CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

The Real Reason Your Business Isn't Growing (And How to Fix It) – with Michelle Weinstein

• James Donovan • Season 2 • Episode 27

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Unlock the secrets to attracting high-paying clients without the dreaded "salesy" vibe. Explore insights with Michelle Weinstein from the Abundant Accountant, as she shares her transformative journey from finance to entrepreneurial success. We promise you'll master strategies that empower you to communicate your value effectively, freeing yourself from solely relying on referrals. Michelle's structured sales process and eight-week sales mastery course have already helped many firm owners establish themselves as authorities in their fields, and now it's your turn to benefit from her expertise.

Michelle takes us through the essential steps of positioning yourself as a trusted authority in your niche, enhancing both your professional and personal life. Hear inspiring success stories, including a client's remarkable revenue increase and stress reduction, while understanding the significance of targeting your ideal client. Michelle's own experiences, like her pivotal Shark Tank presentation, serve as a testament to the power of preparation and systematic approaches in achieving business growth. Listen in for actionable strategies that promise to elevate your firm to new heights, all while gaining personal freedom and confidence.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success, the go-to podcast for fractional CFOs and accounting firm owners who want to attract more high-paying clients and increase their revenue. Hosted by James Donovan from Nine Two Media, this podcast dives into marketing strategies specifically designed for lead generation and client acquisition. In each episode, you'll hear from industry leaders sharing their success stories, and Today we're joined by Michelle Weinstein from the Abundant Accountant based out of California.

Speaker 2:

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. I'm looking forward to diving into this conversation and hearing a little bit more about what you offer to accounting firms.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. And yes, the Abundant Accountant. I'm here to help firm owners who are basically feeling really burnt out and stressed over the sales process, constantly worried about coming across pushy or salesy. That's where I come in, so you can have confidence, you can get paid your worth and you can have a plan on how to communicate your value with a very simple, step-by-step process so you never have to aimlessly wing it anymore.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. I love the intro. Helps us out. Michelle, tell me a little bit about how you got into this space and how long. How long have you been in this space and how did you get into this space?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, that's a great question. Do you want the long version and short version or medium version?

Speaker 2:

Let's, let's go with whatever version you're most comfortable with.

Speaker 3:

Okay, well, basically I have over 20 something years, maybe 30 years, of sales experience now and I had a food company back in the day and I pitched on Shark Tank. I got into big retailers and I was on this mission to help entrepreneurs from after that kind of part of my life for a decade and I said how can they help sell high value services to clients without being sleazy, pushy or desperate? And so that's really when I started the Abundant Accountant out of college. I have a degree in finance and I worked at Moss Adams as an analyst for three years and I was like this cubicle life is not for me and I got a part-time job at Nordstrom and just really love the client experience, customer service and sales and I said, well, how do I take that and help firm owners? Because I loved working at Moss Adams, because I love really smart, educated people, I love introverts, I love people who are people pleasers. You just don't have the structure in how to enroll. So I basically took all that experience and then I said, well, this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to really help all the people that are just not. You know, it's not your fault, you've never been taught this before, and when you're not taught something, it's like you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 3:

Most people think, oh well, michelle, I just need more leads, I just need to do marketing. I was like, well, that's marketing, that's not sales, that's not conversion, that's not how to have clients basically want you to help them so you can double your billings and you don't have to come across pushy or salesy in any way. And so that's where I really started the Abundant Account in about 2018 and learning and teaching firm owners actually how to take back control of their firm and how to close high quality, premium paying clients and establish themselves as the authority with their clients and be able to grow their firms without trading time for dollars. How do you do this value pricing, how do you get paid up front so you don't have accounts receivable, and how do you grow your firm on your own terms, and that's what I help firm owners with now.

Speaker 2:

It's such an important thing that you're helping Firms do I can't tell you how many people come through our ads, that we speak to clients, that we work with, that there's such a need in that space because there's been so much relying on referrals and not okay. Well, when that pool dries up, how do I actually convert someone who has come through an ad or has expressed any interest on LinkedIn, wherever it is? So that's awesome, the stuff that you're doing.

Speaker 3:

You get the lead. So the lead comes from LinkedIn, a Facebook ad, organic marketing, a referral. It doesn't matter where the person finds you. If they contact you through Yelp or your Google review or your website. You have to be able to not freeze up and learn how to have a proper enrollment conversation. That's where we come in and I have the solution for those that are sick of the way things have been going. One of my clients, jessica, she spent three the last three to four months on marketing on Legion and she missed out on about 30,000 of potential revenue because she didn't know how to convert. And she went through my program that I have, which is called the eight week sales mastery course, and so she worked with us for eight weeks and she literally just posted on our Facebook group. She closed a $10,000 cleanup project, a $9,000 cleanup project, and she did two $500 diagnostics with prospects where she would have done that for free in the past, and that all happened in a seven day period. So that's really what's possible when you know exactly how to communicate to prospects and how to attract high paying, premium paying clients and taking them through a different client experience.

Speaker 3:

You know I get a lot of people that are complaining and I don't know if you hear this too. You know the clients I get aren't quality, they're not good enough, they're not this, they're not good leads, whatever that may be, and it's like well, did you check your sales process? Do you even have a process to attract a quarter million, half a million dollar kind of business owner into your firm? What is the that you're providing to your clients and they have to align, otherwise you're going to keep getting. You know energy attracts and right, we attract what we put out. So if you don't have a process and you don't have a system for your sales workflow, you might have one for your uh client workflow. Right To do a CFO engagement, to do an accounting engagement, to do bookkeeping. You have the flow process for that, but how come you don't have it for your sales?

Speaker 2:

It's so true, it's the. You're not looking in your own backyard, but you're helping everyone else have the beautiful you know curb appeal from the front. So, um, it's interesting you talk about the sales process, because we hear it all the time as we help firms bring in more leads, book their appointments, help with their sales process on the back end. That's a new. Most of the time it always comes back to either even prospects you spoke to or clients working with the leads.

Speaker 3:

The leads are bad yeah, the leads are bad like all the time, the leads are always bad.

Speaker 2:

Multiple marketing companies, every channel, the leads are bad.

Speaker 3:

Um well, it has where with that because once you learn how to communicate to the leads in a way where you can actually convert and close them, then you're going to think the leads are great. I think people think the leads are bad because you don't have control over your sales conversations. You don't close high paying clients, they ghost you. You send proposals and quotes and cross your fingers and hope that someone's going to sign it. That's not a sales process. That's a passive approach.

Speaker 3:

So if you want to put an end to second guessing how to do this, how to price correctly, how to not send a proposal or quote, then you have to change that and that's exactly what I can help with so you can get leads from you guys and go oh my gosh, those were the best leads ever, because now you have money in your bank account to show for it. Right, You're not wondering when your next client's gonna come from. You actually have a process and you've eliminated the guesswork. And I think that's the crucial part, because the stress and the anxiety for most of you when it comes down to the sales call or discovery call or whatever you wanna call it the meeting where you are gonna ask for money. If you have stress, anxiety and you're irritated, that's because you don't have a process, so you're always going to think every lead is bad.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there is. Yeah, I mean every. It's when people are coming in with us. They didn't have a process for getting those leads.

Speaker 3:

Again, you need the process the whole way through. So maybe I can quote like it's the hope and a prayer strategy. It only gets so far and it's not converting. So the only way to do it right, especially if you're going to spend money on leads or do advertising, you have to remove and eliminate the guesswork. You have to have a step-by-step process in order to follow it, to give your chances higher.

Speaker 3:

I call it like you can go to Las Vegas and put money in a slot machine and hope you have a big payout. That's like the passive approach. You're kind of winging it. You have no structure, you have no sales process. You just think the leads are bad. You need more marketing, you need to do lead gen, you got to do advertising. That's how you think you're going to solve the problem. So where I come in is.

Speaker 3:

I basically compare this to like playing poker, where you're going to learn the cards that the other person has. You're going to know what to say. You're going to know the exact next step for you to make the best move in order for you to help this client who's sitting in front of you. Most of you are so smart and so amazing. You are doing CFO services, accounting, bookkeeping, whatever it is these clients need you, you guys. Accounting, bookkeeping, whatever it is, these clients need you guys.

Speaker 3:

But if you don't know how to enroll and how to sell, then it will be very difficult. So I like to say, here at the Abundant Accountant, we teach you how to strategize properly, where you get to create a sales process, in your own words. You're not doing any scripting or anything like that, but your conversions are so high that when you go play poker, you're winning most of the time. You have clients who want to pay you premium fees, you have clients who are never ghosting you and you have zero stress and zero anxiety as to what the next step is in your process. And I think that's the most crucial part, because you're not going to freeze up in your next sales call. You're not going to come across pushy. You're going to have a very systematic, step-by-step approach that shows you're the best person for this prospect.

Speaker 2:

That's so good. We've had clients that what you're saying just really reinforces that. What we do, a big piece of what we do on LinkedIn we're never going to overwhelm anyone with leads or appointments. It's just the way the platform works and the quality of the leads that are coming through, and we've had clients that have had drastically different results. Some, on one end, they're closing 90% of the people that are coming through on the appointments because the quality I say quality with air quotes, but it's there because they're running a really solid conversation with another human Cause. That's ultimately what it is but they're asking the right questions. They're being a doctor that pushes on the pain versus maybe some other clients who've come in and they feel like they need 20, 30 appointments to close one person. It's like that's not the case.

Speaker 3:

It's just asking the question to be a human yeah. Yeah, that's like your recipe for burnout. Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2:

What are you doing at the Abundant Accountant to bring prospects into your ecosystem? So I'm sure you must give some feedback and hints to your clients on like, hey, this is working for me.

Speaker 3:

You guys should give this a try, yeah well, I don't do much of that because I like to separate the sales from the marketing. So if we're talking about that, then I'm talking about how I'm doing my lead gen in my marketing, which I like to keep very separate, because here at the Abundant Accountant we don't include that. I simply am focusing on the conversion piece. So, from the time you get the lead to the time they pay you, your follow-up, how to handle objections, how to have your full sales workflow process and, if you have current clients, how do you re-engage your clients and get them on new engagement letters, how do you increase your fees to your current clients by two to 300% so you have more money in your bank account and you can go on more vacations, you can start working less and you don't have to sacrifice your time with your family and friends anymore. You finally get your freedom back. So that's what I focus on.

Speaker 2:

So, with this being a, I would say, more focused on marketing, I would love if you were open to sharing what works for you to get new prospects into your ecosystem. Talking to you.

Speaker 3:

So I love to do podcasts, I do a lot of webinars and I do a lot of podcasts what works for you to get new prospects into your ecosystem Talking to you. So I love to do podcasts. I do a lot of webinars and I do a lot of podcasts and I also have my own podcast called the Abundant Accountant Podcast. So we get a lot of leads from that, just having conversations, just like what we're having. And I think for every person, I think you really need to think about, well, how many clients do you really need in order to hit your financial goals? Because the marketing you know, like you said, you can do the linkedin and get high quality leads and that's really that might be the only thing someone needs to do, but I think it's just really important to learn how to position yourself as the authority for whoever your ideal client is, and knowing who your ideal client is and really targeting in that niche. So, like for myself, I only work with accounting, tax, fractional CFO, bookkeeping, firm owners, very specific right. So for all of you, what I would want you to think about is from the sales side of things that helps this as well, in addition to your marketing, is who do you want to speak to? You have to start learning what keeps them up at night.

Speaker 3:

It's like a doctor, right? You brought that up earlier. A neurosurgeon wouldn't help someone who just has like a head cold. They would go to like a general practitioner. So I think, for each of you being a firm owner, who do you really want to speak to? Could you work with clients that don't fall into your niche or your ideal client profile? A hundred percent, if that's what you choose? But if you're going to start speaking to them and marketing to them and being the authority of them, I would recommend a pick one.

Speaker 2:

And if you can't think of who your ideal client is, who isn't your ideal client, and start reverse engineering.

Speaker 3:

At least you get a little bit closer to who you want to work with who you do not want to work with, exactly.

Speaker 2:

You touched a little bit earlier your client, jessica, and some really cool wins she's had recently with you. What else stands out to you as like some of the biggest wins you've you've seen with your clients, or like what are you most proud of with with your entrepreneurial journey?

Speaker 3:

I would say I mean I just give people back their freedom. You know, I just did a testimonial with another client yesterday, mary, and she's like this was life-changing, like her marriage was on the rock, she was going into a lot of debt. She thought she just needed more leads and marketing and she realized that it was just a vicious cycle. You can continue to get people in the door, you can continue to have sales meetings, but if you're not converting and getting paid what you want, getting paid your value, getting people to get paperwork to you and documents on time instead of hounding people for paperwork the stress of all of this is just too much and her health was taking a toll and so she shared with me yesterday. You know it was life changing, literally.

Speaker 3:

She's still in my program, she's on week six of eight. She's increased her revenue by over twenty five thousand dollars from where she was to where she's at now. So that's additional revenue. I call it like the gain the gap between where they were and where they're at now. So I only calculate the increase and her monthly reoccurring revenue has gone up on that one client over $15,000 for the year. But with this she doesn't have to hound people for paperwork. She doesn't have to stress, she doesn't have to hound people for paperwork. She doesn't have to stress, she doesn't have to say, oh, all this falls on my shoulders anymore and she's able to start seeing a return on that investment. So if she gets a lead, she now has a process so she doesn't have to have any more bleeding.

Speaker 3:

So the cool part about this is that I've helped hundreds of firm owners with this. But you can stop the bleeding. You can really create the firm that you've always wanted. And what most and she says, and pretty much Jessica and everyone, if you go to my website, I have a couple hundred and that's exactly what we do is give you the you know plumber. Come into the house without your toolbox and your tools. I give you the proper tools for the sales piece in your firm, just like you help on the marketing side. So you can make sure you don't have AR. You can make sure that people don't ghost you and you don't have to send another proposal or quote ever again in your life. And when you have a system that works so flawlessly, that's what people get.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome it's. I mean, you're just explaining what you're doing. I can see why everyone gets so much value. Because it's not like, oh, I'll help you get, like, I'll help you convert at X percentage and you're going to get dollars. Well, it's like that's what's a ripple effect of what's to come, but the main piece is your confidence and you're getting time back. You can read like there's so much more to it.

Speaker 3:

The ripple effect is, sure, your percentage of closings higher Big deal, but you're putting more money in the bank because of it and I think a big thing too for many firm owners is they get to stop feeling awkward in these sales conversations, like it's like when you don't learn something or you don't know how to do something. It just feels weird. And I had a client yesterday. His name's Aaron. He told me, michelle I think I actually like selling better than doing the accounting and I was like, oh my gosh. When I hear that I'm like, yeah, we did a good job, you know, and now he can save more money, he can go on trips he feels like, if you think about it, on a P&L, the top, the first thing on a P&L is revenue. So if we don't have a system on how to get more revenue in the door, how can we be a successful firm? How can we save for retirement? How can we go on multiple vacations a year? How can you have freedom if we don't have that?

Speaker 2:

That's so good. Michelle, tell me a little bit about as we're approaching the end of this. Tell me about maybe one of, like, the biggest learning experiences on your entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial journey, like what was something that you look back on. You're like, wow, that was so impactful and because of that now I'm you know this far ahead yeah, I would say um with my last business pitching on Shark Tank.

Speaker 3:

If you want to prepare yourself for sales meeting or you want to have a successful business or anything, it all comes down to preparation. So I would say that experience set me up for pretty much to conquer anything that came my way. Nothing phases me after that. When you're preparing for that, you're pitching. I live in California so I was close to LA. They don't um if they run out of time because they work on union and eight hour shifts and some pitches go two, three hours and I've been, I was sent home two or three times. So that experience even though I don't remember a lot of it because you kind of black out because it's so intense it it really solidified so much.

Speaker 3:

After that I got a million dollar investment from the vitamin shop for my last company and they did this full build out and I mean the fact that I could pitch to the CEO of vitamin shop at the time to do fresh food. It was a fresh food company inside a supplement store where they've never done fresh distribution. A fresh food company inside a supplement store where they've never done fresh distribution. I mean it was just like mind boggling some of the things that I did. So I would say that experience really shaped who I am. And then also, you know, I said, well, if I can do this, then I can teach any firm owner how to learn, how to enroll with a step by step process, because I know you guys like systems. I know you like just to follow different steps and it's very nice to have that freedom and I love being able to help so many people now.

Speaker 3:

So that's probably the most monumental moment and shift in my career.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no kidding, going on Shark Tank, that's huge. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your wealth and knowledge. I hope everyone has a lot to take from this. And how can everyone get in touch with you so we can add in some links to the show notes?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So for most people, if you want to figure out what's working in your firm, what's not working in your firm, we do complimentary calls, so I don't charge for them. Me and my team will talk to you for about an hour and then if you say, hey, this sounds really good, we want more help, then we can talk about that too. But no matter what, you're going to get a lot of value and a lot of clarity. So you go to theabundantcallcom to book a call with me and my team and we'll talk about all the things that maybe you're doing right and some of the things that maybe you're doing wrong. And where can we find those plugs. So you can think about it as like the Titanic and the ship right, there might be a hole where water's seeping in and it's bringing you down, where you feel exhausted, you feel tired, you're angry, you're snapping at people. That's all the stuff. So you can actually come across on the other side and have freedom. You know freedom and peace on these calls. So it's theabundantcallcom.

Speaker 2:

Perfect, we'll put that in the notes so that everyone can pick up the conversation with you. Thanks again, michelle. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 4:

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high-end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleadsnowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy. Call it's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. Call it's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got more exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward. Your growth is just one strategic move away.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. We hope today's episode provided valuable strategies to help you attract more high-paying clients. Be sure to subscribe, follow and share with fellow professionals. Connect with us on LinkedIn and leave a review or comment to join the conversation. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Until next time, keep striving for success and unlocking your business's potential.