The natural inclination for most of you will be to dedicate 90% of your time and attention on the semantics of pricing. After all, you are an accountant, so it seems logical to focus on the price because the price is expressed as a number, and you are very good with numbers.

Unfortunately, this preoccupation with pricing semantics has caused you to waste time on factors that only matter to you and the esoteric exercise of determining “the price you need to get” in order to earn a decent living.

The most important word in the phrase Pricing Value is of course “value”. And value, while determined by your client, must be masterfully uncovered and drawn out by you, the practitioner. One of the reasons why it is so vital to completely turn the concept of value pricing inside out (or back to front) is because of the imperative for you to focus the bulk of your time, energy and resources on the fundamental driver—VALUE. And to do that, we must first place the word value where it rightfully deserves to be positioned, as the focal point and key ingredient of the phrase.

Clients come to you for a number of reasons—because they need help with bookkeeping, they need a tax return or set of year end accounts completed, or they have questions about payroll and sales tax obligations. But as you’ve discovered, your clients are often very price sensitive and they don’t value these compliance tasks highly.

In order to captivate the attention of and compel your clients to react positively to your value-based offers and communications, you must first learn to do one thing—get leverage on your clients. Mastering leverage makes it possible to Price Value quickly and effectively—because it simplifies your message, reduces the amount of time it takes your clients to decide, and ensures what you say is of value to them. And it will work no matter which medium or channel you choose to communicate it in.

The 6 Cs are:

Control Your Fear – Learning to move beyond your own fears, low self-worth, and stinking thinking

Comprehend Value – identifying and quantifying the pain points and desired transformations keeping your client up at night

Create Value – delivering the solution and managing your client’s perception of value

Capture Value – the art of capturing a larger portion of the value that you create for your clients

Communicate Value – the three 3 factors you must nail if you want to communicate value masterfully

Convince – leading your client to your solution without ever having to “convince” them or resort to hard sell tactics

Value is an elusive and often misunderstood concept because value is comprised of both tangible and intangible components. In order to maximize the value that you are able to create in the mind of your client, you must deliver the solution to their pain points and manage their perception of value.

Perception is a bit tricky because it may include a whole host of elements that are largely imperceptible and difficult to nail down. It’s no easy task.

Thankfully, there are some proven, easy-to-implement strategies based on neuroscience and behavioral psychology that can help you navigate the subtle (and not so subtle) elements of creating, delivering, and communicating more value to your clients.

It is fairly easy to quote a fixed price on compliance to ensure you earn more than you did with an hourly rate, but it is much more difficult to Price Value. To Price Value on a compliance task, you need to work much harder to niche down and establish the Economic Value. The only way that you can create value and price it in the context of compliance, is if you can provide solutions to the stuff that is keeping them up at night and uncover Economic Value above and beyond the time and materials that go into creating the solution.

Together we will explore why you need to stop thinking of compliance and advisory as separate aspects of your practice. You are no longer in the business of pumping out compliance services, with the odd interesting advisory project. If you start thinking about and viewing your practice as a holistic, one-stop business improvement shop, you will find it much easier to create solutions that your clients value highly.

You cannot learn to swim by simply reading a book about swimming. The same principle holds true for Pricing Value.

To help you apply and implement what you have learned, you will be presented with case studies in each chapter, questions to ponder, step-by-step instructions or checklists, and some space to jot down your notes, observations, insights, and to-do lists.

Pricing Value is also accompanied by a DIY workbook and an education/mentoring program facilitated online via a Learning Management system.