How To Win High Value Business Advisory Services

The accounting profession has been going through some big changes with the improvements in technology, automation and artificial intelligence making compliance work very quick.

We have to do more for our clients. We have to add value.

That could be by doing planning work, consulting or advising, anything that adds value to the service.

Let’s focus on business advisory. This refers to the process of giving your client advice about their business: producing management reports, helping them reach their goals, improving their efficiency, looking at the numbers, identifying problems and suggesting how to fix them.

How do we sell more advisory services?

You can watch the video here.

Here are three tips…

#1 - Packaging

The first thing you will need to do is give your service packaging.

Your clients probably won’t know what business advisory services are. Giving it packaging helps you to build up the value of what you do by having a system or structure.

I recommend you take your advisory service and make a nice professional looking brochure. You can use this brochure in your meetings with your client to go through what you do, why you do it - the pain you’re taking away, the benefit to the client.

Using a brochure will give your meeting structure and also show the client that you are an expert. You will have so much more confidence too.

#2 - Use different packages

Break your service up into packages using Menu Pricing. Create a Bronze, Silver and Gold package for your business advisory services.

You need to do this because everyone is different, and everyone values things differently.

You are going to have some people that understand the concept of business advisory. Those people are ambitious and want to grow their businesses. They will have big targets and will be happy to invest money in your help to reach those goals.

On the other hand, you may have clients who have never bought advisory services before and are not sure what to expect. They may be on a tight budget and so they aren’t sure whether they can afford your full advisory service. This could be a start-up business, or a very small client, for example.

You need to create different business advisory packages for different types of clients. You’ll probably want 3 or 4 packages. Every client is different, so you should have different packages that meet each clients’ needs.

#3 - Top-Down Pricing

It’s fairly likely that your client has never bought advisory services before. They have no frame of reference as to what the price should be.

Therefore, when you reveal the pricing for your packages, it’s probably going to seem expensive.

Advisory services are highly valuable, you should be charging high prices that reflect that value. But, you will need to help the client to see the value in order for them to accept the price.

One of the ways you can do this is by using top-down pricing. Start by talking about your most expensive option. Go into detail about what that service entails, the benefits to the client and the results they will see. Then share the price.

The client will probably say it’s too expensive - that’s good.

We reveal the most expensive option first to create a reference price in the client’s mind. That way, when you reveal the lower packages, the prices will seem much more reasonable by comparison.

If your client is really interested in the service but feels they can’t afford the first price, the cheaper prices will come as a relief to them.

When you create your packages, make the price of the most premium service quite a bit more expensive than the others. Talk about that one first, then everything else will seem much more affordable.

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”