A few months ago I wrote a blog about having been chosen as one of the winners of Intuit’s Firm of the Future contest. Those selected would coach with business consultant Ron Baker who specializes in teaching businesses how to move from hourly billing to value-priced services. If you didn’t have the chance to read that blog, you can find it here.
The five business owners are located in different parts of the country, so our monthly group coaching is by phone. However, Ron wanted us to have the opportunity to meet and dive into the information, so a summit was scheduled for us to come together. This was of great benefit for a few reasons.
- Coaching calls are usually no more than an hour and a half which doesn’t allow for a lot of information to be shared at once. We usually only cover one or two main ideas.
- We had the opportunity to meet in person and get to know each other. We don’t have time on calls to talk about ourselves, our businesses, or who we serve.
- We were able to discuss the challenges we are facing or successes we are having. It gave us the chance to support each other through this learning process.
- We met others who have gone through this change in pricing and are having great success. We heard stories and ideas on how to implement this pricing structure.
- There were 2 days of intensive learning allowing us to get more information at once rather than a little at a time. Of course, we need time to digest everything we heard, but getting this content was extremely helpful.
I have started to implement the new pricing structure with new clients but haven’t yet changed over current clients. I have looked at how much each client is currently paying on average for services and determined what the fixed price options should be. Clients will be able to choose which package they prefer, and going forward will know exactly what their cost will be each month. I think overall, we will all like this change. My staff and I are looking forward to reducing the time it takes for us to create invoices.
I’m glad I had the chance to attend this summit and meet the other winners. I have no doubt we’ll continue to reach out to each other for support through this change we are making.
