January 8, 2021

Success story from reader Geraldine Carter

Longtime reader Geraldine Carter had me on her podcast to talk about different pricing models for CPAs (e.g., retainer, value-based, contingency and subscription).

A few days later, she sent me this success story (shared with permission):

Hi Jonathan,

THANK YOU, because...

Yesterday a client wanted to re-up her contract.

In a hurry I gathered objectives and value, and applied goldilocks pricing with $15K at the center (the amount of our initial contract).

That gave me $12K, $15K, and $19.5K, which I padded with goodies.

At the start of our call, I asked her ballpark what she was comfortable spending, and she said, "I dunno, $10 - $15K."

I said cool, you have two options in that range, and then showed them to her.

Before she could even have had the time to scan the options, she said, "I’ll take the most expensive one."

Then she added, "The only problem is that I’ll need to pay you in one payment, because I need to get my income down." (for tax reasons.)

I said I can live with that, and we are on our merry way. (I am curious about how much I might have left on the table, but whatever, I’m thrilled.)

She is an awesome client and we are both getting crazy value from working together.

So, thanks for a great podcast interview the other day!

Geraldine

YAY! I love stories like this. Thanks for sharing, Geraldine :)

If you’d like to listen to Geraldine and I chatting, we’ve done a couple other episodes in addition to the one linked to above:

(If you have any CPA friends, please consider sharing these links with them. Thanks!)

Yours,

—J