having the performance confidence paradox that he was talking about. We can do something 1,000 times but if we’re waiting for confidence, we’re never going to have the opportunity to even approach our clients and maybe charge $3,000 or $4,000.

Try something and see how it works because every little step is that one little ounce of confidence. If you want to go off the deep end, you can go try meditation. Accept what’s coming up in the moment. I love the leaf blower. Do you know what I love is the garbage man? When the garbage man comes, it sounds like a car is being hit, like an accident waiting to happen every day. It’s so loud and drives me crazy but I accept it. Thank you so much for each of you being here. It was an honor to be here with you.

If you have a quick second, I would be grateful if you could leave me a rating and a review on iTunes and subscribe to the show. I always like hearing from you and I never want you to miss when I publish a new episode. One last thing before I let you go, if you ever felt like you give away too much information for free and you’re tired of not getting paid what you’re worth, you’re probably like many accountants I’ve worked with. You feel like you’re on a cashflow roller coaster. I have the solution for you.

You can join me on our accountant masterclass over at TheAbundantAccountant.com to learn how to communicate your value, collect higher fees with confidence and be paid what you’re worth so you can work less, make more money and live that life of abundance. We would love to see you there. Thank you so much for reading and have a great day.

 

Important Links

• Subtle Words That Sell
• Success Unfiltered
• The 5 Second Rule
• iTunes – The Abundant Accountant
• LinkedIn – Michelle Weinstein
• Twitter – Michelle Weinstein
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