ACCA Burying the Billable Hour phần 2 pdf

1% The customer dies.

3% The customer moves away.

5% The customer has a friend.

9% The customer is lost to a

competitor.

14% The customer is dissatisfied

with the service.

68% The customer believes you

don’t care about them.

What about the opposite side of

the same coin, that is, what

characteristics do customers use to

select an accountant? According to

William J. Winston in Marketing

for CPAs, Accountants, and Tax

Professionals (1995: 170):

• interpersonal skills

• aggressiveness

• interest in the customer

• ability to explain procedures in

terms the customer can

understand

• willingness to give advice

• perceived honesty.

What is conspicuously missing

from these surveys? Price. It

doesn’t even show up. Most

defections from accounting firms

are the result of human failings,

and perceptions of indifference,

rather than price or technical

quality. In other words, it is how

people are treated or mistreated

that determines their willingness

to remain loyal.

Further empirical evidence of price

insensitivity or what economists

call price inelasticity is observed

when the average accounting firm

increases its prices, revenues

increase. Or, put another way,

what would happen to the gross

revenue in your firm if you cut

prices by one half? My conjecture

is your gross revenue would

decrease, not increase. If

accountants truly operated in a

price-sensitive market, we would

observe the opposite results in

both of these examples.

You are what you charge for. And

you will never receive more than

you think you are worth. If you

don’t believe you are worth

multiples of your (arbitrary) hourly

rate, neither will your customers.

The accounting profession needs to

restore pricing to its exalted

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You are what you charge for (continued)