Exactly What to Say to Accountants

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Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Cat Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia's CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, [00:00:30] we're not going to talk about QuickBooks. We're not going to talk about Intuit. Let's call this a bonus practice management personal self-improvement episode. It's called Exactly What to say for Accountants. Exactly what to say for accountants. The inspiration from this comes from a book by the author Phil M Jones. He wrote a book called Exactly What to Say like seven years ago. And I'll give you some background. Phil Jones Is a [00:01:00] natural born salesperson, like he's been in sales all his life. He built a framework for being more persuasive, more influential, a better salesperson, but within the ethos of you only make a recommendation if you earn the right to make a recommendation, and earning the right to make a recommendation means trust building, [00:01:30] relationship building, and it also means making the right recommendation that will ensure a long term relationship and a long term transaction. So I actually gave a copy of this book to Alicia. I've been obsessed with this book for the past seven years, and I gave a copy of this book to Alicia a couple of months ago, and Alicia read the book. I think it's like 100 pages or something like that. She read the book. She immediately put things into practice. She DM'd To me and said, Holy crap, this is going [00:02:00] to change the way I communicate. And I said, let's just do an episode about that. So, Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm doing great.

Hector Garcia: So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you applied. Just just go straight into it. What have you applied that has worked? Give me give me a little bit of background on how you used to do it, how you're doing it now, and the kind of results you're getting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure. So I've always prided myself on being a wordsmith, and one of the things that I always really appreciated about just, you know, sometimes when you step outside yourself and you [00:02:30] look at yourself. But when I would communicate with clients, I always made it a point to write in a way where I was thinking about their psychology and thinking about what was going through their head, and finding a way to communicate in a way that built them up and let them know that I appreciated them and I respected them, even if I completely disagreed Agreed with them about things. I would always couch what I was saying in [00:03:00] a way that built the relationship and deepened it. And so when I when Hector gave me this book, I was like, oh yeah, I'm already good at this. But I also know that I'm really like, I'm not a sales person. I don't like selling, I don't like promoting, I don't like self-promoting. And that has always been kind of an issue for me because when I talk about, you know, like I'm talking about the classes that I do or I talk about my training program, I always get really, really self-conscious. [00:03:30] So when Hector gave me this book, I kind of flipped through it on the airplane back and I was like, whoa, this is really cool. And in our meetings with my staff, everybody else thought it was really cool, too. And so we're actually about to start going through it point by point and phrase by phrase, and having everybody incorporate it into something that they do that week. But I had I'm in the process right now of raising my prices [00:04:00] for my for my membership program.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And up until now I have always I've been doing this now. This program has been together for about seven years, and every year we would do our normal price increases. But, you know, I, I would say to myself, well, these were my original members. I want to I want to thank them and appreciate them for their loyalty. And so I won't raise their prices now faced with this. So this [00:04:30] is also a mini a mini pricing lesson right here. So here I am now seven years later, and I looked at the at all of my different members, and I realized that my members for my bronze, my silver and my gold were paying wildly disparate rates, sometimes hundreds of dollars different because somebody who came into my program originally when it was $49, missed. The 79.99 won 5200 [00:05:00] 250 price points. And I've been adding value and they're still at the original price points. And so some people have been, you know, getting like a 300% discount for for years now. So we looked at the program and we realized we needed to simplify it and get everybody in the same tier tiers, because even just our automations, we had to keep reprograming all of our automations to keep track of everybody at all the different levels. And now that so much time has gone by, it [00:05:30] was unsustainable for us. So we had to get everybody up to current. So how do you break the news like that to some of these people? For some people it's just, you know, like it's a 5% increase.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's only like a $20 increase. And for some people it's a $350 increase. So that was what I was faced with. So I wrote all of the benefits down for all the things that we've added, all the things that we're doing for people, all the benefits that they're getting out of it. What our goals are, [00:06:00] what their goals are like, all the good things that I can think of. Then I went through this book and I looked at the different phrasings, and I found one that related to each of the points that I wanted to make. And then I pulled a phrase that would wrap up the concept into an opportunity for them to examine themselves and examine their situation using these different phrases from the book. [00:06:30] And so far, I haven't had any cancellations. I actually had two people request to go from silver to gold. I had somebody say, well, instead of monthly, let me go up to annual so I can save that two hours, that two months fees. And so, you know, maybe once I actually change the price on October 1st, I might get different results. But so far I had the opposite of what I expected. I expected that people were going to leave the program and in fact [00:07:00] it has actually enhanced participation. I'll fast forward to after October 1st, and I'll let you know if once the prices change, people go, wait, what? I didn't see that email, but so far the results of the email have been the opposite of my expectations. It's been fabulous.

Hector Garcia: That's awesome. And then maybe towards the last three minutes of the episode, we'll have you actually read that email out loud so we can kind of see the application of this. So I want to teach some of the principles in the book. So number one I need [00:07:30] to disclaim I am exactly what to say certified. You can actually go to exactly what they say. Com and figure out they have certification programs. However, I am not certified to teach it. My brother Carlos is certified to teach it. I'm not pretending to be certified to teach it. You know, if any of you love this? Email me and I'll put you in contact with Carlos and you figure out how to, like, sort of go deep into this world if you want to go deep into it. But at the very least, you should go to Amazon.com, [00:08:00] search exactly what to say for words, and spend anywhere between $10 and $15 for this book. Spend the hour and a half or two hours that it takes you to read it and read it every month, because you're going to go back to it like a Bible, because this is the Bible of communications. So here are some of the principles that are really important to understand as to why it matters why this matters. So number one, the [00:08:30] worst time to think what you're about to say is right when you're about to say it.

Hector Garcia: And this is what gets almost all of us in trouble, right? A customer reacts a certain way that we were not expecting it. Our employee or coworker reacts a certain way that we were not expecting it. Our software vendor partners reacts a certain way that we were not expecting it, and then we counter react probably with something [00:09:00] that we regret. Or we go back and, and and go to that conversation and go, hmm. In retrospect, I would have managed it differently. So this is one of the first principles is you want to give conversations, practice and thought prior, right? Just like baseball players practice batting 100 times before the game, right? You're not going to practice batting at the game. You practice batting before the game, [00:09:30] so you got to put work behind the work before you want to show up and be the most assertive, the most zen, the person in control, the person that actually has the right answers, the person that's going to guide the client through the transformation. Et cetera. Et cetera. You want to be that person, and in order to be that person, you have to prepare. So that's a very important principle. The worst time you're going to think you're going to, the worst time to think about what you're going to say is right before you say it. So one of the things that he, um, proposes [00:10:00] here is practice these phrases in low stake conversations.

Hector Garcia: That way you're ready when you're going to have high stake, crucial conversations. So you can practice some of this stuff with your spouse, with your kids, with somebody in school or whatever. And then all you have to do is what you're about to say, see if there's an exactly what to say version that will make you more assertive. And we can do a couple of examples of that. And there's more principles. I don't want to give all the principles away, [00:10:30] but part of the principles here. Number one is you want to be as curious as possible. Always assume that you don't know the answer because you will. First of all, you will learn more because the problem is when we walk in with an agenda, assuming that we know the answer, then we're basically blocked to any possibilities that are outside of the answer that we already preset. It's like a prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Imagine if you go to your doctor and your doctor saw you and he's like, [00:11:00] oh, this guy has diabetes for sure. And doesn't matter what you tell him, it always goes back to tell you you have diabetes. It's like, is that a good is that a good consultant? It's one that already has a predetermined idea of what they're going to tell. You know, they want to listen to you. They want to see what's going on. They want to spot the patterns.

Hector Garcia: They want to do some research and then go back and go, based on what you told me, based on your research, based on my experience, the trifecta, the triangle of truth. Right. So what you told me my experience and what I researched [00:11:30] based on that. Then I'm ready to make a couple of recommendations. That's how you build trust. That's how you build long term relationships. And another important principle is that when people do things, it's because they want to do them. Okay. If you remember the movie inception. Okay, you watch the movie inception. Alicia. In the movie inception, they talk about this concept of industrial espionage, where they they sneak into your dreams, and then they try to tell you [00:12:00] in your dream to do something. But the most important concept is why I love this movie. By the way, one of my favorite movies in the world is It Cannot be you telling them to do something. It needs to come from them. It needs to be their idea. And if it's their idea, they'll act upon it. Boy, is that true? Everywhere. Like you know. So if we tell our clients, hey, you should stop spending so much money in weird travel things, or you should stop spending company money on personal stuff, or you should stop wasting money in December just because it's, quote, [00:12:30] tax deductible or hey, you should stop. Um, or you should stop throwing away the receipts because your bookkeeper needs it.

Hector Garcia: So like, we give clients all these suggestions all the time, but we say you should, you should. I recommend this and that? And no surprise, they never do it. Why? Because it was your idea, not theirs. So you need to challenge their reasoning and coach them through the process so they realize, oh, you know what? I should do this right? And then when you do [00:13:00] that, then you're really, really good consultant. And the venue or not the venue, the the tool for this is asking questions. When you ask questions, people give the answers. The answers came from them. So there are ways to suggest to do things through a question. So let's start with maybe the classic um, which is called a rejection free opening. It's called I'm not sure if this is for you, but [00:13:30] so I'm not sure if this is for you, but it's a very powerful concept. So instead of saying you should do this right, you can say, I'm not sure if this is for you, but I've had clients with tons of success converting from QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks online. What happens if you do that instead of you should convert to QuickBooks from QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks online? If you're successfully tell somebody you should do this and it wasn't their idea, [00:14:00] it was your idea. After you convert everything that goes wrong with Qbo, everything that Qbo doesn't have that QuickBooks desktop you used to have.

Hector Garcia: Guess whose fault that is? Guess how they're going to react. How they're going to feel about that suggestion. But if you say, I'm not sure if this is for you, basically saying, hey, I'm going to take it away immediately. The customer is going to go, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a second. Don't take it away from me until I have heard it before. You [00:14:30] don't decide what I want, I decide what I want. That's how people react immediately. But then you say. But right after. And imagine, Alicia, if I say you're very good looking, but basically that you're very good looking basically gets completely erased by the. But because we are, we are always trained to like say, oh, he said, but that means I don't care about everything else, right? You know, like when you break up with someone, it's like you're a wonderful girl, but. Right. And then all of a sudden, you know, the compliment just completely disappears. So [00:15:00] anyway. So anyway, I'm not sure this is for you, but. And so that allows you to transition and then that transition you can use a I've had people be success at this, you know, do you imagine or picture yourself having the same level of success. Then you have a conversation. You ask questions and then they arrive to the conclusion that maybe they do want to switch to QuickBooks online.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I have one of those in my letter. Should we wait until I read my letter at the end, or should I give that example now and we'll just pick each of my examples. Let's, let's.

Hector Garcia: Let's read it. Okay. Tell me what [00:15:30] else you have in your letter so we can go through the principle.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Excellent. Um, because you know, otherwise we'll talk about this for hours. Just imagine.

Hector Garcia: Just imagine. Okay, so first of all, Walt Disney. Okay. What is the word that Walt Disney uses all the time, right. Imagination. It's a matter of fact. The engineers in Disney are called Imagineers. Okay, this is Walt Disney always said if you can dream it, you can build it. A dream is the [00:16:00] ultimate manifestation of pure, unadulterated creativity and imagination. The word imagine basically triggers a part of your brain that is different than everything else. In business, most of us don't imagine things. In business, we look at facts. We look at history. This is why accountants are not known to be very creative. Because the word imagine, you [00:16:30] know, the profitability of the business. That's not a thing like you have to actually go through. History and facts and reality. But imagine switches you to a place when you were three years old and you were drawing hand drawing a picture of an animal or a rocket ship or whatever. That part of your brain is actually not used as often as we should. And just saying just imagine, comma, and then your value proposition, [00:17:00] just imagine not having to send a backup file to your accountant. And then they make changes and then they come back. And then it's a hot mess to try to figure out if their changes are current with the changes you've made. Just imagine your accountant being able to log in at any time to your QuickBooks without interrupting you remoting into your system. Just imagine QuickBooks being automatically synced to your Bill.com account or whatever system that you use. Shopify and the transactions coming in. When you say, just imagine [00:17:30] you get people very excited about the future, and basically it triggers a part of your brain that you couldn't but use just using facts and circumstances.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. The next one is I'm guessing you haven't got around to.

Hector Garcia: So that's a really, really good one. So you send an email to someone with a checklist of all the things that they need to send you. And usually we reply back to that email and go following up. Have you done this? You haven't done this. That feels like [00:18:00] hectoring. That feels like like bothering, right? Like, hey, you're bothering me. It just feels like a burden. Like just completely asking people, give me this, give me that. And sometimes it's a little bit of shaming, like, like I'm shaming you for not doing what I told you to do. So by saying, I guess you haven't gotten around to it. What you do is you allow them to save face. You allow them to say, you're right. I have not had the chance to get around to it. And basically [00:18:30] this is your in. This is your entrance into getting them to feel positive, getting them to feel good about the requests that you're following up with. So it's just a simple request for telling people, hey, I know your time is valuable. I know that you know intellectually that this is important. I don't know, I don't want to berate you for forgetting or not doing it. I'm basically letting you save face and I'm giving you grace. I'm giving you space [00:19:00] to take a look at it one more time and see if you can comply with the dang checklist I sent you, but in a very assertive way, so we could do a lot more. But Alicia, I wanted to take the last couple of minutes. Maybe you read the list and then show us in practice how you've used the application of this book.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, so do you want me to to read the list of all the phrases, or do you want me to just.

Hector Garcia: Just read the email that you did inspired by exactly what to say?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. And, um, I should I should call out [00:19:30] which phrases those are.

Hector Garcia: Um, maybe at the end. Maybe at the end. I'll write them.Down.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.All right. So again, this was the email that I sent out for my price increases for my membership that went up, um, August 1st and are being rolled out to existing users on October 1st. Exciting updates to your royal wise membership. The Royal Wise team has been hard at work over the past few weeks. We've revamped our membership subscription program to bring you even more value, and simplified the structure [00:20:00] to make it easier to participate. What's new? Thursday Mastermind sessions were transforming our Thursday Silver Gold meeting into a mastermind section, and we're adding a second office hours session open to all members. This means bronze members can now participate in the Q&A, while Gold and Silver members will now have even more opportunities to connect and network. Just imagine how you feel when I drop that little nugget. That makes all the difference for how you work with your QuickBooks. [00:20:30] Now you get twice as much time with me. Expanded course library. We've integrated the guest instructor courses, Microsoft courses, and business productivity courses into the QuickBooks library, which we're calling the Knowledge Base with O.w.l. all capitalized. Now all these resources are included in the silver and gold memberships. No more separate payments required. Okay, I'm guessing I'm guessing that you haven't gotten around to watching all the videos yet, and now [00:21:00] you get to take it to the next level.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Live webinar access Silver and Gold members will now be automatically enrolled into all live events, including those with guest instructors, not just the ones that I teach. That means more learning opportunities with a variety of industry luminaries. If you have grown your qbo skills over the past few years, then I'm confident that our new speakers will catapult you to the next level. Simplified discounts. [00:21:30] We're now applying appointment discounts automatically. Coupon codes can still be used for the Apple Library. Bronze members still get 10% off additional courses and webinars. I bet you're a bit like me and want to learn everything about everything. There are Apple memberships coming soon for our Mac, iPhone, and iPad users. We're planning to offer a discount when you subscribe to both Apple's libraries. Here's one we haven't talked about. There are two types of people in the world. [00:22:00] Those who get overwhelmed by their technology and stop in their tracks, and those who keep moving forward step by step to make the tech work for them, to make all these new benefits possible and to fairly compensate our guest instructors, we will be adjusting our pricing pricing structure slightly. If you joined after August 1st, the new rates are already reflected in your Apple subscription.

Alicia Katz Pollock: For our existing monthly members, these new changes will take place after take effect after October 1st, while annual members will see the new pricing [00:22:30] at their next level. And then I go into the different pricing, um, over the past five years, as we raised our rates, we never adjusted prices for existing customers. That means that many of you have been enjoying a substantial discount for years. In September, Jeff will be reaching out personally to our long time members who are on legacy subscriptions to update your plans and ensure that you receive all the latest benefits. Um, okay, here's another one. If you're one of my [00:23:00] OG learners who has been with me for years and your subscription price is jumping significantly, don't worry. Everybody always already at the new pricing has been reassuring me that the benefits are worth every penny. We understand if these changes aren't right for you, but we hope the ongoing value through in-depth training, quick answers to your questions, and a thriving community continues to support your growth as an expert. What questions do you have? When [00:23:30] would be a good time for us to reach out and let, and so that you can let us know how we can partner with you to achieve your goals for your life and your business.

Hector Garcia: That's perfect. So I'll just kind of go over the magic words that were covered, and then we'll wrap it up. So just imagine followed by a value proposition. What's the very first thing is getting people excited about possibilities in the future? I'm guessing you haven't gotten around to watching all the videos. It [00:24:00] says, hey, you're not a chump for not watching the videos. We get it. Just having gotten time, you haven't not gotten around to it and basically telling them you still have the ability to get around to it. Then you have if then if we provide this much value, will you commit to buying X, Y, z from us? If then it's really important, especially if you're a spreadsheet fan. You know, if then it's really important as well. I bet you're a bit like me, that's to say. Hey, I relate to you. You relate to me. Okay, I'm making [00:24:30] a recommendation because I personally feel strong about this. Because we're similar. You're a bit like me. I'm a bit like you. There are two types of people. Creates a contrast between you have basically you have two paths you can go around life without royal wise and second guess yourself. If you're using QuickBooks correctly, or you're the type of person that wants to make sure that all their stuff is done correctly and they're always educated. So it basically creates a framework for you, either an ideal type of customer [00:25:00] or you're not. It also simplifies lets people decide quickly, yes, I'm this or no, I'm not. Don't worry. That's a guarantee, right? I'm I'm guaranteeing you that I'll do the worrying for the both of us. I'll take care of it.

Hector Garcia: I'll reassure you that this will be good. Anything with I understand, we understand is saying, hey, I'm listening. I'm hearing, um, you know, I get your position and we also have a position. And what questions do you have? Instead of saying, do you have any questions? Because [00:25:30] when you say, do you have any questions, people are just not going to ask the questions. But what questions do you have? Assumes that there is questions. They're supposed to be questions. And there's a safe space to ask questions so people don't feel like, oh, I'm going to be that idiot asking questions. He said, what questions do you have? So basically, everybody should have questions. It's totally normal. Normal to have questions. And of course, ending something or ending anything with what happens next? What happens next is really important. So people go, [00:26:00] okay, you gave me a whole bunch of instructions. What is my next step? Tell me what I'm supposed to do next. So what happens next is the best way to end anything. And and Alicia brilliant interpretation of the book of the concepts I love it. Um, I would love to see you practice this and everybody else at Reframe October 16th to October 19th, because exactly what to say is actually the inspiration behind our communications masterclass [00:26:30] we're going to have in Fort Lauderdale at the Reframe conference. And I have two special surprises. One, that I will say, one that I won't say, one is the author of exactly what to say, will be there, and will give a masterclass adapted to accountants with accounting concepts. And the second surprise, you have to be there to find out. Alicia doesn't even know.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I can't wait to find out.

Hector Garcia: Awesome. So I'll see you at reframe by the book [00:27:00] reframe 2024. Com thank you everybody. Thank you Alicia. I loved your example. I love that I watching you apply. This just truly inspires me and we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.