To Fee or Not To Fee

“To fee or not to fee?”…that is the question

I hear many accountants telling me that they provide strategic help to their clients which is often provided on an ad hoc basis and is rarely billed to the client let alone acted on by them.

It is so easy to be drawn into “giving it away for free” (whether as a golden nugget in the sales process or as part of “this I what I do as part of my client care”) if you do not have a structured and productised way of providing that pro active help that many business owners are looking for.

You often wonder how much value is left on the table with clients and prospects alike, that those people would gladly pay for, if they knew that the valuable help and advise formed part of a process over a period of time rather that the traditional one-off consultancy route.

The client engagement would then become part of an integrated process of “this is how we do things at XYZ Ltd and I would really recommend that we spend some time together looking at what is important to you as a business owner going forward”.

One of the ways of looking at taking on a new discipline or service is to set oneself an aim or objective for growth in that service line. This would then become the subconscious reason for acting in this new behaviour pattern and not letting the client (or prospect) benefit from your years of experience/training (and your PI cover if you have advised rather than facilitated and it all goes wrong). An additional way is to formulate a clear, concise and transparent pricing policy that will explain to your clients and prospects what they are paying for. It will also give you something to refer to when you broach the subject of business growth and their aspirations and the client springs the inevitable “how much” question and the wind is not strong enough to seek guidance from your wet finger!

The successful clients that I look after provide their client care in a commercial manner and provide that help in a structured, formulated and productised manner that is priced in a clear and transparent methodology and is provided as part of a structured hand hold for the business owners out that that are willing to pay for the valuable help that they receive and who are looking for the proactive service from their accountant or business advisor. They have also structured their business in such a way that they have created time to enable them to provide this service.