14 ⎸ How to Practice Discovery Calls

In this solo episode, I take you behind the scenes of the beginning of a discovery call practice session I held for students inside The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator. We go over some basics of discovery calls, I give some pointers on how to talk about your process with potential clients, and we even get into introducing the diagnostic process to clients. Ready to listen in? Hit that play button! 

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Transcript

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one of my biggest pointers and I talk about this in the course too, is when you are preparing for a discovery call is to just like kind of release everything. Like all the tension of. Desperation of I really want to land this client because you also want to go into the meeting, interviewing them from a perspective of , are they the right fit for me? Because if you go into it with desperation of like, oh, I really hope I get a client. I just really want a client. I really, really want a client. Then you're going to not see red flags. In this episode, I decided to share a little bit of behind the scenes of how I coach and mentor other bookkeepers inside my program, the bookkeeping business accelerator. I have a clip of the beginning of one of our. Discovery call, practice, , sessions, where I invite students into zoom to practice their discovery call process with each other. So we do little breakout rooms, and this is the introduction to one of those calls. I do a little bit of teaching. It gives some tips and then we go into some breakout rooms. So we're going to. I have a little discussion about the discovery call process, how to talk about your process with clients and how to introduce a diagnostic. So let's get into it. I was just kind of going over how I am going to structure the breakout rooms. So one person, , gets to be the client and one person gets to be the bookkeeper. And then if we have enough time, you guys can trade off. But I was just talking about how it's good to, whoever's going to be the client to kind of just before you jump into like the pretend discovery call is give a little bit of background. Like I'm a solar preneur, or I have three employees and like I have a brick and mortar, or I have this many transactions. Um, This is the type of business I have. Like I'm a dog groomer or whatever it is. Right. So give a little bit of background. And then the person being the bookkeeper can ask clarifying questions and treat it as if like maybe they didn't get all the answers on the discovery call or, or on the questionnaire or whatever. Right. So I, I'm going to go ahead and open it up for you guys to ask some questions. And then I'm also going to drop the workbook in, the chat in case anyone wants to pull it up. This is my Google doc version. So feel free to make a copy of it and put notes in it or whatever. I kind of already gave you the background, but one of my biggest pointers and I talk about this in the course too, is when you are preparing for a discovery call is to just like kind of release everything. Like all the tension of. Desperation of I really want to land this client because you also want to go into the meeting, interviewing them from a perspective of , are they the right fit for me? Because if you go into it with desperation of like, oh, I really hope I get a client. I just really want a client. I really, really want a client. Then you're going to not see red flags. And I'm saying this from experience. You'll just be like, It'll be like the goggles on. Right. So, I like to, before I go into a discovery call, just like take a couple of minutes and like deep, deep breath and just be like, I'm just coming in here to meet a new business owner and ask them some questions, see if I can help them. And if they're a good fit for my business as well. Um, and just releasing, like detaching yourself from the outcome. Pretty much of like whichever way it goes. Like I know that's how it's supposed to go. Right. And then the other thing that came up on our last discovery call, practice session, I was in a breakout room with Ashley and I was so proud of her because she went in and she just like priced it on the discovery call. And she was like, I've never actually done that with a client. So that was pretty cool. So you can go either way, you don't have to give them a price on. The call, but if you're feeling comfortable with it, like you can try it out in here. It's a safe space. Right. So, okay. Do you, does anyone have any questions, anything that's like, particularly holding you back or that you want to like talk through before we jump into breakout rooms, I have a question. Sure. I guess what I struggle with is communicating my value on the discovery call or even just like explaining my process and what I do to them, because I'm so used to, like, I'm getting the information that I need and I forget to like give them the information they need. So what are your tips on that? That's a really good point. So that's part of, In the outline of how the discovery call should go. So we have the opening where you're like, you're thanking them for. You know, scheduling the call and, and then kind of letting them know how the call's going to go. And I honestly I'll literally be like, well, at the beginning, I don't really anymore, but I would be like, I have like a little agenda here, so you're going to see me referring to my notes. I just want to make sure I don't miss anything. So I'm going to take you through asking some questions, get to know your business and you a little bit better. And then I'm going to offer some solutions and the solutions is really not like telling them exactly what they need to do, always. But I mean, there's some things that you could be like, I recommend that you like, look at your state website to see if you need a filesales tax and that kind of stuff. But the solutions really is more like how you can help them. So if you know that you can, this is where you kind of discuss your process. Like I know that we can help you. Get clarity on your numbers and not feel so overwhelmed with all of your bookkeeping. So this is the process we would take you through. We'll go through onboarding, it'll take, you know, one to two months to get you fully integrated. We'll set you up with the systems to make things easier, this, that, and the other thing. So whatever it is, your internal system of, how you handle clients through the onboarding process is good to talk about it in that like solutions phase, right., Or just like how you would go about helping them. So if it's something more complex than just straight up bookkeeping and they are expressing that they need help with like improving their internal processes or they need to research a new app. You can, you can talk about that too. Like, I definitely know of a couple apps that would be great for what you're looking for. So like, if they're like, I want to hire an employee, but I don't know about payroll. You could be like, well, we use Gusto. So that's something that we would set you up with or whatever it is that you. Um, and stuff like that. And so then after the solutions phase, you're going to go into kind of the closing of where you reiterate, like what their pain points. And what they had expressed to you kind of just reflecting back to them and invite them to work with you and be like, if, if you think that we'd be a great fit, I would love to give you a proposal. I can send it over after this phone call. It'll just take me a little bit to put it together. Or if you're like Uber confident, you could be like, this is the price for that service. So it took me a while to get to the point of pricing things on the call. And, um, that really didn't start happening until I kind of niched down. And now I, I know that my pricing is pretty solid. I have like these tiers of pricing. So, um, don't worry about getting there too quickly. It'll come over time, but yeah, that's where you would just, you're just making an invitation to work with you. And then. If you aren't, if you don't think that they're a great fit, you can, you can let them know like, based on your business structure or like your specific needs. Um, that's not really an area that I'm, I consider myself an expert in, but I might have some people that are, that I can refer you to. Um, and then I can relay some of the information that you shared with me on this call. So you don't have to go through it all over again, So like the solutions phase is really where you're going to talk about your process, which at the beginning, like that's why you all are here, right? Because you're trying to figure out what that process should be. So, that's something that it starts to develop over time. I like to say, like, jump in, get your first client and make a bunch of mistakes and fit kind of work out your processes. But, um, the, the process that we onboard with is ever changing. Like I almost, I change it almost every time I onboard a new client because there's always some little nuance, but the basic structure is the same. We send them a, a list of documents that we're going to need. We set up all of their, the systems and tools that we use. So we set them up in Xero and Hubdoc and all that good stuff., And then we just start working through it, depending on if they're a new setup or if we're taking over. So if it's a new setup, then we start just setting them up and zero, if they're, if they're in QuickBooks and we're going to migrate them, we first have to do the diagnostics. So that's the other thing that I do bring up on the discovery calls. If they already have books set up in a system and it's not zero since we like all our clients to be on zero, I require even if they were on zero, honestly, if they had been doing their own books or they had another bookkeeper, I would say it looks like based on the questionnaire that you that you filled out, that you you've been in business for a couple of years and you're using. QuickBooks online for your software. One of the things that we we like to do is have all of our clients on one software. It makes us way more efficient. And honestly, we prefer zero because of this, this, that, and the other reason. And I'll give them reasons depending on like, if they're an online, um, of course creator, which is most of our client, I let them know that the reason I prefer zero is because they integrate with Stripe and PayPal. And those are generally the payment processors that course creators use. And they're just, their support is a lot, a lot better for us. So, um, I'll let them know we prefer to be on zero. So what we would do, this is my solutions phase, right. What we would do is we'll ask for access to your QuickBooks online account and we would perform a diagnostic. Our diagnostics are $500. And I flat out say that on the call. And the reason for that is because, well, I don't, I don't wanna explain this part, but I'm explaining it to you. The reason for that is because when we do a diagnostic, we're doing the bulk of what we would be doing in a cleanup and figuring out what, what all is messed up or needs to be corrected. And so. I don't want to lose all that. Like, I don't want to invest all that time. And then, then, then, then quote them on a cleanup and then, then be like, I don't wanna, I don't want to clean it up. So you've just basically wasted like three or four hours or however long it took, um, and not gotten paid for it. So this also shows their level of commitment if they are willing to have clean books and have things set up right. And, um, want to have a bookkeeper, they should be able to afford $500 for a diagnosis. So then I go into explaining to them. W like what they get out of the diagnostic, even if they don't go with us, they get a report of what needs to be fixed. So I'll tell them, like doing the diagnostic will help me evaluate exactly where you're at in your books. If you need any cleanup, I can then more accurately quote what the cleanup would be. And if you don't need cleanup, all apply that invoice , , that$500 for your first day. So it's kind of a win-win they get a document with like a tangible deliverable when , if they decide not to go with us for the cleanup and they could choose to do whatever they want, they could give that checklist to a new bookkeeper. They could try to figure it out themselves, whatever., but at least they kind of get their money's worth. And know where they stand. So I've never had anyone not agree to pay that diagnostic fee because usually they're in a position where they know that they have issues, they need the help, and they're going to be paying at least $500 a month for me to be doing their bookkeeping anyway. Cause that's my minimum. So. That's why I probably said at what I did, um, you don't have to price it at $500. I started out pricing it. Well, the first time I did it, I did it for free. And then I was like, this was a lot of time and effort. I think I'm going to start charging for this. And then the second time I did one, I charged a hundred dollars and then I just kind of incrementally started increasing it. And it just kind of, I settled on$500 now for most of the businesses that come across to me, that's generally where they should be. But if a huge business came to me and was like, we have three years of unreconciled bank accounts, or we don't even know what the deal is, we just know our bookkeeper. Wasn't doing a great job. Then I would, I would get an idea of how many transactions a month they have and then price the diagnostic kind of accordingly. If they have like a thousand transactions a month, I'd probably charge them a thousand dollars for a diagnostic. You know what I mean? So you can always adjust. Per client as well. So kind of off track here, but go ahead. Um, I was just wondering, do you charge, like, uh, since we're in, you know, July almost August, do you charge like a catch-up fee on top of the diagnostic? Where does that get applied? Or how do you, yeah, so if I go in and do a diagnostic and they, everything was caught up through like January of 2021, and they are just behind a few months, if they're just behind a few months, then I, and like nothing looks messy, then I would just charge them a catch-up, which is generally like a little less than my monthly fee, because they're not going to get that monthly meeting that they normally would get in the monthly, um, the monthly fee you could do like 50% of your monthly fee or 75%. It just depends on what you're also including in your general monthly fee. Right. So I typically give them like, Discount on the monthly, because they're missing out on however many meetings, but, um, yeah, it, and then I would just same apply that to the first invoice that either the catch-up invoice or the first month, whichever ends up being the case. Yeah. All right. So I'm just gonna quickly go over. What w what we're going to do, and then I'll put you guys in breakout rooms. So we'll do three breakout rooms and then. One person will get to be with me. So I don't want to like make you nervous, but I'm willing. Well, if you're stuck with me, you know, you're going to be the bookkeeper. Cause I'm going to pretend to be the client so that you'd get your practice. Um, so one person will. To be the client. One person will pretend to be the bookkeeper. Like I said before, if you're the client just give like a little bit of background, like what type of business you have, um, how many transactions you have, what software you're on, and then you can let the bookkeeper ask other clarifying questions. So, yeah. Sound good. Everyone. Are we ready? All right, what's do you like 20 minutes? And then we can, and then I'll like send a little alert for everybody to come back into the main session and we can, , Kind of debrief. All right. So if you guys, like, if you have time to take turns, then go for it. If not, that's okay too., everyone's still gonna get like a ton of value from this. All right there. We have it. At this point, we went into breakout rooms. I don't record that portion of these practice sessions, just the beginning, if I do any teaching, but if you're interested in participating in something like this, the next. Live VIP cohort of the bookkeeping business accelerator will be sometime in Q1 of 2022. So you can hop on the wait list at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/waitlist to be the first notified when we are opening the door. For the accelerator VIP option. And I also hope you gained some golden nuggets out of listening into the way that I mentor inside the program. And I would love if you took a picture and tag me on Instagram, wherever you're listening to this and share your biggest takeaway or aha from this episode. And I would really, really love it. If you. I wrote a review on apple podcasts, and that would really be helpful in, in getting the podcast out to other folks, if you know, a bookkeeper or an accountant that you think would make a great entrepreneur. I'd love it. If you shared this podcast with them as well. All right, that is all for today. I will talk to you next week.