Candy Messer - Setting Reasonable Goals

Ron actually said, "You're going to make mistakes and you might not price something correctly but just do it for now. You're going to gain more experience and over time you're going to be doing this well. You're going to be more profitable in the long run because you're not tracking time. You're not having to put that into your system to create your invoices." I would say so far right now maybe 10 to 15 percent of my total client base on the bookkeeping side, it's fixed right now. With 170 clients it's going to take me quite a while to work through getting everyone shifted. My goal is actually to start with most of my payroll clients and then I will move over to the ones that are bookkeeping and start presenting those packages to them as well to choose from. It's going to take me probably a few more months to be able to work through that process and get everyone finally on a fixed-price agreement.

I am hoping to get more of my customers in this upcoming month onto fixed price. I actually had three current clients already ... I had a conversation with them in detail and let them know and I've actually presented the change to them. One already came back today actually signed. The other two were very interested. There's a fourth I've created but I have not yet sent to the customer for him to review. I was feeling that I had to try to get everyone converted quickly to this fixed price agreement. I'm not moving as fast as I would like and Ron said, "Just take two or three a month. Don't worry about it. Just start with a couple and then as you get better you'll have the capability to do more but just focus on a couple at a time." That actually really helps me realize I don't have to try to get it all done at once.

When I started this I was very concerned about creating fixed-price agreements because I thought perhaps customers would come to us with additional work after a price was established or perhaps I wouldn't even know how to create the price correctly once you put in packages. I'm becoming more comfortable with the concept of creating these packages and realizing I might not price it correctly at first but not to worry about it. It's going to be better for us in the long run because we will not spend hours every month creating our invoices.