March & April Book Review: The Smartest Sales Book You’ll Ever Read: The Truth About Successful Selling and 101 Questions and Answers for Managing an Accounting Practice
The Smartest Sales Book You’ll Ever Read: The Truth About Successful Selling by Daniel R. Solin
I’ve known Dan Solin since 1978 so always look for and read his books. They have all been great. He is an attorney and started out writing about how to avoid getting taken advantage of by your brokers. He then moved into investment advice and wrote a bunch of “The Smartest…” books, some of which were on the New York Times Best Seller list, and some other investment books. He has transitioned to becoming a successful investment advisor forcing him to make “sales.” It’s those experiences he shares in a new book on selling – all good tips.
Since I read a lot, I look for books that are not too long with short, straightforward and concise information and action oriented tips. All of Dan’s books are like that, including this one. Additionally, I always stress being happy and having fun. Dan does this too, so I already liked this book, even before I got into it.
Dan starts out debunking commonly believed information, such as needing high self-confidence and self-esteem to be successful at selling, explaining why the opposite is more likely to be true. Much of this book does not have new information, but he presents it in ways that you can immediately and easily put to use. I contend that professionals get dozens of new ideas a month between reading articles and books and attending webinars and live presentations; and while it is nearly impossible to adopt all of them, if they can concentrate on implementing just one a month, they will be doing twelve new things a year – 60 over five years. I think that is a pretty good accomplishment and goal to reach for. Dan’s book will provide you with much to choose from, giving you the problem of selecting.
This is a motivational type of book more than a “how to” but the how tos are spread throughout almost every page. Sometimes the point is made with a story. The one I liked the best is when Lou Gerstner became the CEO of IBM and he sent his top fifty managers to visit five customers each to find out what was on their minds. This led to some giant changes. I’ve done this on occasion, and after reading this book I am doing it more. Count that as my one thing this month.
While this book is directed to the financial services sector, it applies equally to accountants. Before we can help we need to determine the client’s goals; we need empathy; we need to relate our recommendations to the client’s goals, and not necessarily to what the client “says” they want – we need to become skilled in uncovering unstated agendas without making assumptions and by asking many questions and listening, really listening, to the responses. A second tip I am adopting is to listen more and interrupt less. I do listen a lot, but this needs continual reinforcement, and Dan’s book provided a poignant reminder.
A bonus is that the well documented source section has URLs that can bring you right to the original material if you have the e-book edition. This book is a definite must read.
101 Questions and Answers for Managing an Accounting Practice by Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, ABV, PFS (published by www.cpatrendlines.com)
Rather than reviewing my book (which I wholeheartedly recommend), here is the Table of Contents listing the 101 Q&A showing you what you will get.
CONTENTS
- 10 Reasons Clients Don’t Pay, and What to Do about It
- Preparing to Sell Your Practice in a Few Years?
- 13 Things You Need to Know Today
- Why Selling Your Practice Is Not a Retirement Strategy
- 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Decide to Add Financial Services to Your Practice
- Should I Really Spend the Time Using Checklists?
- Are Partner Retreats Really Worth the Cost?
- Audit Reports Without Doing the Work?
- Asking An Attorney for a Referral Fee
- What You Need to Know Before Expanding Into Business Valuation
- 47 Types of Business Valuation Services
- Clients’ Calls at Home
- Dealing With Busy Season Demands
- Can You Teach Judgment?
- What Do You Think You’re Doing?
- Measuring Growth in Yourself, Staff and Partners
- Using the Knowledge Gap Method
- When Not to Offer a Free Initial Consultation
- Sample Initial Business Valuation Consultation Engagement Proposal
- Why No One Listens to You
- How to Do It All?
- 15 Tips for the Novice Manager
- Three and a Half Ways to Get into Your Own CPA Practice (Plus 14 Tips to Get Business)
- 14 Techniques To Get Your First Clients In A New Practice
- Improving Quality Control
- Talking Too Much Trying to Get a Client
- Hiring an Experienced Person
- Adding Family Office Services
- Sample Engagement Letter for Family Office Services
- Terrible Service and Failure of Management
- Fee Increases
- Merging Your Practice
- Selling Practice to Staff
- Staff Who Do Not Listen
- Client Survey
- Managing Client Meetings
- Providing Work Papers to New Accountant
- Consulting With a Client Who Is Also a Friend
- Serving on a Not-for-Profit Organization Board
- Specialization
- Careless Staff
- Marketing by New Staff
- Five Ways for a Young CPA to Network
- Recognizing a Value Pricing Opportunity
- Fire the Client
- Collecting Past Due Fees
- Value Pricing
- Transforming From a Practice to a Business
- Past Due Fees
- Below Normal Fee Assignments
- Integrating an Acquired Practice
- Ten Tips to Managing an Acquired Tax Practice
- Timesheets or Not?
- 13 reasons to Get Better Value from Using Timesheets
- Raising Rates
- Seven Ways to Increase Fees
- What Kind of Expert Do You Want To Be?
- Advising a Client Buying or Selling a Business
- Practice Management Conferences
- Ed, Are You for Real?
- Eight Traits that Made Me a Happy CPA
- The Right Attitude for an Exit Strategy
- Complaining Partners
- Becoming a Blogger
- Lowball Fees
- Collecting Old Accounts Receivable
- Joining Professional Associations
- Pre-Merger Questions
- 25 Essential Data for a Merger or Acquisition Discussion
- Partner Out Sick
- How a Partnership Agreement Would Help
- Suing a Client
- Billing for Phone Calls
- Five Ways to Bill for Phone Calls
- Partnership Buy-Sell Agreement
- 11 Reasons for a Partnership Agreement
- Doing As Little As Possible
- Outsourced CFO Services
- 22 Guidelines for Outsourced Bookkeeping Services
- 32 Guidelines for Outsourced CFO Services
- I Just Lost My Biggest Client
- How to salvage something from the loss
- How to stop it from happening again
- How to avoid being surprised
- Referral Fee to an Employee
- Returning Client
- Outsourced CFO Services Fees
- Introducing Business Clients to Additional Services
- Letter to Client
- Responsibility for Brokerage Statements
- Family Tree of Referrals
- Target Clients
- When a Client Threatens to Sue
- Buy-In
- 17 Ingredients for Successful Change Management Projects
- Out-of-Sync Partner
- 11 Tips for Staying in Sync
- Value Pricing
- Eight Elements in Determining a Value-based Price
- Preparing for a Meeting
- I Just Lost a Good Staff Person
- 19 Easy Staff Retention Ideas
- How to Nurture a Staffer’s Professional Growth
- Staff Development and Growth Checklist
- Conflict Checks
- Six Touchy Issues When Clients Divorce
- Time Management for Partners
- How Partners Spend Their Time
- Type of Office and Car
- Charging Clients Late Fees
- Five Clauses to Clarify and Protect
- Project Management
- Writing a book
- How to Write a Book in Eight Steps
- Mitigating Risk in New Services
- 19 Tips on How Not to Lose a Lawsuit
- Being Judged Based On The Clients You Have
- Keeping Track of Other Professionals
- Out of Control
- Moonlighting Staff
- Referral from a Bad Accountant
- 88% Effective Staff
- Partner Marketing or Selling
- Value Of An Outside Accountant
- 78 Potential Value-Add Services
- Keeping Current
- Preparing a Client Newsletter
- Reasons for CPA Firm Mergers
- Succession Planning for CPAs
- Managing Partner by Default
- Effective Staffing
- Complaining Client
- Thinking about Selling
- 32 Reasons To Do a Deal
- Future of Small CPA Firms