Practice Success Podcast

The Art of Selling with Michelle Weinstein

• Canopy • Season 3 • Episode 9

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Michelle Weinstein returns for an inspiring conversation around the art of selling. She stresses the importance of having a solid sales process in a firm in order to increase profitability. Michelle notes that being prepared and confident in sales meetings can make a significant difference in transforming a firm. 

KC Brothers:

Welcome back to another episode of Canopy Practice Success. I am your host, KC Brothers, and we have our first return guest. Welcome back,

Michelle Weinstein:

Michelle. Thank you so much for having me back. This is awesome, your first return guest. This is fun. Hopefully we have many more. Yes.

KC Brothers:

I just remember last time we had Too much to talk about. So I know I feel like I still want to talk

Michelle Weinstein:

about

KC Brothers:

all of it. It's everything an accountant needs to know because an accountant, just like any other entrepreneur knows their trade. But then there are all of these business aspects that we, I think we barely touched the surface on sales last time. Um, But there's just so much more to understand to ensure that these accountants are set up for success, especially anyone, whether they're starting in a new firm, no matter how big it is, or even like re honing these older firms as, um, partners are retiring.

Michelle Weinstein:

Yep. It's so true. And, you know, I think with, you know, people starting their firm and partners retiring, it's just. It's more, there's more of a need for firm owners, but you also need the skill set of sales because otherwise if you don't know how to enroll these clients at the right prices and everything else, then you'll have capacity issues. You'll have cashflow problems. If you're not getting paid up front, you're, there's so many elements to sales that I think. Most firm owners just don't really know. And I actually just got off a client review testimonial with my client, Lauren. And I mean, she was talking about, she's in a job, just started her own accounting and bookkeeping firm. She doesn't do any tax, but she started a year ago and still hasn't really gotten it off the ground per se. And she was saying that she was just. stuck. She was paralyzed because she didn't have a sales process. So she couldn't even go and do marketing and lead generation because she was scared to even meet with somebody. And she didn't know how to price their services or anything. So she said it was a real eye opener when she created a sales process because it's like going into the unknown. You just don't know what you don't know. And I think there's,

KC Brothers:

yeah, did she self diagnose? Did she recognize she had a sales problem or is that through conversations you two had together?

Michelle Weinstein:

You know, to be honest, I didn't ask her that today, but she said she didn't have a sales process and that she knew that she needed that in order to have confidence to even meet with a prospect. Which I thought was pretty amazing. Cause most firm owners don't really know what the problem is. They like, it's not like you can go to chat GPT or Google and say, well, what is my problem in my firm? Because it's not going to tell you, maybe you have a sales problem, but. When you talk to us on the phone, we can help diagnose, well, what is the issue that you're having in your firm? If you're brand new, if you've had your firm for a year or two, or if you, even if you had it, like I did one yesterday with my client, Keith, he's had his firm 15 years. He generated an extra 19, 000 just this last month. He never had a sales process. He had zero boundaries with his clients. He did everything and anything for anybody. And he was at capacities like Michelle. I just couldn't keep going. I was like in a tip over. And I'm like, and I think that's an industry problem, right? So many farm owners are overworked, underpaid, stressed out, having anxiety and panic attacks. And it's like, as an industry, as a whole, we have to change. And one of the biggest changes each person can make is having a sales process that you stick to because it helps you create boundaries, not only for yourself, but also for your clients.

KC Brothers:

Okay. You've said a word twice now that I was going to say, if you hadn't said it and that's boundaries. Oh, boundaries? Huh? Yeah, it's a term we hear a lot, right? In our personal lives, I think at least. Yeah, you gotta have boundaries with your significant other, right? Yeah, with anyone. You just have to know where your limits are, what's acceptable, how you'll respond to all these different things. In the business world, that's an SOP, right? Maybe not an SOP, but an engagement, a proposal, an agreement, right? Without the guardrails, the bumpers on the bowling alley. Yeah. Like, it's just, it can get really unruly. Really quickly. And to your point, I think that's what can lead to these symptoms. We do hear accountants complain about a lot. So where, where does someone start when refining a sales specific, if we're going to focus our operations, cause I know that's your area of expertise, but we're going to talk just about sales. What might be the first thing you should do? Sales is

Michelle Weinstein:

my expertise, not operations, just sales process, only that. And. And I think the most important thing when you're thinking about a sales process. I mean, there's really not like just one thing. It encompasses everything. So the sales process begins with your client experience. So what is the client experience when they contact you? From the time they send an email inquiry, maybe they found you through Yelp, your Google page, maybe you got a referral, maybe you're spending money on marketing and you're out there on Facebook or doing Facebook ads or Google, SEO, other stuff, that's all marketing. So the time you get the inquiry, begins the sales process. Now, the sales process has many different umbrellas. There's the qualification process. There's what do you say in the sales meeting? There's preparing for your sales meeting. There's learning how to handle objections, a follow up process, learning who your ideal client is. Who do you want to take on as clients? Who do you not? And the boundaries that you're going to stick to for your firm, because this is the only way you can also fix your capacity problem for firm owners that have had their firms for many years, they feel, um, like a lot of pressure, like they're in a pressure cooker because, you know, maybe the money's not in their bank account. They have a bunch of a are they're getting ghosted by people because you're still sending out proposals and quotes and crossing your fingers, hoping someone will contact you back and you're basically drowning, and that is a capacity problem. So that's also a sales problem. So the sales umbrella and your sales process in your firm has so many different umbrellas of areas that you need to focus on, and I would say, understanding your boundaries is probably the number one. Uh, area to focus on because that's how we can weed out people who we don't even want to waste our time meeting with from the people that are contacting us from our marketing effort.

KC Brothers:

Yeah. Um, you meant the way you said that made me just, I want to reword it a little bit because I feel like this was a point is that capacity issues are a lagging indicator of sales, lack of sales process. 100%. I felt like that for me as a non accountant, I felt like that was a big light bulb.

Michelle Weinstein:

Yeah. And, and my client, Keith, let me just see if I can find some of his notes. Um, because he had a capacity issue and now he's realizing that. There were so many things as firm owners you think in your head, but you never communicate to your client list. You never communicate boundaries on when you need documents by let's say for

KC Brothers:

accidental, it could be that you're scared or nervous to say something out loud or like draw that boundary with that line in the sand. But there was something you said last episode you said, You teach and preach all the time that people buy clarity, certainty, and confidence. Totally. I love the three C's. Um, and it's so true because this, the wavering ness, the lack of confidence communicates so much. It's like, okay, well, do you know what you're doing? If you don't know how to interact with me, do you know how to do bookkeeping? They will instantly jump to that, even if you are a great bookkeeper or whatever the case may be. Yeah.

Michelle Weinstein:

And, and I think confidence. Like people say, Oh, Michelle, you know, what do you really do here at the abundant accountant? What's your eight week sales mastery course all about? And I'm like, I sell giving your life back, getting freedom back, getting time back, getting money in your bank account, but ultimately. You get confident and that's what Lauren got. I mean, so many brand new firm owners gain confidence just by having a process. And I think like for those of you doing bookkeeping or taxes, you're confident in executing the work cause you got taught a step by step process for that element of executing the workflow. But what about the workflow to get money in your bank account? You signed up and I talked about this on the last episode. To be a full time entrepreneur, which is a 24 seven sales job. So you have to learn the art of enrollment, the, the basic sales one on one, if you're going to own a business, that's just what it is. We're always having to sell ourself, but there's so many other layers to sales and in an accounting tax bookkeeping, fractional CFO firm. That, that are integrated in that because one of the biggest challenges for firm owners that have been around a while is accounts receivable. The amount of time people waste chasing money and not getting paid interest on that money and being a free bank just boggles my mind. And I've

KC Brothers:

just, you said something that I've really started to lean into as we talk about. It's just like, you're not a bank, quit being one. You don't need to owe this, what you think might be a courtesy, or I don't know, or maybe it's just, um, old practices that just haven't really been reconsidered, and like, oh, is this actually the best way to do, you know, it's just been practiced for so long.

Michelle Weinstein:

Yeah, you need to use your product, and use Canopy, and And use all the tools that you're spending money on, because that is how you don't, you don't become a free bank and all the money that you're missing out on, on the compound interest and all this other stuff, but just the admin, some of the people that are sending out invoices and chasing the money on 30, 60, 90 day old accounts. invoices. They've got admin people doing that for them. And what a waste of payroll when you could be doing so much more. So most, not most, all my clients that work with me, like Alfredo, he was in our class on Tuesday goes, Michelle, this is like the most relaxed tax season I've ever had. I'm like, great. That's how it should be all the time. you know, when you are ge you're not going to file till they've, you're not a finger retur paid. There's been so man People just like, you know, if you own a firm and you're listening, how many times have you done work for somebody? And then they just disappeared on you. They didn't even take the work that you did and you didn't get paid. Right. It's, it's like, uh, my boyfriend took his shoes to a shoe repair and. He did a really good job, like three different pairs of shoes. They look brand new. And he came back and he's like, do you know that you don't pay for your shoes until you go pick them up? I go, how much stuff does this guy have at his shop? Do you know how many people probably drop stuff off and just completely forget? That they even dropped anything off. And it's the same for the firm owners that are doing work up front. This guy's repairing designer bags, designer shoes, fixing them all, and has like all this inventory and no money because the people have completely forgot about their stuff.

KC Brothers:

Okay. So with that, that's an interesting example. Um, because where I want it, I wanted to talk to you about like, okay, is, is a way to solve this AR issue pricing, you know, just pricing, um, into, or like just the timing, the way you price.

Michelle Weinstein:

Okay. Yeah. So there's, well, we'll talk about the three P's. Okay. Last time we talked about three C's. Today we'll talk about three P's. Number one, you have to price and figure out what you're going to charge for the engagement. If it's a cleanup, if it's a business return, if it's whatever, before you start the work, that's step number one. Okay. Because you have to gather the documents and know what are you going to go into? And KC, it's kind of like. a doctor going into surgery. I'll use my boyfriend for an example, and he had a back surgery, but the, the surgeon, the orthopedic surgeon would not see him until he had x rays done, MRI done, uh, pain management done, physical therapy completed with all the notes. Then he saw the surgeon and said, okay, you've tried everything. I see the problem. Now we're going to go do surgery. So in our world of taxes, bookkeeping, you know, accounting, CFO work, all that. We need to see people's. Tax returns. We need to see their financials. We need to see their QuickBooks files. We need to see all of that so you can diagnose and look at the x rays and look for where their soft tissue areas and other things that you're going to see on an MRI or, uh, x ray. So you can diagnose the problem in your sales meeting. You're actually coming so prepared to the sales meeting. You have the engagement letter ready. You have the invoice ready. You have everything ready to go. Now, if there's some surprise that you learn in your sales meeting, which we have not enough time to talk about how to do all that right here, um, then you can. You know, make an adjustment or create a supplemental invoice at that time. But at least in your first meeting, you're also going to get number two P is get paid up front. Yes. You're going to get paid in that sales meeting and you're going to get assigned engagement. So that eliminates AR. It eliminates admin chasing people. It makes you have a much fuller bank account. You can reinvest those funds if you want, maybe, uh, you know, high yield savings account, or if you need cashflow, at least you've got it there, but at least the money's growing and doing something for you instead of you being like you said, KC, a free bank. Okay. So you need a price in advance. You need to get paid up front and you have to understand the client's problems. So when you're going through the x rays and the, MRI and their QuickBooks and their tax returns and their financials. You're looking for problems. You're looking for mistakes. You're looking for where there's errors. You're being the investigators that you are. You're actually doing your craft. You're doing what you're really good at and figuring out the problems. And then a whole nother podcast we could do is understanding what questions to ask your prospect in a sales meeting to really get to the root of the problem and why someone would want to pay you right then and there to fix it. So those are the three Ps.

KC Brothers:

Yes, and you've mentioned doing that, um, I mean, I'm sure you've got some of it established up front so that you can communicate it in the sales meeting. It seems like the sales meeting is like the crux. It is. What?

Michelle Weinstein:

It's very important because, um, in the sales meeting, you can also get paid up front. You can get the engagement letter signed, which can also eliminate being ghosted. I would say over half or more of the firm owners, you send out a quote, a proposal, and then you're like, Oh, I never heard from them again. They said they wanted to move forward. They said they were going to sign my proposal. They never paid the invoice. They never signed it. You're ghosted. And then you're wasting all this time trying to figure out who to even follow up with because you don't have a follow up system in place, which is also part of your sales process. So we want to switch the, the roles. We want to have clients practically chasing you down because they see that you're the best surgeon for them. They want to pay you whatever they asked you, you know, they're not begging you. They're just, they see the value in you and they see what you're worth and they want to work with you where most, um, firm owners feel underappreciated and undervalued and, you know, are just taken for a free ride. So we change the script by having a sales process in place and you can do that without being pushy, without being salesy, and just having a skill set that, you know, so you can follow steps, that's all. Yeah,

KC Brothers:

and I would say too, a myth that maybe people might have, or I feel like I've heard circulated all over, you know, not just specific to accountants. Yep. But you don't have to be a natural salesperson. I don't know that that's a thing.

Michelle Weinstein:

You don't need to be a salesperson at all. You just need to be you. You just need to follow some steps,

KC Brothers:

that's all. Yeah, yeah, and it goes back to your three C's with like confidence. It's just like, okay, trust in the process. You've, you know, slow down to speed up, right? You've taken care of those three P's. You've looked at, you've established, The pricing, you're, you have the systems to get paid up front, um, and you're doing that. Trust that you are doing that in such a way that is going to be beneficial to your business. Hold true to it. Right. And again, like revisit it every year or two. Do you have a recommendation from there?

Michelle Weinstein:

Yep. I mean, I revisit a sales process all the time. You're always refining. It's not like it's set in stone, right? It's going to always ebb and flow. And you always want to be meeting with clients all the time because you want to avoid scope creep. So you always want a new engagement for every single client that you have. So if it's an annual engagement, then make sure you're meeting with them quarterly, but then once a year, you're meeting with them just to go over what they've engaged your firm for, because that's how you have control over your firm versus. Your firm running you.

KC Brothers:

Oh my gosh. And that last part, like the business doesn't have to run you.

Michelle Weinstein:

No. No, no, you want to have control over your sales conversations. You want to have control over how the firm is run. You don't, I don't think any of you created a firm to just have a job and feel like, you know, this has just turned into another job. No, you want the freedom. You want the time freedom. You want the money freedom. That's really what you want, but it really. It stems from having a step by step sales process. So you can enroll high quality, high paying clients, establish yourself as a premium, and how can you do this without losing any of your current clients, if you have current clients and for those firm owners that are just starting out, how do you not make the mistakes that. So many firm owners have, I mean, I just got off the zoom with Lauren and she was saying before she had met me, she was figuring out her pricing by going online and looking what people around her were charging. And she's like, Oh my God, their prices were so low and so cheap. That's why everyone's burnt out, underpaid, and overworked in that capacity, because you're just so cheap. You're charging the lower amount based on someone in your area. Well, to change this industry as a collective, we have to really get a grip about what are we worth? What did we invest in our careers? And she said she learned how to price, and then she said even the pricing she thought she was going to do was still too low. So now it's even higher, but now she has the confidence. And when you have the confidence, anything is possible because that's how you can stop trading time for dollars. You know, you don't want to trade one hour for the X number of dollars. We want to start growing a firm on our own terms.

KC Brothers:

Yes. Yeah. Because when you stop seeing your, the, what you have to offer them as your time and more as your expertise, it's not necessarily about the time you put into it, but the knowledge, um, and skills you have that they don't have.

Because

KC Brothers:

you are providing them with a value. You're not providing them with hours. They are not paying for hours. They're paying you for an outcome or an output.

Michelle Weinstein:

Outcome. I use outcome all the time, KC. It's they're paying you for an outcome for back surgery. For my boyfriend, he was paying for the outcome of no pain when he walked. That's an outcome. You know, we're always looking for the outcome. What is the result that you deliver? That's what we sell. We don't sell bookkeeping. We don't sell a tax return. We don't sell CFO, fractional CFO services. We sell the outcome, you know, peace of mind for a lot of you, you sell freedom for a lot of. Taxpayers. You don't have to worry about the IRS. You know, those are the outcomes that you provide your clients.

KC Brothers:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a big mental shift, but an important one when it comes to both, um, pricing your offerings as well as understanding. Okay. Well, if my input isn't what it used to be, am I, um, being dishonest? No, you're not, you know, like I, I see this with my mom as an entrepreneur, as she's struggled with that throughout the years. It's like, no, mom, they're paying you for your expertise and if you have better and refine it and can do it in less time, then that means more time for you. Yes. It's more

Michelle Weinstein:

profit for you. Yeah. I mean, Okay. I want, I want, it's like the thing you've probably seen on social media and Facebook with the plumber. You know, there's the guys that come and take hours, try to fix the problem. There's the guy that comes in, takes two seconds and charges you a couple grand when the other guys took a few hours and we're going to charge you 600. I rather have the person come in, fix the problem, get the hell out of here. And I pay him a lot of money to do that because he's had a lot of experience trying to figure it out.

KC Brothers:

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I do want to in our last couple of minutes, just because that sales meeting seems to be like this big deal breaker. Do you have a formula, an outline, recommendations for, You know, how long should it last? Can it be on zoom? Can it be in person? Can you replace it with a loom video? I've been seeing lots of recommendations there. What things,

Michelle Weinstein:

no human connection. I mean, well, in the way that I teach it's relationship based selling, so you have to have phone conversations and the way I teach, and you know, if you want to dive deep into this, you can book a call with me and my team at theabundantcall. com and we'll go through what you're currently doing in your firm. Figure out the gaps in your current sales process and then At least you'll know exactly what to fix. And then if some of you want our help, we can talk about that too, but go to the abundant call. com. But as far as all the steps, like you can't do it on loom. I don't recommend it on zoom because once you work with me, you're going to have all sorts of notes and things. And then you can't be present with your client because actually sales is about a skill of listening. And so in order to listen, I need to close the eyes and close that off and not pretend we're going to look at someone on video and just do things on the phone. So that's what me and my team do. Everything is on the phone until we actually Start working with you. Then we're on zoom. Um, so I don't believe in in person meetings, no loom and no, no video meetings, everything should be on the phone because that's the only way you can really become a really great listener. And the sales meeting 99 percent of it is a listening skillset and listening for key things that I would teach you. So that's my, um, two cents, uh, for. Typically a bookkeeping client, a cleanup project, CFO, uh, accounting client. You'll need an hour if it's just a tax return. That's kind of a take it or leave it conversation once you come up with your boundaries and your prices and your minimum so that that conversation goes a little bit easier, but. It's all about how do you have every single call go smooth like butter. You've got to be prepared. And, um, KC, we don't have time to talk about all steps. Cause there's 15 steps to my process and a one hour meeting. Um, but I do know that once. You've gone through the process and you have the confidence and you understand it. You will definitely get paid your worth and you're going to get paid based on the value of your expertise and that your bank account and you will be very happy and less stressed and less frustrated and less angry.

KC Brothers:

Yeah, what you said. I think that's a great, great way to wrap it up. Yeah.

Michelle Weinstein:

For sure. There's

KC Brothers:

just, there's, there is so

Michelle Weinstein:

much.

KC Brothers:

Yes, the grass is in fact greener on the other side of this.

Michelle Weinstein:

Once you have a sales process.

KC Brothers:

Yes, because on the other side of this sales process um, workshop, right? Yes. The grass is greener. You can decrease hours. You can become more profitable. It is, it's not too good to be true. It's not,

Michelle Weinstein:

and you can eliminate the guesswork, you know, I think there's just so much, or like Lauren called it, she would just like wing it. She had no idea what to do or what to say. And the stress and the anxiety of that just really creeps in on you. So you can have the financial freedom that you want. That you've probably always dreamt of, and you don't have to chase anyone down for payments ever again. All of that is 100 percent possible, and I've seen it with many firm owners.

Yeah.

KC Brothers:

Well, thank you

Michelle Weinstein:

again, Michelle. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me, and hopefully we can talk to a few of you. Again, you can go to theabundantcall. com to schedule that, and we would love to talk to you about how to take control over your firm and have control over your sales conversations.

KC Brothers:

Matt, if you didn't just realize that she just sold you, then you've missed the whole conversation. Like, that was so succinct. Yeah. so

Michelle Weinstein:

much for having me, KC.