Today, right here, right now, this is the moment that you will finally say, I'm growing my accounting practice and you're going to discover exactly how, right here, right now, on the Grow My Accounting Practice podcast. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Ron Saharian, co-founder of Profit First Professionals.

I'm Mike Michalowicz, author guy of Profit First, co-founder of Profit First Professionals, along with Ron. You're listening to GMAT, Grow My Accounting Practice. We do this for you, my accountant, bookkeeping, or coaching friend, to teach you how to do exactly that, to grow your practice.

We do it through Insider Access, something Ron's doing over here at our offices that we think you can do over there at your offices. We have a GMAT Now task, the one task that if you do it, you'll see results. And we have a great guest interview.

Yes, I'm excited today. Sale, sale, sale. So it's always a topic of mine.

I love it. And thank you, subscribers. Thank you, listeners.

Don't forget to tell your friends to comment, like, and make sure you share your reviews with us. Yeah. So, Ron, it was funny.

In the preamble to our show, you asked our guests about an accident they were in. Yes. My God.

And what a way to demonstrate it, to get back on stage after being hit by a vehicle and being able to jump around and say, hey, I'm fine. I'm just good. Well, you know, your sales can bounce back like that, too.

I can't tell you how many people say that my sales are struggling. I feel like I've crashed. I was getting some leads.

Now I'm not getting any. People are referring business to me, but no one's referring business to me. You can recover fully.

That's how I'm relating to that story. What a tie-in. That is awesome.

You're a pro. Was that good? That was absolutely horrible. Well, by now, you probably guessed our guests.

You probably guessed our guests. That makes sense. Dave Lorenzo is a sales expert, a business strategy consultant, and an author who has built five successful businesses during the past 25 years.

He is a world-class sales expert known for his proprietary 60-second sales system. He's about to teach you, my dear listening friends, how business development and revenue growth works specifically for CPAs. So, without further ado, welcome to the show.

Welcome, Dave. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you guys.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. So, let's get right into it.

I think when it comes to business development, even that term is cloudy for many folks. What do you mean by business development? So, when we talk about business development, what we're really talking about is we're talking about a combination of sales and marketing, but you don't even need to get that technical. It's the system you use to get the shortest path to the money in your pocket.

That's it. Oh, I like that. It's the system you use that produces the shortest path to the money in your pocket.

So, if your system is you go outside your door and smoke a cigarette, and somebody walks by and they say, hey, what do you do there? You say, I'm an accountant, and they say, oh, you know what? I heard about this PPP thing. Can you help me? You say, yes, that's your system. They walk into the office, they plunk down their cash, you help them with their PPP, and you do their taxes, right? That's your system.

Okay. Everybody, whether they believe it or not, has a system. So, when we talk about business development, people come up to me and they're like, oh, you know, I hate sales, but you like revenue and you like growing, so we just got to find a way that's comfortable for you.

And business development, I think, is a term that was invented by professionals, by CPAs, by lawyers, so that they wouldn't have to tell people that they were really in the sales business. So, you know, I think that's where it comes from. Why are so many people resistant to sales? Why they don't like that word? You know, I spend so much time – my kid is a movie junkie, and I spend so much time trying to disabuse him of the notion that sales is Wolf of Wall Street, or sales is Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, or sales is Boiler Room.

And, candidly, that's why people hate sales. Three great movies, though. Come on.

Listen, I would watch those over and over again on a loop for the rest of my life, but they scare the crap out of CPAs because a CPA just envisions having to pick up a phone and call somebody who's a stranger and ask them to do business with them, and the reality is that's not what selling for professionals is all about. You'll never need to do that if you're a CPA or you're an attorney. There are other ways to get clients.

Okay, so let's start talking about it. What is the way to get clients? Well, everybody wants clients by referral because it's the easiest thing, right? The trust is automatically passed, so if somebody refers somebody else to you, that's the easiest way to get a client. So if you're a CPA, you're listening today, here's the one thing you can do right now that will absolutely change your business development life.

Take everybody you know, dig out their contact information. It's the business cards that are piled up on your nightstand at home that are in your center drawer of your desk, the business cards that you have in the pockets of your suits or your jackets. Go find them all, put them on a list.

All you need is first name, last name, e-mail address. Upload it to an e-mail system. Start sending out an e-mail to every one of those people once a week.

In the e-mail, you can talk about personal stuff. You can educate them on stuff that's going on in the world of accounting. I don't care what you do.

Start communicating with everybody you know once a week and watch the magic of referrals happen. You see, people want to refer you. They just forgot about you.

It's not that they have something against you. They just don't remember that you're out there doing your thing. So if you want to change everything from a referral perspective, start today, e-mail everybody that you know.

Look, if you're interesting, this will work better. But even if you're crappy, even if your e-mails are terrible and you're just sending out goofy cartoons once a week, you're going to get one or two referrals a month from your list because these people forgot about you. That's all you got to do if you wanted to get referrals today.

Now there are 20 other things you could do that could get a lot more business in the door, but you'll never have to worry about, am I going to get another referral again? Because you're communicating with people who already know you, like you, and trust you. They just forgot about you. That's the easiest thing you can do right now.

That's great. Simple. I want to start, though, upsetting people.

If I start e-mailing you, Dave, you gave me your card. We met at the Chamber of Commerce two years ago. I start e-mailing you once a week.

Now you're like, who is this putz? He won't leave me alone. Well, the first thing you get, let's look. I said the exact words that you would use.

You would use the word putz. I just want that to be known. Putz, schmuck, something like that.

Schmuck. The first thing you would do is you would go out with a message that says, hey, this is, and put your name in there. I'm going to say Dave because that's my name.

Don't you write Dave. Hey, this is Dave. I'm e-mailing you because we've lost touch, and I want to stay in contact with you.

Why? Because I want to make sure that we have a productive relationship. Why don't you reply back to me with who a great client would be for you because I'd love to connect you with somebody who can do business with you. Now listen, Mike, if I sent that e-mail to you, you wouldn't say putz.

You wouldn't say doofus. You wouldn't say schmuck. You would say, hmm, let me see who I can get Dave to introduce me to.

And you know what? If you replied back, I would introduce you to somebody who is fantastic, and then guess what happens? I'm going to get a referral from you at some point, guaranteed. So that's the way you start off. Now the whole key to this thing is that you go into this with two things in mind.

The first thing you have in mind is we all have to have an external orientation. It's the key to marketing success. And what is having an external orientation? It means I do for you three times before I ever ask you to do something for me.

That's having an external orientation. The second thing is we've got to always provide value. My e-mail has to be valuable in order to get you to open it up.

And this is the thing that people don't realize about sales. And when I talked about my kid in the movies, we're all selling all the time, right? Just to get my kid to change the channel, I've got to sell him on it. To get my wife to make something I want to eat for dinner, it's a sales process.

To get my daughter to clean her room, it's a sales process. So when you're sending out these e-mails every week, what you're doing is you're selling people on reading that content. So my advice is while you could just throw out anything, my advice is give them something valuable.

Give them something they can use. Give them something they're going to want to read. Even more important, the better it is, the more likely they'll be to forward it to somebody else.

Now, Mike, you said something important there because no matter how valuable these e-mails are, there's going to be a segment of that population that don't want the e-mails. So guess what they're going to do? They're going to unsubscribe. And that's perfectly fine because three weeks ago, we weren't sending any e-mails at all.

So we were getting 100% of nothing. Now, if we've got 20% of these people opening these e-mails, we got a shot with that 20% that we didn't have three weeks ago. Right, right.

Now, what if our listeners don't have drawers full of business cards? How would you suggest that they start building a list or is there a different avenue instead of list building for them to take? Sure. So we all have a list of people in our natural network. So what I want people to do is I want them to do this test.

I want them to reach out to somebody that they care about. It could be a friend or a family member. And I want them to have a real candid conversation with those people and say, tell me, what is it that you think I do for a living? And watch the answers that you get.

So the way to start the list is just with your natural network, with friends, with family, and tailor the content in your newsletter to those people first, and then your task is to build the e-mail list. But let's take a step back for a second, and what are the fastest ways to build an e-mail list, let's say, with qualified people, with people who could be our potential clients or with people who we know are going to be evangelists, people who don't use our services but would refer our services readily. The fastest way to build those lists is to go out and get in front of groups of people in mass.

Many times I tell professionals, especially CPAs, that networking is kind of the fool's gold of marketing because people think that they're going to go to a networking event, they're going to shake some hands and get one or two business cards, put them on their list, and they've done their marketing for the week, right? Well, what I'm going to teach right now is the faster way to do this, and this is what you should be looking for all day, every day. Anytime you have a chance to get in front of a group of people, either via webinar when the pandemic ends, in person, or through writing an article, you need to do it, and you need to publish your articles to ideal client audiences, and the way you find those is, get this, you ask your best client, what groups or associations do you belong to, how do you stay abreast of the things that are going on in the industry, how do you stay sharp? And they'll tell you, oh, I belong to YPO, or I belong to EO, or I belong to the XYZ Chamber of Commerce. Do they have a business section, and would they like a guest speaker because I could do a webinar, I could do a presentation.

In fact, I can tell you how to apply for PPP forgiveness, and I can do it in 15 minutes, and guess what? If you don't have an event coming up, I'll put it on a video, and I'll give you permission to share the video with everybody, just throw it right up on the website. Oh, geez, that would be great. So you do this, but the key element in doing all of this is you have to offer something in the article, offer something in the video, offer something when you're speaking from the stage.

Now, that free thing, that engagement device, I call it a honeypot, and that's the key to converting the people in the audience into people who are going to go on your list, and here's how this works, right? You create the PPP forgiveness checklist, right? Or you create the five things you need to get ready before you call your CPA to get your taxes done checklist. Or you do a free report, 15 ways to improve your cash flow without lifting a finger, right? And then you say to the people that you're speaking in front of on that webinar, you say to them, if you want my free report, all you need to do is, and then they can send you an email, they can opt into a form, they can click a link that has a form, and you got their contact information, and that's how you build your list. So if I were starting a business today and you dropped me on the planet Klingon naked, here's what I would do.

I would go to those Klingons, and I would say, listen, I'm going to educate all of you how to build a business. All you need to do is get together in a group, and I'm going to teach you something in 25 minutes, and at the end, I'm going to offer you something for free. If you want it, give me your contact information.

And I would do that day in and day out until I built the list, and then I would communicate with the list over and over again. That's what I would do. If I was put on a planet Klingon naked, I would try to get close first.

I like how you just went for the sale. No, man, you got to sell it. Look, so the first thing is, I'm figuring if you're dropping me on the planet Klingon, it's been a long trip and you probably haven't fed me, so I'm hungry.

I got to sell something and get something to eat. I'll get pants after that. I love it.

What about selling? A lot of people are concerned. I am about closing. I don't know what to say.

Is there some effective closing verbiage you can give us? Ah, there is. There's only one sentence you need to know. It's just one question.

The one question closed. This is the essence of the 60-second sale, okay? Here it is. You ready? Get out a pen.

Would you like some help? That's it. That's your close, right? Really? That's all you got to do, especially if you're a professional. You're talking to somebody, right? And you ask them a question.

So tell me about your goals for the next six months or tell me how's your business going. My business is going great. What are you hoping to do this year? Are you going to exceed your expectations? Well, you know, we got this one little thing we'd like to fix.

Tell me about that. Well, see, we got this issue and it's a bit of a challenge and blah, blah, blah. Oh, interesting.

Would you like some help with that? Now, who turns down help? Two types of people turn down help, right? The first type of person who turns down help is an absolute psychopath, right? The second type of person who turns down help is somebody who doesn't trust you enough yet. So hopefully you've built up enough trust during that conversation. Generally, 99% of the time, what that person is going to say is, Dave, help? How are you going to help me? I thought you said you were a consultant.

I just told you that I needed a new roof on my warehouse and we were having trouble getting financing for it. Yeah, you did tell me that, and here's the thing. I know a guy who helps people just like you get financing.

I'd love to introduce you. I'd love to help you with this. Oh, well, I'll be happy.

Yeah, sure, I'll be happy to take that help. So when you lead those conversations and you say, would you like some help with that, when they raise an issue that is in your wheelhouse, we're having some trouble, there's money that seems to be missing at the end of the month, the books just don't balance, I can't figure it out, I'm not sure what's going on, and you turn to them after you help the guy with the roof and you say, would you like some help with that? Well, yeah, I would love some help with that. Well, that's what I do.

Let me come over, let me look at what you got and we'll see if we can help you. That's it. See, selling is helping in exchange for financial compensation.

That's what selling is. It's not Glen Gary, Glen Ross. It's not Boiler Room.

I mean, it is to those guys, but for us, for professionals, our business revolves around relationships. So when you have a relationship-based business, it's natural to give and to receive help from people who you're in a relationship with or you want to be in a relationship with. So that's awesome, but how is a professional services sales approach different than a product-based business? Well, the first thing you have to realize with professional sales is that people are, every aspect of professional sales involves something that people really need a high level of trust for.

There's not a single profession where, you know, I could go buy a new watch and I don't necessarily have to trust the watch guy. I can shop around on the internet and determine what's a good watch, what's a bad watch. Even to some extent, a car purchase, although it's a big ticket purchase and there needs to be a level of trust and it's better with relationships, but, you know, there's Carvana now.

I can go online, point and click, and get a car. But with professional services, there's a level of intimacy that's different than buying products or services. And think about like CPAs, for example.

I mean, that's a freaking intimate relationship. You're going to see the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? So for me to engage a CPA, particularly if I have a CPA relationship already, there has to be trust that's built up first. And in addition to the trust that's built up, there has to be both credibility and then there has to be a believability element.

And let me explain the difference between the two. So generally with a CPA, someone's going to first become interested because either of an introduction like a referral or because of something they learned from the professional. So they saw the professional doing a demonstration, either on video or they read an article the professional wrote or they saw the professional speak.

And then they're going to initiate the conversation. The first thing that happens is credibility. So they have to believe that person knows their stuff.

So what we've set up already in our system, in our business development system, was through the lead generation ideas that I gave you at the outset, speaking, publishing, or doing webinars. Those have been around for professionals since the beginning of time, but that's a huge credibility piece. So right then and there, somebody put this person in front of me and they spoke and they sounded good, so there's some credibility.

The second thing that's necessary is that believability element. So although they're a great CPA, they may not be the CPA who can help me because my business is different, right? How many times have you guys heard this? Everybody says this, right? My business is different. And in reality, most businesses are very much alike, but my business is different, so I got to believe that you're the right CPA for me.

So that involves us having an additional conversation. And you know, the one thing that can take this credibility and believability and put it on steroids is, and it's so simple, all the professional has to say is, listen, it was great speaking with you. I'm not sure if we're a good fit.

I know you have more questions you want to ask me. And I definitely have more questions I want to ask you. I want to find out more about your business so that I can be sure that I can help you.

Let's schedule an appointment. Let's sit down in my office. Before I do that, would you like to see some letters of recommendation? Would that be helpful? Now, nobody turns this down.

Nobody said, nah, I don't need, you know, my money, I don't need, I don't need, of course they're going to say yes. And what you're doing there is you're throwing down the gauntlet. When you say to a prospect, would you like to see some letters of recommendation, you've immediately said, everybody should have these.

Every CPA you talk to should have letters of recommendation. So they walk away from that meeting or from that phone call, they get an email with 35 letters of recommendation in there, and they think to themselves, wow, goodness, my current CPA never showed me any letters of recommendation. You know, this guy must be the real deal.

35 people, could he get 35 people, and their names are on there, it's on their letterhead, their phone number, I can call them, their phone numbers are on there. So to start the sales process in professional services is as simple as building up that list and then educating the market. But the real key is in that intimate moment where the credibility and the believability is essential, offering up something like letters of recommendation to get the ball rolling goes a long, long way.

I love it. I'm wondering about the competition that accountants and bookkeepers have by being accountants and bookkeepers. If I walk in the door and I say, I'm an accountant, the prospect may say, oh, I know 1,000 accountants.

I mean, they don't say it out loud, but they feel that. And then the downward price pressure begins. Like, oh, are you cheaper? How do I distinguish myself right from the get-go if I'm in a category that's so competitive like accounting and bookkeeping? Right, how do we get out of the proverbial box, if you will? Well, so you guys know a lot of CPAs.

You know a lot more CPAs, a lot more accountants, a lot more bookkeepers than I do. I probably know maybe 55 or 100 bookkeepers well enough to pick up the phone and call them and have a conversation. And I love all of them.

They're all fantastic people. But of the, let's say I knew 55 bookkeepers, there's probably five that could really talk business with me, that could talk about my lead generation process and could talk about hiring somebody to help in the office, an office manager, hiring somebody to go out and help me sell. There are very few CPAs that could talk shop with me, not about what I do, the nuts and bolts of what I do, but about the entrepreneurial aspects of what I do.

And it's a shame because CPAs should be able to speak that language because they're in and out of a ton of different business books all day long. So they should be able to have a business conversation with me. If you are a CPA and somebody introduced me to you and the first thing you said to me was, hey Dave, what you do fascinates me.

I'm wondering how I can build a sales team. Could you talk to me about that? And then you could speak intelligently about sales. Or if you said to me, hey Dave, you're a business guy.

You've been in and around businesses for over 30 years. I'm struggling to hire somebody and here's what I'm doing. I'm using these psychometric assessments.

Could you help me think this through? If you could talk business with me, like an entrepreneur would talk business with me, I think that would set you apart from all the other CPAs I know. Now I'm saying this because the CPAs I know don't speak the business language. They speak the CPA version of business language.

Maybe you guys know people who are more business oriented than I do. But that would be a huge differentiating factor for me. And that's why I work with the CPA I work with.

That's why I work with the bookkeeper I work with because they spoke to me in my language from day one. Gotcha. I love that.

What about the price conversation? So you talked about that one sentence close, like how may I help you? Or do you need help with that was actually what you said. Would you like help with that? What about the customer comes back and says, well I need to know your pricing. I mean that's going to be a conversation.

It becomes very uncomfortable. Does price always have to be a consideration and how do I address that? Yeah, I love it when we talk about this up front. And I say that when somebody asks me that.

Oh, that's actually a great one. I say thank you for asking that. I love it when people ask me this because I'd rather talk about price now because I never want to have this conversation with you again.

You're going to pay more than you ever thought you would pay if you decide to work with me. Boom. And then I just stay quiet.

And they're like, what do you mean? And I say, why do you think I charge more than everybody else? And again, I stay quiet and they look at me and they're like, because you're better than everybody else. Bingo, you got it. I mean whatever they say at that point, that's the answer, okay? Now if they don't say anything, if they say, Dave, I have no idea, why are you playing these cutesy games? By the way, nobody says that.

But if they say, Dave, I have no idea why you charge more, you say, listen, here's how we're going to work together. Over the course of the time that we work together, I have one promise that I will make to you other than following the accountant's creed to the letter. I have one promise that I will make to you.

And the promise that I will make to you is you will make more money, you will save more money, you will reduce the amount of risk you have because you work with me exponentially greater than the fee that you pay me. So if you're making three times more than you're paying me because of the guidance I'm giving you and because of the systems we're going to set up, what difference does it make what you pay me? And the person's going to look at you and they're going to go, hmm, now what am I doing here? And we're going back to what we were just talking about five minutes ago. I'm speaking the language of business to a business owner.

I'm not riding down that razor blade to the absolute cheapest price. The simple fact of the matter is you get what you pay for and if your business, Mr. Entrepreneur, is ready to go from good to great, you should be working with an accountant who will take you from good to great. You should be working with someone who's a partner in helping you get to the next level.

Now that's not cheap, okay? I'm not asking you to split your profits with me, but I'm going to ask you to pay a little bit more than you're used to paying for accounting services with the caveat that you're going to end up taking home two, three, four, sometimes some of my clients ten times more than what you're going to pay me. And that's it, that's the whole price conversation. Now if they're still not interested after that, there are a number of things you can do.

You put them on your list and you keep educating, keep educating, keep educating. Most of the time when people are gun shy after this conversation, if you do everything by the book, and I just showed you in five minutes how to do it, it's not more complicated than that, but most of the time if you have this conversation and people shy away afterward and you put them on your list, you'll notice that they're lurking. They're the ones who always open your emails because they have FOMO.

They're thinking to themselves, I could have had that guy. That could have been my accountant. I just didn't want to pay the money that I had to pay to get him.

It's like the person who always wanted to drive their Mercedes. They always wanted to drive their Mercedes, but they got the Camry instead. And they got the Camry because their wife said they should get the Camry.

Well, what happens? They're waiting at the valet and the Mercedes pulls up and the guy's standing there and he's like, oh man, I really wish I had that car. It's always at the valet. You want to be the CPA who's the Mercedes.

The Camry's a great car, but you're not the Camry. You got to be the Mercedes. If they didn't plunk down the coin to bring you on board, you want them to regret it.

And when they regret it, they'll come back. They always do. The ultimate groin punch for Camry guy is when Camry guy's wife walks into the car with Mercedes guy.

Let's talk about podcasts. Last week we had a guest on talking about the power of creating podcasts. You have a propensity to be on podcasts.

I dare say it was daily? Yeah, I do a daily show. The Inside BS show is every stinking day. Wow, so that's a lot.

That's what I said. Yeah, so why? I made this commitment to myself. For four years I did a podcast, and it was a chore.

I was doing it weekly, and every week it was like, what am I going to do? It was the last minute. I didn't get a guest, so I got to do a solo show. I love to talk, so the solo shows aren't a problem, but you can't do a solo show unless you're a huge personality.

You can't do a solo show and grow it to any scale without having some type of other form of media that's going for you. It's a rarity that one will go viral. Yeah, so I thought to myself, listen, I like to interview people.

I'm intellectually curious. I'm going to do an interview show, and in 2021 I'm going to commit to doing it every single day, every single day. So in December I started lining up guests, and I started recording shows, and the thing that I found was it became, and Ron and I were talking about this pre-show, it became like working out.

It became the kind of thing where momentum just built, and it turns out these conversations, conversations like I'm having with you guys now, they're the best part of my day. I spend a lot of time on the phone coaching clients, and I love to coach clients. I love to make an impact.

I love to help people, but those conversations are all the same. Everybody's at a different level of growth or a different level of growth progression, but I have the same conversation with people regardless of what level they're at two, three, five times a week, right? The conversations I have with people like you, Mike, and Ron are, they're interesting, they're engaging, they're animated. I learn new stuff.

The feedback I got from doing these shows daily was unbelievable. People were totally into it, and let me tell you a real quick story about one of the things that happened. One of the first people I interview is this guy who's the CEO of an e-sports company up in Canada, and I had to study up on e-sports.

I didn't even know what e-sports was before I interviewed him, so I study up on this. I interview the guy, and we talk for an hour and 10 minutes, and I have him take me through all the different revenue streams he has in his business. He takes me through how they make money.

He takes me through recruiting players, tells me that they're forming a new team. It was a great conversation, so that podcast goes out, and I'm getting emails from people. I got phone calls from people.

Everybody wanted to know more about e-sports because they didn't know what a huge business it was, and I thought to myself, man, this is, you know, the fact that I could, and at the time I had maybe 2,000 people, 2,000 listeners, 2,000 people who would download the show, and I'm thinking to myself, if I can have this kind of an impact just by doing an interview, imagine if I really, and this was a guy who he, you know, I just found him online, and I thought he would be a cool guy to talk to. If I did some real research based on what people told me they wanted, this could be a huge deal, and that's what I started doing, and the next thing I knew, I'm doing these shows, and I went from January 1st, 2021, having about 2,500 listeners who downloaded the show every month. I 10X'd it.

We're over 25,000 now in the middle of March, so for me to be able to reach 25,000 people, you know, is just phenomenal, and I'm doing it while I'm doing something that I really enjoy, so I'm at the stage, if it was a gym workout, where I just flexed, and I'm like, ooh, I can see a little shadow there. Look at that. All right.

That's awesome. That's actually a perfect way to wrap it up on the shadow note because we're running out of time. Wow.

That was great. Before we let you go, Dave, where can our listeners hire you, learn your services so they can improve their sales? How do they connect with you? Well, the best thing they can do if they want the full Dave Lorenzo experience is go to the InsideBS show. Just go to the InsideBS show wherever you get your podcasts.

You can see me there every day. My website's just like my name, Dave Lorenzo, but the InsideBS show is available wherever you get your podcasts. I would love for people to listen and give me feedback.

Tell me who you want me to talk to, and I'll figure out a way to get them. That sounds amazing. Dave, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks a lot, Dave. Really appreciate it. My pleasure.

Thanks for having me, guys. Have a great rest of your week. You too.

All right, Ron, we're going to recap. We learned from Dave. We got InsiderX.

We got a GMAP Now test, but first, we're going to start off with our learnings. What did you take away, bro? Well, I learned that Dave is definitely a Jedi when it comes to sales. No doubt about it.

I've got about three to four, actually six pages of notes. I was overwhelmed with the knowledge. I could have listened to Dave all along, but I like, geez, people want to refer you, but they don't know about you.

Get in front of them. What is it that you think I do for a living? Get in front of groups. Trust, credibility, believability.

Would you like some help with that? As well as the last nuggets that Dave was sharing. Why do you think I charge more? You're right. He's making them frame his expenses.

I'm going to weave that bad boy right into value starts at hello. Yeah. No, I like that one too, because he really has the client framing and justifying why he dictates the price he does.

I mean, we say that people say, Ron, how much does it cost to work with a certified profit first account? I always say more than you've ever paid for accounting services before. Yeah. Every day.

I love it. And I would just simply add the I love it part. He says, I love that we're talking about this up front.

Like he shows an enthusiasm for that question where I think most people try to dart or dodge. How much do you charge? Like, well, you don't know enough yet. Let's not talk about that yet.

And that's something that we kind of sort of do a little bit. And so as we're speaking and sharing, my mind is going through. Okay.

You know, I, we don't avoid answering the question, but I like how Dave presented it in a way that, yeah, glad you asked. Awesome. It's going to, you're going to spend more than they ever spent before.

Yeah. Well, the, the belief that we have is that when people ask for a price without knowing the offer, they're making a judgment on half the, half the knowledge. So the argument is if someone said, hey, would you, wouldn't jump out of an airplane? People are like, uh, without a parachute, would you jump out of an airplane without a parachute? People are like, no.

And they're like, well, what if the airplane's on the ground and it's on fire? Of course you would. You don't know the context. Yeah.

Right. So that's what our argument is. But I also, by here in Dave's point is if, if the customer is asking and you defer or deflect, it's a denial of them and that's, they don't want to be rejected.

So I never heard the, I love it before. You embrace it. It's awesome.

You're asking, I would do the exact same thing. It's an acknowledgement. And therefore I think it's very empowering.

And then he frames it for them to defend the pricing. So I loved it. Um, my takeaway was, um, was, well, everything you shared, Ron, but simply.

I know. I kind of took it all. Yeah.

You're like, I like this and that, but that people forget about you. We have a responsibility to get back in front of them. Um, we remember them cause they're our targets.

They forget us because they don't need us at the moment. It's only when they need us, they think of us again. So you gotta be there and present.

All right, Ron, there's a reason you carry that lightsaber of yours around. It's so that you can share some, uh, Obi Ron Kenobi stuff. What do you have for us tonight? Yeah.

And so, you know, a lot of what we do here is cultural building, right? I have a great workplace environment and it really starts with, uh, building relationships. Whenever we're bringing in a new employee or a new member is working on a already assigned teams, we really want to stress relationship building statements. Right there.

There's key things that we want to do to get off on the right, the right foot. So some of them are, Hey, you know what? If you're new, you can simply say, I really want to work with this for you. I bet we can figure this out together.

You know, I feel that you're jacked about this project. I can't wait to talk about it. You, you clearly put a lot of work into this already.

I'm excited about working with you on this. And so there's a lot of key statements that you can Google and look up when it comes to, uh, basically relationship building statements that will help you if you're a new employee, but also will help you as the owner help a new employee feel more welcomed. And you can have your team go through these exercises as well, but really look to build those relationships with the newest, the new individuals with great statements.

Mind blown. Ron mind blown. Listen, and this is, I'm telling you, this is divine intervention.

As you're saying that I got my cell phone here. A text comes in from Edwin solar. Remember him? Great guy.

He goes, uh, things are going great here. Uh, just wanted to reach out to you and, please especially tell Ron, uh, I'm doing well and say, hi. And I'll tell you, I assume there's a reason he says, especially tell Ron because of all the kindness you showered upon him over the years of him doing voluntary work for us.

So this doesn't just work. Oh, I feel very special now. That makes me feel good.

Thanks for sharing. I mean, literally as you're saying that it's, so there's proof for the pudding. I, um, one more thing I got for you.

This is the proof is in the taste of the pudding, not just for the pudding. Let's get that right. Mike.

Well, I'm putting pop. Um, this is a GMAT now test. One task we do, you'll see results.

It's real simple right now. I want you to go to Amazon and buy five copies of prop first. You can get them pretty inexpensively.

This is your marketing tool. Here's what you're going to do. Get your five copies, bring them to your office, sign each one, our guy from with your name and say, I hope you enjoy this book.

And, uh, I hope it serves you and mail it to your prospects. Here's the deal. Dave was telling us that we got to stay on top of people's minds in front of them.

That that weekly email books stay on shelves. If you want it to be in front of your prospect, keep that knowledge in front of them. Books do not get thrown out.

And since you're the gift giver of that book, it's always in front of them. Boom. Well, nice job.

Thank you, Dave. Great insights. Thank you.

Listeners. Don't forget to tell your friends, please subscribe, follow, and leave comments. And now get certified in teaching that process, right? So now you've given those five books out.

You got people intrigued. You can offer your position yourself to offer a new level of service, get certified. So you can actually do it.

Become a profit. First professional. We are actively seeking qualified folks.

And as Ron shared, you're going to pay more than you would for any other membership. And we love when people ask that because the value you get is redonkulously more than anything I suspect you've ever done for your business. Here's how you step forward.

Go to profit. First professionals.com click on apply. Now fill out the application and we're going to schedule a get to know each other call.

You'll talk with one of our team members. Maybe Ron himself. We'll talk about how you're growing your business, how you think you're a fit for our organization, how you think we can serve you.

If there's a mutual fit, we then pursue certification, meaning you'll go through the process. And sure enough, your officer races, delivering profit first services to your client. And now you are the esteemed and distinct provider in the accounting bookkeeping or coaching community.

So go to profit. First professionals.com. See ya. See you guys later.

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