Want to add £2.2 Million to your bank account?

Raising prices was a somewhat controversial topic in the room, with many business owners sceptical about being able to do this in their particular industry. But apparently, this is something Shaz and the team hear frequently, and a couple of interactive examples soon got the room thinking about this from a new perspective.

Steve asked anyone who had increased the prices in their business to stand up. He then asked anyone who’d had a negative result from doing this to sit down. No one moved. He then asked us to imagine a black, lacquered coffee tray and estimate the value if bought from a regular shop. Next, we had to imagine the same tray, but come up with the price if it were at a car boot sale. Lastly, think about how much we’d expect the price to be if we saw the same tray in Harrods. For the same tray,
our expectations as a group ranged from £2 to £1000 – a crystal clear example of how important perception is in terms of pricing your services.

One thing that did resonate strongly with the attendees was a point about dropping prices – or rather, not dropping prices. With some simple statistics Shaz demonstrated why this method should only ever be used as a last resort.

If you drop your prices, you might win 10% more customers. But firstly they would be ‘BMW’ customers (bitchers, moaners and whiners) and secondly, you would have to work twice as hard to retain the same profit. On the other hand, raising your prices, you might lose 10% of customers, but you would still have a higher profit

Of course the ideal is to raise your prices and increase your customers. For the final part of the seminar, Steve revealed how aa Accountants managed to save Dave tens of thousands of pounds by looking at legal and effective tax savings – including some of the more morally dubious methods! As

Steve pointed out, it is the responsibility of accountants to look at all options and it is up to the business owner to decide what they find acceptable. Some of the tips Steve revealed included offsetting personal mortgages against business bank accounts (for sole traders), the benefits of registering as a limited company, as the tax paid on commercial properties, and things like the Penn Report – which allows companies to expand without having to pay the default amount of tax.

The seminar also covered a range of personal tax savings, such as thinking about care homes, inheritance tax, income tax and ISA accounts. All of which can benefit a small business owner, as well as an individual. It’s impossible to squeeze in everything covered in the seminar to one feature.

In three hours, Steve and Shaz offered advice on improving every element of business from cash flow, to generating more profitable sales, to effective invoicing and reducing costs. Peppered with inspirational phrases like “making money and making excuses are mutually exclusive”, humour, and interactive tasks it was a genuinely enjoyable and informative experience. They demonstrated seemingly ludicrous claims with concrete examples, and pretty much everyone left impressed.

Gavin admitted that the average take-up rate from these seminars is around 63%. As an added bonus, there was also an emphasis on corporate social responsibility. Shaz is a passionate supporter of the Buy One Give One (B1G1) charity and for each ticket sale, 10 people in Ethiopia will be given access to clean water.

Steve said:

These guys have a vision to make a difference and they are absolutely doing that. You can see online, they’ve already made a difference to something like 30,000 people’s lives through the B1G1 initiative. But that’s just part of the vision. After this seminar, there are people that will go away and make things better for their businesses and hopefully that message will get beyond the room into their whole supply chain and even the whole region’s economy. So there’s a real message and I applaud it hugely

Gavin also emphasised the philanthropic element of the seminars:

From my point of view, being a cabinet member of the council, I want Peterborough to prosper as a city as much as I want Shaz’s business as an accountants to prosper financially. So I’ve got a bigger agenda, and I know Shaz has got a bigger agenda as well because he’s a stakeholder in this city. It’s a fantastic place to be. There are some brilliant businesses here and we want to make even more businesses brilliant in the area

What attendees had to Say:

 Jason Swepson – Walters Ltd. 

Do you attend a lot of events?

No I don’t really. I try to pick the ones I go to, and I was very surprised by how good it was today. I
thought it was fantastic.

Were there some elements that stood out?

Yes, particularly the part about don’t put your prices down – put them up, I made a note of that. It told its own story so I thought that was really, really good.

Did you have any doubts that saving £2.2 million is possible?

Well, I found everything else really plausible so I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be as well. It’s figures I’m not used to dealing with, but it all seemed very plausible.

Will you be recommending the Seminar

Yes, absolutely.

Mike Marshall – Director of Gildenburgh

Why did you Decide to attend the Seminar today?

I used to go to a lot of events, but this is probably only the second one I’ve been to in the last few months – – both of which have been run by aa accountants. The last one was very good, I found it quite inspirational, interesting and enjoyable, so I wanted to come to the second one.

Was the Seminar as good as you hoped?

Yes, I enjoyed it, I thought it was very good. There were certain things that I found very interesting, particularly the effect of reducing your prices on your bottom line. It really is quite staggering.

Did you have any doubts about the seminar?

The biggest doubt, which I’ve already spoken to Shaz about, is whether we can put our prices up in the printing industry because it’s so competitive. And you tend to get clients on a job by job basis so it’s very difficult to put the prices up when you’re competing with companies with a lower price. But Shaz seemed to be quite surprised that we couldn’t put our prices up. We haven’t had our first proper meeting yet, so that remains to be seen. He’ll either be right, or he’ll be wrong! We’ll find out!

Will you be recommending the Seminar?

Yes of course. Like I said, this is my second one and I enjoyed it so if I can recommend it to anyone else, I’ll be happy to do so. And Shaz and aa accountants as well of course.

Ticket prices for the event are £55 with the next seminar scheduled to take place in September.

Visit www.aa-accountants.co.uk/ for more details.