Transcript
Hey. Veronica Wasek here with another episode of BK Biz. Should you give free consultations?
Should you give free consultations to prospective clients? I think this is a great question and one that I think you have to make a decision for yourself. But I’ll tell you from my own experience what I used to do and what I do now.
So, when I started out in my accounting and bookkeeping business, I would give free consultations to anyone who asked. And I would limit them to 30 minutes. That was a way for me to get around a lot of people to be able to show them what I knew. Unfortunately though, you get a lot of people that are just trying to get free advice and are not really serious about working with you, because people don’t really value free or things that are free.
What I do now though is that I provide what I call a discovery call. As you can see here on my website, here’s my call to action on my website where I would like my ideal client to book a discovery call with me. And, for me, a discovery call is very different from a free consultation because in a free consultation you’re expected to give advice, whereas in a discovery call, my goal is to get to know that prospective client and to understand what their basic needs are.
So, my goal is to get an understanding of their business and then to get a preliminary understanding of some of the problems that they’re having with their QuickBooks or with their bookkeeping. My goal is not to provide free advice. I may choose though to answer a few questions here and there, or to provide a comment that displays the level of expertise and knowledge that I have.
But when a prospective client then is going down the road of they’re wanting to ask lots and lots of questions and to want free answers, obviously right away we know that that is not an ideal client. And, I usually then will change the conversation into just to say, “Well, that would require a consultation,” and then I may go into pricing for consultations. I usually don’t. I just generally, if I feel that at that point that’s not an ideal client for me, I try to steer the conversation in a way where I will let them know that I would probably not be the best person for them to work with for the particular problem. Then I would try to refer them away or give them some other source. Something that would point them in the right direction.
So, if you’re giving free consultations and that’s helping you to get clients, why don’t you leave me a comment and let me know how that’s working for you. But for me, I found that while I felt it was helpful in the beginning and probably just to build my confidence, I think when you start out and you’re new, that if you feel like, well, if I give it away for free, then I don’t have a big risk If I don’t know the answer. And so, when we’re giving away those free consultations, if we’re giving away too much value, that is the time then when you have to make a transition to then providing a discovery call instead and where that sets the expectation for the call then that you’re not answering other questions. You are then getting an understanding of your prospective client’s business.
I’m Veronica Wasek. If you’re finding this content helpful, leave me a comment and definitely subscribe to my channel, and visit my blog at 5MinuteBookkeeping.com.
