How A Bookkeeper Secured a Contract Worth $44,000

I met recently with one of my students who told me about her immense success. Here’s what she posted in my Facebook Support group:

I just had to interview her!

You can watch that interview in full here.

Lana’s 3 big pricing successes

Lana signed up for my How to Price Bookkeeping course, and after studying value pricing and implementing the new practices throughout her business, there were 3 clients in particular that she managed to get great results from and demonstrate her improvement in pricing.

Client #1

The first client was an education consultant.

She had a bookkeeper but wasn’t really satisfied with them, so asked Lana to double-check everything was in order.

Lana noticed there were a number of accounts that weren’t entered, and several holes in the paperwork needed sorting.

She priced this clean-up work at $2500.

But, the real value pricing achievement came when Lana priced her bookkeeping…

“I typically would have priced somewhere around $3000 a year. She ended up going with the package that was $5100 a year for monthly bookkeeping work!”

Getting this amazing 59% increase in her price gave Lana a huge confidence boost. This was all the proof she needed that value pricing works.

So, she carried on value pricing…

Client #2

The second client was a really successful wedding venue that had been in business for almost 15 years.

His books were a mess. He was one of those clients that scrambled to get things ready for tax time then did nothing with the books for the rest of the year.

This client was struck pretty hard by COVID-19. All weddings were postponed, and he needed to apply for some relief grants but couldn’t because his books weren’t in order.

Clean-up work was needed for all of 2019 and the first half of 2020, so Lana priced the work at $7000 and included a quick turnaround time of 2 weeks as part of that so he could apply for his grants.  

She looked at the bookkeeping monthly fee and priced her middle ‘Value’ package at $8000, and her top ‘Premium’ package at $10,000. She recommended the middle package to him as she felt it better suited his needs…

“It was the fastest yes I’ve ever gotten!”

Currently, he’s paying Lana $1192 a month for bookkeeping and clean-up work.

But, Lana showed him the projected costs for 2021. When she renews the contract, his bookkeeping would cost $584 a month. 

Seeing this as a huge drop in price, the client decided he would move up to the premium package at that point which would cost $757.

He saw it as a saving!

Client #3

The final client came to Lana with complaints about their current accountant.

They paid $30,000 the previous year, but every time they had a question or tried to send a file, they weren’t getting a response. When they asked for help with their QuickBooks files they were told they didn’t have the time to help.

This was a rapidly growing business, on track for $9,000,000 in sales in only their 4^th year. They really needed to be on top of their numbers to make good business decisions.

So, Lana priced their clean-up, and it came to $10,000.

They were really looking for a high-quality business advisor to help them make the right decisions, so when Lana showed them her packages, they immediately stated they wanted the top.

Lana drew up a 6-month contract. She was quite concerned when the monthly fee for the bookkeeping came to $1500. Would the client pay that much?

But, by now she had faith in the value pricing process so gave them the contract…

“The business owner decided to actually pay the entire clean-up in full and the first 3 months of his contract in full. He paid me $16,000 up front!”

The last 3 months of the contract would come in around $2800. Then when they repriced at the end of the contract it would go down to $2600.

Unlike their previous accountant, Lana loves working with this client and dedicates a lot of time and effort to helping them get exactly what they need.

By cultivating this relationship and projecting the fees for the next year, Lana has secured herself $44,000 worth of work for the year 2021.

Lana’s value pricing skills are incredible and the results she is getting are simply outstanding! 

I highly recommend you watch the full interview here.

Lana learnt about value pricing from the How to Price Bookkeeping course, which we open up just twice a year. You can check when your next chance to learn is here.

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”