REFRAME: Strategic Value Creation Plan for Accountants

Quick Note: the contents of the article are expanded in this 1-hour video:

As accounting professionals, we hear that transitioning to value-priced services and bundling more advisory services is the key to the kingdom. Particularly, bundling Advisory Services is really the key differentiator here, your clients are already getting a combination of services and money-related advice from different providers; so it should be easy to consolidate most of those with your firm, clients want “One Throat to Choke” like my friend Doug Sleeter says; our clients want this, they want a single provider to create more value for them! However, the "HOW" is rarely well-explained; leaving us with more questions than answers.?

This article is the first step in simplifying the start of the process: to create a Strategic Value Creation Plan, focusing on the myriad opportunities we have to create value for our clients. Successful businesses create value for their customers and, in return, collect a fraction of that value. For accountants, this principle is fundamental - as our firm is in the exact same position with our small business clients. And in order to move beyond traditional roles of bookkeeping and compliance, we must always be seen as VALUE CREATORS.. This shift will enhance the status of our services, but most importantly, it will position us as partners in our clients' success.

The ideas contained in this framework are a compendium of learnings from different authors, mentors, colleagues, and friends that have helped have a “value creator’s mindset” - I will give you quotes from most of them as I develop each idea.

The Framework for Building a Strategic Value Creation Plan

Each of these 9 elements form the pillars of the plan to transform our practice while significantly benefitting our clients.

1. Positioning Value

• Brand Promise: Clearly articulate what you promise to deliver to your clients.? Branding can totally transform the client’s perception of your firm.? In the book Alchemy , by Rory Sutherland, he jokes: “A flower is a weed with an advertising budget."
• Reputation: Build and maintain a strong reputation for being reliable and transparent.? Your reputation is the biggest stepping off point for trust building. Stephen Covey Jr, in this book The Speed of Trust , says: "Trust is a learnable competency. It can be built on purpose and leveraged in any situation."
• Specialization: Develop horizontal (specific hard skills around the problem to solve) or vertical (deep industry knowledge) specializations to stand out, and get known as “best in class” in your specific areas of practice. Tim Williams, author of Positioning for Professionals , says: "Generalists are replaceable, but specialists are irreplaceable. When you try to be all things to all people, you end up being nothing special to anyone."
• Differentiation: Sally Hogshead, in her book Fascinate , says: "Different is better than better. Being the best isn't enough if nobody notices or cares." sometimes being best in class is just not enough, just simply standing out is valuable
• Authoritative Content: constantly publish value content aimed at your ideal customer, that showcases your expertise and positions you as a thought leader in your niche market.? Strategically, you WANT to give away all your knowledge; I know this sounds counterintuitive, but clients will pay the big bucks to get help IMPLEMENTING the knowledge alongside the “author” of the new concepts they are learning.? Like my friend Seth David always says, “When it comes to knowledge, you need to give it away to own it” meaning that people will always respect the person they first heard it from, even if you disclosed it is not your original idea.
• Your Clients: the type of client you pursue makes a huge statement of value about your firm; and sometimes the ones you don’t take are even more important. Tim Williams, author of Take a Stand for your Brand , says: “A brand that stands for everything stands for nothing. Great brands are defined by what they stand against as much as by what they stand for." Another great quote I love comes from Peter Block, author of The Answer to How Is Yes : "The choice to say NO is the most strategic choice we can make. It allows us to declare what we are not willing to do and thus affirm what we are committed to."

2. Availability Value

• Strategic Accessibility: Ensure clients can easily reach you and develop a platform to receive timely responses.? Limited availability can also signal relative quality and desirability to your prospects. Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing , says: "Scarcity creates value. When something is hard to get, we want it more."
• Pre-sales Process: Optimize the initial interaction to set a positive tone and build trust from the start.? As my friend Blair Enns, author of Win Without Pitching , says: “The Sale is the Sample” indicating that how you sell is a preview to how you will serve.? A sloppy sales process signals sloppy quality.

3. Pricing Value

• Price Level: the perceived echelon that your company is in, based on the price level sends a signal about quality, but most importantly allows the customer to make sense of your positioning in the market, the wrong price level sends the wrong message.? In the book Minding the Store , Stanley Marcus says: "I have learned that the customer’s perception of value is paramount, and the price paid must be commensurate with the perceived value."
• Integrity: Maintain consistent and fair pricing structures, do not give arbitrary discounts as it cheapens the perceived quality of your services.? Think about Apple, they never discount, this is by design, strategically. Steve Jobs said: "You have to believe that the price is going to be an important part of the marketing message. If you discount your product, you’re telling people that it isn’t worth the price."
• Options: Offer flexible pricing options to cater to different client needs; think of tiered packages.? My friend Ron Baker in his book Implementing Value Pricing , talks about the physiological advantages of offering 3 options, specially how we are wired to look at the middle option as the safe option, think of the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears; there is much wisdom in these traditional stories.
• Strategic Discounts: Use discounts judiciously to attract clients without devaluing your service; maybe tie them to a recent event or based on some historical relationship with your firm.? My friend Ed Kless, founder of MetaConsulting Academy , calls it “Preferred Price” because “He who liveth by the discount, shall ye also perish by the discount.”

4. Understanding Value

• Value Conversations: Engage in meaningful discussions to identify and solve expensive problems for your clients. My friend Jonathan Stark, author of Hourly Billing is Nuts , always refers to it as the “3 Whys”:? Why This? Why Us? And Why Now? Referring to ways to structure a value conversation to understand the WHY behind why the client wants you to fix THIS problem, why they think that US (our firm) is the appropriate one to engage with, and finally why NOW and not before, or not in the future, to really understand what is motivating this prospect to want to make a move.? The greatest tip I have ever learned on having effective value conversations from from the book The Dan Sullivan Question , which is to ask your prospect: “Imagine we are in a cafe having a discussion, three years from today, and you were looking back over those three years, what has to have happened in your life, both personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress?"
• Communications Style: Words matter in value conversations. As Phil M Jones, author of Exactly What to Say , says, "The worst time to think about the thing you are going to say is in the moment you are saying it." Preparing for these conversations allows us to guide our clients effectively and ensure we truly understand their needs. Our firms need to build a core competency, just on "conversation preparedness"
• Proper Diagnosis: Conduct thorough assessments to understand client pain points, this should always be a PAID ENGAGEMENT, sometimes diagnosing the problem properly is more valuable than the prescription, as your competition is full of prescription filler just waiting to take on more work.? Understanding the real underlying cause of the problems is the most nuanced type of work that can be done, and a paid engagement is the only way to properly assign time and resources to do this properly.? My friend Ron Baker, author of Time's Up , talks about the “Smile Curve” or “Stan Shih Curve”, that depicts that virtually ALL the value of any service lies at the very beginning of the engagement (the diagnosis) and the experience of the end result (final outcome), all the effort to fix the problem is on the trough of the curve?
• Scope of Work: design a clear scope of work to align with client needs and desired outcomes. Maybe “scope of work” should be named “Service Access Agreement” or some other term that depicts what the customer gets and not what the service provider does.? Spoiler alert, your clients do not value the units of effort you track (aka. Time it takes to perform a task; Ron Baker always says: "Hourly billing encourages inefficiency and discourages innovation. Professionals should be rewarded for their expertise and the value they deliver, not the time they spend."), instead clients appreciate the commitment to the end result.??

5. Performance Value

• The “Job to be Done”: all engagements with clients, are really just a “Job to be Done” in disguise, clients do not buy services from us, they HIRE OUR PRODUCT TO DO A JOB and that job is defined by proper diagnosis, then we perform the work known that there is a very specific job to be done, our client wins.? Clayton Christiansen, author of Competing Against Luck , says: "Customers don’t buy products; they hire them to do a job."
• Client Experience: Focus on providing a superior experience at every touchpoint.? Every interaction should be strategically designed to be meaningful. Brené Brown in her book Dare to Lead , says: “Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”
• Speed: turnaround time is by far one of the most impactful performance-related aspects of any service performed.? I like to point out that the source of speed is very commonly by the amount of trust your client has with your firm, Steven Covey Jr says: "Trust always affects two outcomes—speed and cost. When trust goes down, speed will also go down and costs will go up. When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down."
• Strategic Visibility: Make valuable aspects of your process visible to clients to enhance their perception of your work.? Joseph Pine, author of The Experience Economy says: "Businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, and that memory itself becomes the product—the ‘experience’." While I think, there is also a lot of value in hiding certain processes from clients.? I like to think of restaurants with a closed kitchen vs. open (fully visible) kitchen.? These restaurants are positioned differently; therefore, they operate differently, and thus are priced accordingly.
• Novelty & Creativity: anytime your clients experience something new or a creative way of solving a problem, this leaves a memorable experience; especially a sense that they are doing business with a firm that is “keeping up with the times”.? This could be manifested in the technology you use or simply how your team responds to a novel issue.? John Cleese, author of Creativity , said: “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”? Your firm must allocate time and resources to thinking creatively and innovation exercises, to become a creative output generator when the time comes to think on the spot.
• Aesthetics: the look and feel of your work will resonate with your client.? My friend Chris Do, founder of the futur , always says: “In the age of AI seemingly doing our work, the TASTE of the designer will always stand out, you cannot program TASTE into an AI, this is exclusively a human feeling that can only be felt”

6. Results Value

• Economic Outcomes: Demonstrate the tangible financial benefits of your services. Peter Drucker, father of modern management, famously said: “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for.”
• Emotional & Spiritual Outcomes: Highlight the peace of mind and confidence clients gain from working with you.? Joseph Pine says: “The experience economy is about creating memorable events for customers, and that memory itself becomes the product.”
• Guarantees: Offer unconditional (no questions asked) money-back guarantees to reduce client risk and increase trust.? In the book Extraordinary Guarantees , Christopher Hart says: “A strong guarantee can be a key differentiator in the marketplace, setting a company apart from its competitors."

7. Membership Value

• Exclusive Club: Create a sense of exclusivity and loyalty among your clients. Like Robbie Kellman Baxter says in her book The Membership Economy: “The goal is to build a forever transaction, where the company provides ongoing value to the customer in exchange for loyalty.”
• Brand Association: Foster strong associations with your brand that clients value and trust.? It is also important that customers know who your other customers are (maybe not by name but by profile/persona) as they want to feel that brand association collectively.? Think of Harley Davidson fans, who literally have tattoos of the company logo.??Kevin Kelly, author of Excellent Advice for the Living , said: "To be a successful creator, you don’t need millions... to make a living as a entrepreneur, you need only thousands of true fans."

8. Tail Value

• Post-service Benefits: designing a system that gives benefits for clients even after the initial service is completed, is going to be essential, making the customer feel like they have a relationship with your firm and not just a transaction.? I think of Amazon Prime as a great example of this, Jeff Bezos says: "We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member."
• Ease of Transition: make it no-brainer easy for clients to transition out of your services and into a competitor. Remove all the friction for client to “unsubscribe to your firm.? What is interesting is the easier you make it, the less likely it will happen; and in the event that it does, it will create such a memorable experience, that your ex-clients will actually still recommend you even after they leave to another firm.? Make your customers feel that they “had” to leave you and not “wanted” to leave you; which reframes you firm as a stepping stone onto the next era of their business.? So, strategically, setting up the systems in place to allow this transition is imperative.
• Warranty: What is your firms policy to respond to issue after the fact? This is how must clients judge the "professionally" of the service provider. Unfortunately, must service providers do not want to do work without getting paid, failing to build their firm economically to do a certain degree of "non-billable work" - do not forget Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

9. Transformation Value

• Long-term Impact: Showcase the lasting positive changes in clients' businesses or lives due to your services, and the actions your firm took that created pathways to these changes - this is where your customers seek your leadership and ability to be the catalyst of true transformation.? Sheryl Sandberg, in her book Lean in , says: “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
• Client Testimonials: Encourage clients to share their success stories, reinforcing your role as a valuable partner; focus on THEIR story, not your firm’s.? Don Miller, author of StoryBrand , says: "Always position your customer as the hero and your brand as the guide."

Incentives matter, your client’s ultimate incentive is to spend as little as possible and get back a multiple of their investment.? The reality is that all of these things are just theory, and do not manifest themselves until an actual transaction happens; but there is a huge advantage here, most accounting firms are having transactions with their clients all the time, it's just a matter of understanding how all these moments and interactions play out when they are actually strategically planned ahead!? Our customers are simply looking to lower their risk, risk of wasting their time, risk of wasting their money, essentially, the risk of hiring the wrong firm.? Creating Value pre-transaction, during the service delivery, and beyond the transaction… is simply the fastest way to lower that risk.?

Just like basic economics: supply & demand drives the price; the great economist Thomas Sowell, author of Basic Economics , said: "There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs." And our customer is willing to part with their money in exchange for value.? Our client’s problems to solve is the “demand” and our ability to solve them is the “supply” - before thinking that we are in the solution providing business, think that we are in the value creation business; this one distinction "de-comodetizes" our services and removes price from the equation as long as the value created supersedes the price paid in multiples.

Finally, by developing and executing a Strategic Value Creation Plan, we can shift our clients' perceptions of our role from “cost of doing business” to that of “value creation partners”. As our clients begin to see us as integral to their success, they will perceive our services as investments that yield substantial returns. Whether through increased sales, reduced costs, or enhanced confidence in their decision-making, our clients will value the trust and expertise we bring to the table. This transformation not only justifies our pricing but also cements our position as the go-to advisors who are fully aligned with their desired outcomes.

Now, go create you own Strategic Value Creation Plan using this framework, toss out the old Business Plan and try this approach instead. I think you will see the light in the direction you want to take your firm and consequently your prospects/clients will see it to... and pay you more, happily.

If you are interested in attending any of my conferences or workshops, check out the schedule of events at REFRAME 2024's website