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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

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

 The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read: The Truth About Successful Selling 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

  1. 10 Reasons Clients Don’t Pay, and What to Do about It
  2. Preparing to Sell Your Practice in a Few Years?
    • 13 Things You Need to Know Today
  3. Why Selling Your Practice Is Not a Retirement Strategy
  4. 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Decide to Add Financial Services to Your Practice
  5. Should I Really Spend the Time Using Checklists?
  6. Are Partner Retreats Really Worth the Cost?
  7. Audit Reports Without Doing the Work?
  8. Asking An Attorney for a Referral Fee
  9. What You Need to Know Before Expanding Into Business Valuation
    • 47 Types of Business Valuation Services
  10. Clients’ Calls at Home
  11. Dealing With Busy Season Demands
  12. Can You Teach Judgment?
  13. What Do You Think You’re Doing?
  14. Measuring Growth in Yourself, Staff and Partners
    • Using the Knowledge Gap Method
  15. When Not to Offer a Free Initial Consultation
    • Sample Initial Business Valuation Consultation Engagement Proposal
  16. Why No One Listens to You
  17. How to Do It All?
    • 15 Tips for the Novice Manager
  18. 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
  19. Improving Quality Control
  20. Talking Too Much Trying to Get a Client
  21. Hiring an Experienced Person
  22. Adding Family Office Services
    • Sample Engagement Letter for Family Office Services
  23. Terrible Service and Failure of Management
  24. Fee Increases
  25. Merging Your Practice
  26. Selling Practice to Staff
  27. Staff Who Do Not Listen
  28. Client Survey
  29. Managing Client Meetings
  30. Providing Work Papers to New Accountant
  31. Consulting With a Client Who Is Also a Friend
  32. Serving on a Not-for-Profit Organization Board
  33. Specialization
  34. Careless Staff
  35. Marketing by New Staff
    • Five Ways for a Young CPA to Network
  36. Recognizing a Value Pricing Opportunity
  37. Fire the Client
  38. Collecting Past Due Fees
  39. Value Pricing
  40. Transforming From a Practice to a Business
  41. Past Due Fees
  42. Below Normal Fee Assignments
  43. Integrating an Acquired Practice
    • Ten Tips to Managing an Acquired Tax Practice
  44. Timesheets or Not?
    • 13 reasons to Get Better Value from Using Timesheets
  45. Raising Rates
    • Seven Ways to Increase Fees
  46. What Kind of Expert Do You Want To Be?
  47. Advising a Client Buying or Selling a Business
  48. Practice Management Conferences
  49. Ed, Are You for Real?
    • Eight Traits that Made Me a Happy CPA
  50. The Right Attitude for an Exit Strategy
  51. Complaining Partners
  52. Becoming a Blogger
  53. Lowball Fees
  54. Collecting Old Accounts Receivable
  55. Joining Professional Associations
  56. Pre-Merger Questions
    • 25 Essential Data for a Merger or Acquisition Discussion
  57. Partner Out Sick
    • How a Partnership Agreement Would Help
  58. Suing a Client
  59. Billing for Phone Calls
    • Five Ways to Bill for Phone Calls
  60. Partnership Buy-Sell Agreement
    • 11 Reasons for a Partnership Agreement
  61. Doing As Little As Possible
  62. Outsourced CFO Services
    • 22 Guidelines for Outsourced Bookkeeping Services
    • 32 Guidelines for Outsourced CFO Services
  63. 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
  64. Referral Fee to an Employee
  65. Returning Client
  66. Outsourced CFO Services Fees
  67. Introducing Business Clients to Additional Services
    • Letter to Client
  68. Responsibility for Brokerage Statements
  69. Family Tree of Referrals
  70. Target Clients
  71. When a Client Threatens to Sue
  72. Buy-In
    • 17 Ingredients for Successful Change Management Projects
  73. Out-of-Sync Partner
    • 11 Tips for Staying in Sync
  74. Value Pricing
    • Eight Elements in Determining a Value-based Price
  75. Preparing for a Meeting
  76. I Just Lost a Good Staff Person
    • 19 Easy Staff Retention Ideas
  77. How to Nurture a Staffer’s Professional Growth
    • Staff Development and Growth Checklist
  78. Conflict Checks
    • Six Touchy Issues When Clients Divorce
  79. Time Management for Partners
    • How Partners Spend Their Time
  80. Type of Office and Car
  81. Charging Clients Late Fees
    • Five Clauses to Clarify and Protect
  82. Project Management
  83. Writing a book
    • How to Write a Book in Eight Steps
  84. Mitigating Risk in New Services
    • 19 Tips on How Not to Lose a Lawsuit
  85. Being Judged Based On The Clients You Have
  86. Keeping Track of Other Professionals
  87. Out of Control
  88. Moonlighting Staff
  89. Referral from a Bad Accountant
  90. 88% Effective Staff
  91. Partner Marketing or Selling
  92. Value Of An Outside Accountant
    • 78 Potential Value-Add Services
  93. Keeping Current
  94. Preparing a Client Newsletter
  95. Reasons for CPA Firm Mergers
  96. Succession Planning for CPAs
  97. Managing Partner by Default
  98. Effective Staffing
  99. Complaining Client
  100. Thinking about Selling
    • 32 Reasons To Do a Deal
  101. Future of Small CPA Firms

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