What does self-esteem have to do with value pricing accounting services? A lot actually. Your self-esteem affects how you feel about yourself and your accountancy firm, therefore, you could say that it is quite a major factor in determining growth and success. This article explores how your self-esteem can determine your value pricing accounting services and how you can increase both your confidence and your prices. 

The link between self-esteem and pricing 

“Self-esteem is defined as having confidence in one’s own worth or abilities. It’s about how much you respect and value yourself.”

When your self-esteem is higher, you feel better about yourself and your firm, but you also have more resilience. Studies have shown that high self-esteem, and therefore resilience, means that you are:

• Less likely to find rejection and failure as painful as others,
• Less vulnerable to the effects of anxiety,
• More likely to bounce back from setbacks.

Not everyone naturally has high self-esteem and resilience of course.  But both are essential qualities to have as an accountancy firm owner as they are vital to the sales process. 

What we mean by this is that, to achieve the goals you have set for you and your firm, you need to charge what you are really worth and to charge what you are really worth, you need to have the resilience to get comfortable with some rejection. 

By raising your fee level, you will become too expensive for some Clients and Prospects; not every client will want to pay your new fee level and not every great Prospect will want to come on board at the fees you are quoting. This means you need to be confident that you are charging what you are worth so that you can take the rejections. This confidence will keep you pushing ahead to find bigger and better clients that you actually want.(Discover how to stand firm when a client pushes back against a proposed fee increase)

Put simply, if your self-esteem is low and you don’t value you or your firm’s abilities, then why should your clients? 

4 ways to increase your self-esteem 

As you can see from what we’ve already discussed, the fees you quote will be limited by the level of your own self-esteem. 

This doesn’t mean that if you have low self-esteem, you’re stuck with a life of busy work from lots of low-fee-paying clients. It also doesn’t mean that you can just “fake it until you make it” with your confidence to try and win better work. Most Prospects and Clients can spot contrived confidence a mile off!. This is a bad first impression to make as it introduces doubt in the mind of the buyer; the very person who you want to be confident in you and your firm’s services. 

So what’s the solution to value pricing accounting services? Finding easy ways to increase your self-esteem!

We are not saying improving your self-esteem is easy, as low self-esteem is often associated with mental health issues such as depression which may need medical advice or a clinical solution to improve. We are saying it is worth the effort, however. 

My confidence has gone through the roof since joining the club

Before I started in the club my business growth had plateaued, and my confidence was holding me back. The confidence I have gained from getting the right advice from Heather and Ashley, and listening to other club members, is amazing.  I am now valuing my time more, and this confidence has been instrumental in doubling the size of my business within 9 months of joining the club.  Winning £140k of new business within 9 months is nothing short of remarkable.

Lorna Leonard

Leonard Business Services

Within a month of membership I had covered my membership fees several times over

I have only been a member of The Accountants’ Growth Club for about a month, but in that time I have already been helped to increase my fees and sort out my client base which will make us more profitable and also cover my membership fees several times over, and that’s in the first month.  Working with my coach I have been given the confidence to take action and believe more in what I do.Using his coaching Ashley was able to make me feel confident about what I should actually be charging my clients and this has given me a boost to have these difficult conversations with some of my clients.

Kerrie Jenkins

Atek Accountancy

 

Here’s an example of the “rewards” of self-improvement. One of my previous clients, Mohammed took years to build his confidence to move away from bargain-basement pricing (which resulted in a lot of low-fee-paying clients that restricted his resources and time) to price his services for what he was really worth. As a result of this newfound confidence, and requoting for his existing clients, over 12 months he was able to ditch half of his clients but actually increase his actual net profit by 50%! (Read – 10 signs that it is time to raise your accountancy rates)

To help you create positive daily habits to improve your overall self-esteem, here are some simple ways to build your confidence when it is low:

1) Play to your strengths

Doing stuff that we don’t like or know we are no good at over a prolonged period of time is enough to get anyone down. You start to doubt your sense of self-worth. One of the great things about being your own boss is the ability to delegate or outsource the tasks which don’t fill you with joy or play to your strengths. For example, if marketing is really not your thing, then give it to someone who is good at it; even if that means outsourcing it to a marketing professional or agency.

2) Give yourself time to review how far you’ve come

It’s very easy as the owner of an accountancy practice, particularly a growing practice, to get stuck in always being busy. Always doing something. Always striving towards the next milestone. As a result, you can often lose sight of exactly what you have achieved and how far you have come. You can feel like you are making no progress and this can bring you down. So, make sure that you give yourself a little bit of time every day, week, month, quarter and year to review you and your firm’s progress. This progress review can help you realise just how good you and your team are. 

This year has been revolutionary for me and my team. We were pretty maxed out with work and I was always too busy firefighting so I knew I needed some help.  While working in the business, I had become too focused on day to day operations and was not taking time to plan the direction of the firm.  Working with my coach, Ashley, he was able to help me to see what I truly wanted and what I needed to do to get there. When we get back to full firepower in 2020 we are all looking forward to welcoming the new clients. This growth will definitely allow me to take more time off to be with my family and get back into cycling more often.

Paul Wareham

PS Accountants

When you are busy helping other business to grow you tend to overlook your own business, so with the accountability from the group accountability calls I am held to task and can really see me doing what is necessary to grow my practice

Paul Donno

1accounts

3) Eliminate people who get you down

Everyone is surrounded by people in life who either build them up or, sadly, bring them down. As much as you can do, minimise your interactions with people who act as a drain on your self-esteem. 

4) Be kind to yourself

Everyone is always their worst critic. It’s our old friend the Amygdala at work again. When you find yourself being critical about yourself, turn it around. List the positive or good things that you did. Or list out your positive qualities. This is particularly good when your self-esteem has recently taken a hammering. 

Be confident and charge what you are worth

As there is such a strong link between your self-esteem and value pricing accounting services, try to start implementing these 4 ways to increase your confidence so that you can start charging what you are worth. It may be difficult at first to deal with the initial rejections to your higher fee level, but you’ll soon see over time that you will win bigger, better clients at a much higher fee rate. If this doesn’t increase your self-esteem soon after, then we don’t know what will!

Learn more about value based pricing for accountants by reading the first 4 chapters of our new book “Profitable Pricing For Accountants” for free here!