Professional service firms are still struggling when it comes to increasing their professional fees and improving their performance. Too many of the firms are doing business basically as outsourced labor and getting paid strictly on number of hours of billable time plus expenses. The missing ingredient with this concept is not getting paid for the “value” they are providing to the client, which should always exceed the cost of the billable time. There has been some progress made in some of the more progressive professional service firms to bill clients on the “value received,” which is negotiated. There is a long way to go before we see this as the “norm” for professional firms.
Some readers of this article are already enumerating why this billing on “value received” will not work or why it will not be accepted. With that being said, I will attempt to outline some strategies that I believe will enable a professional firm to increase their professional fees and improve their performance. Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following strategies:
Strategy #1: Develop and adopt an understanding that the value you provide to your client has nothing to do with the number of your billable hours.
Strategy #2: Do not develop your fees from billable time and other arbitrary forms of measurement. Develop a professional fee on the “value” of your professional services to the client.
Strategy #3: Develop and commit to specific goals & objectives but avoid assigning a specific number of hours to each task. I found this exercise to provide great “fodder” for the nit pickers who like to argue that you have estimated or assigned too many hours for certain tasks.
Strategy #4: Develop and emphasize a list of benefits from the use of your professional services.
Strategy #5: Make more effective use of email and telephone, rather than face-to-face meetings. Create a higher perceived value of your professional services by providing access to your clients to contact you whenever they need some feedback.
Strategy #6: Focus your efforts on strategic work, rather than tactical work. Have the client do the tactical work.
Strategy Tip #7: Always keep your client informed on your progress on the project. Communicate clearly and provide timely progress reports on an agreed upon time basis.
Strategy #8: Openly communicate with your client regarding the good and bad news about the project. Do not keep the bad news from your client.
Strategy #9: Seek clients that will be open minded to the “value” based compensation for professional services.
Strategy #10: Never agree to accept a contingency payment for your professional services. There are so many variables that are not within your control and you could do everything right and your client could do one thing wrong and cause the project to fail and therefore you would not receive any compensation. It has been my experience that people who insist on contingency payments for your services are those who would never accept this type of compensation. I believe it is important that without an investment from your client, there is no real commitment.
Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to fully realize the benefits of business coaching to strategically increase your professional service fees and improve your professional performance. If you would like to learn more about how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor, please contact Glenn Ebersole today through his website at www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com
Strategies To Increase Fees Performance From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach - To learn more about this author, visit Glenn Ebersole's Website.
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