All My Clients See Is the Dollar Sign

“But Martin…I agree with you in principle but with my clients and prospects; all they see is the dollar sign.”

If I myself had a dollar for every time I’d heard a variation of this sentence over the years. Let’s scrutinise it for a minute here:

IF the cheapest always wins

AND

There’s always someone cheaper

THEN

It must follow that:

  1. The clients you have are the ones where you were the cheapest option
  2. There’s a firm somewhere with a million clients, because they’re the cheapest.

I’m going to go ahead and disagree with this premise. I propose the following instead.

If you find yourself with clients and prospects who ‘can only see the dollar/pound/euro/rand etc sign’ then you can be sure of one or more of three factors being in play.

  1. They are not being offered significant additional value by those who charge more (eg. You)
  2. They are not being educated about why the additional value matters to them by those who charge more. (eg. You)
  3. You’re fishing in small pools of small businesses. Clients with bigger budgets pay for value.

My last client win this month was five figures. The last client win I helped one of my clients win, was six figures.

This year has seen 70 PE deals concluded with accounting firms, an all-time record. You think those funded and acquired firms are all full of low-price low-end clients? No, me neither.

Many of your professional colleagues are able to educate on value and charge more on a routine basis. Why aren’t you?

My money is on #3 but you know your firm far better than I do.

To your success,

Martin Bissett

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Martin Bissett

Martin Bissett is the founder of the Bissett Group of companies including data, software and digital communities such as APT, CAS, AIR and PAR.

Previously he established a high six figure consulting firm while serving as a keynote speaker with over 100 one off and repeat engagements to his name, as well as becoming the most published author on his topics of specialism with 14 books including 1 bestseller.

Since 1998, he has played a major part in working with over 2000 accounting firms in over 44 countries. These projects have led to those firms acquiring over £500m of recurring fees (before inflationary increases, referrals and upselling are factored in). He stopped keeping track of this number over 5 years ago.

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