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TaxCoach Briefs: May 13, 2010
Volume 5, Number 18
****Attention All-Stars and Press Club members ****: Our next webinar is on Tuesday, May 18 at 4pm Eastern. We'll be talking about how to broaden and leverage your networking efforts to generate referrals. Registration info is on the All-Stars page within TaxCoach — talk to you on Tuesday! ===================================================== SUPERTABLE RECAP I'm going to be blunt here. If you didn't make our 2010 SuperTable last week in New Orleans, you missed a hell of an event. We spent three days dissecting how to add tax-planning to your services, how to charge premium fees for all of your services, and how to make those fees stick. I've never seen such a great group of planners, from veterans we've known for years to newbies who weren't even subscribers. With all the different faces, it looked a little like the bar scene from Star Wars, but included a broad range of expertise and experience. Who would have thought we could use one member's story about spending two years as a missionary in Argentina to illustrate how to ask clients to pay you what you're worth! Many of you who attended told us the masterminding and group interaction was the most valuable part of the event. I agree that the masterminding should be more important than anything I say. There's just no substitute for interacting, learning, and brainstorming with a group of your peers. My favorite part was throwing Mardi Gras beads and voodoo dolls to those who made especially valuable comments. And where else but at a TaxCoach event can you find a group of such high-caliber tax professionals dedicated to making proactive planning the cornerstone of their business? I want to thank all of you who attended and shared your own insights with the group. I especially want to thank Dominique Molina, creator of the Certified Tax Coach program, for taking my place when I bailed a day early for my son Oliver's emergency appendectomy. (He spent just one night in the hospital and, other than one night puking like a frat pledge at his first kegger, is doing great.) As promised, we spent the bulk of our time on pricing. And we had fun with my favorite TaxCoach group exercise - a tax return pricing survey. This is where we pass out an actual tax return and ask members to tell us - anonymously, of course - what they would charge to prepare it. The goal is to demolish the myth that there's any sort of "going rate" that you "should" charge for your services. The first time we tried this, in the Fall 2008 RoundTables, I offered the following scenario:
Everyone wrote down their fee and passed in their "number." Then I asked the group if they recognized whose return we were actually pricing. The answer, which most groups guessed, was Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But the real surprise was that every single group priced it less than the $577 that H&R Block actually charged! At SuperTable, I found a new return for those who had already played the game. Specifically, we passed out the first 22 pages of Barack and Michelle Obama's 1040, reporting a healthy $5.6 million in total income. (One important lesson we learned was that writing bestsellers pays more than running the country - and the books get better reviews on Amazon!) Keith and I knew the results would vary wildly. (Why do you think we picked that return?) But we had no idea just how wide that range would be. We saw fees starting at $215 ($215!!!!) all the way to $10,000. The mean fee was $2,447 - but fully two-thirds of the group were priced below that mean amount. When we graphed the results, it looked like a hockey stick, with a relatively long, slightly ascending slope from $200 to $2,000 leading to a sharp jump from there to $10,000. (We thought it was sort of like Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, where "all of the children are above average" - except in our case, most of the group was below average!) I should note for the record that the $215 fee came from one of the attendees who hadn't yet actually joined TaxCoach - so he hadn't drunk any of our "kool-aid." And the $10,000 price came from a member here in our hometown of Cincinnati. But the amazing variability is the key lesson - even on the "handle" end of the hockey stick. Bottom line: forget what everyone else charges. If you can show clients you're different from everyone else - and you can show them you're worth it - then you can charge whatever you damn well please for your services. And you should! Oh, and for those of you who just can't get enough Obama, be on the lookout for our new "Obamalyzer" - a "teaser" plan that will soon replace the Outlook Letter to give your clients and prospects a quick look at what their taxes will look like under the Obama administration's tax proposals and the new healthcare reform act. We'll be roilling it out shortly! ===================================================== "I am working on getting this new account — going to charge $2500 for the tax plan, with recurring fees around $20k a year. I gave him the summary so far and he is extremely interested. I dont think in the past I would have had a chance to take this client from his long term CPA without TaxCoach." ===================================================== MEMBER CALL-IN WITH ED AND KEITH Well, we're back to the regular schedule of Wednesdays at 1pm Eastern, after some interruption due to The Season, our SuperTable conference in New Orleans, and the most recent CTC™ Academy. And we're back to setting attendance records, too, with this week being "The Goodness" again, as usual. So if you're looking for clarification on TaxCoach strategies, marketing tips, or additional ways to profit from TaxCoach too, join us for the next call, on Wednesday May 19, at 1pm Eastern. Enter a question or just listen in on the repartee. Check the "Contact Us" button within TaxCoach for registration instructions. While our elite members (All-Stars, Press Club, and Hall of Fame) can still schedule time directly with Ed as part of their coaching programs, we simply cannot answer marketing and tax-strategy questions via email or unscheduled calls. ===================================================== We can answer questions on using TaxCoach system features anytime. (Save marketing and tax strategy questions for Member Call-Ins.) For best response, email support@taxcoachsoftware.com. Regards, Ed LyonKeith VandeStadt http://www.taxcoachsoftware.com/ (513) 321-2820 TaxCoach SuperTable Certified Tax Coach™ TaxCoach All-Stars TaxCoach Press Club TaxCoach Closely-Held Insurance Company TaxCoach Cost Segregation TaxCoach Briefs archives . . . |