John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello. I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey. In the work I do as an outside CFO for a few clients and as a business advisor, I rely on CPAs to handle the tax work for my clients because compliance work, like taxation, for example, is not my expertise.

John Ray: [00:00:21] Not long ago, I had a series of different meetings with a client and a few prospective CPAs. After we’d completed our interviews, I asked my client which one he preferred. And he told me his favorite. “Why did you like him?” I asked. He answered, “Because any man who says ain’t is a man I know I can talk to,” he said. That’s not exactly the answer I was expecting, but I wasn’t surprised either. I was expecting to hear an intangible, and the only question was which one or two of those intangibles might stand out for my client?

John Ray: [00:01:03] I expected to hear an intangible rationale for my clients’ selection because clients do not select professional services providers like CPAs, attorneys, bookkeepers, or coaches based on qualifications and expertise. No, they don’t really care what school you went to, unless, of course, you just happen to go to the same school they did and then they might care. But they don’t care that you’ve got a great website. They don’t really care about your certifications and in a lot of cases, they don’t even know what all those letters mean. Your certifications and mine are worthless.

John Ray: [00:01:45] Okay. Now, that’s a deliberate overstatement. Certifications and all of the education and work that we’ve put into becoming subject matter experts in our given field are vital but only to a point. They are just the tickets to get into the show. They don’t get you backstage in that client’s mind. What gets you backstage is to have a value conversation. And that’s what this particular CPA who got chosen did. He didn’t spend any valuable time covering all the things we already knew and had moved past. He didn’t talk about his qualifications or his certifications or whatnot. He asked a lot of why questions and then he shut up and listened. His use of the word ain’t wasn’t really the ultimate determinant for my client, of course. It was just a symbol that he could point to, which indicated for him that this professional understood his problems, hopes, fears, and dreams.

John Ray: [00:02:48] As professional services providers, our job is to be known as someone who understands and holds solutions to problems. But you already know that. What can be hard for us to internalize, though, is that clients come to believe that we have solutions because of intangibles, which often have nothing to do with how you and I end up solving their problems. There’s an ain’t with every client. Spend your time trying to find it.

John Ray: [00:03:22] I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey. Past episodes of this podcast can be found at pricevaluejourney.com. Or, you can email me if you’d like to connect directly, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.