Are you an introvert bookkeeper? Me too. I’ve got a special place in my heart for people like you and me because we make great bookkeepers but we may have to face a unique set of challenges (opportunities for growth) when interacting with clients and prospects. One of these growth opportunities, is learning how to say “No” when you’re an introvert bookkeeper. It’s crucial to be able to say “no” to the wrong kinds of clients and projects so you have time and energy for the right ones!
Watch the video linked below, or keep reading to learn how introvert bookkeepers can say “No” with confidence:
Learning to say “no” was probably one of the hardest lessons I‘ve learned as a business owner. It was very hard for me to say “no” because I wanted to help so many people. But as I gained more confidence, I actually figured out that the more I said “no” to the wrong opportunities and the wrong clients, the more my business grew. Who knew?
Define what your ideal business looks
In order to learn how to say no to the wrong clients and wrong opportunities, we need to first understand what our ideal business looks like. For starters, ask yourself these questions:
- Do you want to build a business that’s high-volume with lots of clients and lower fees? Or maybe a low-volume business with fewer clients and charging higher fees?
- Do you want to be a solopreneur, or do you want to have a team?
- What does your lifestyle look like? Do you want to work a lot of hours? Do you want to have more of a lifestyle business?
- Think about your ideal client, what industry they’re in, and what help they need from you. If you’d like to see my related video on “How to get bookkeeping clients – identify your ideal client” – click here.
Determine what you are going to say “no” to
It’s very important to know what that ideal business looks like for you and who your ideal client is. Once that is determined, we need to start thinking about what we’re going to say “no” to.
- We’re going to say “no” to the wrong services. What are the wrong services? Perhaps services that we don’t really have the skill set to do, or we don’t have the capacity to take on, or they don’t fit with our definition of our ideal business.
- We’re going to say “no” to the wrong opportunities. Sometimes opportunities come our way. Sometimes we can make a lot of money from these opportunities, but maybe it’s not the right opportunity for you or not the right time.
- We’re especially saying “no” to the wrong clients. The world is full of clients who aren’t a good fit for you, don’t value your services, and who will wear you out and drag you down if you work with them. Just say no.
If you’re reading this, then it’s likely that right now you’re saying “no” to a very small number of clients, and saying “yes” to pretty much anything. How do I know? That’s exactly what I did when I started my business in 2010. I was just saying “yes” to anyone who wanted to work with me. As long as they could pay (or at least assured me that they could), I would take them on. When you are just starting out, that can work for a while, but at some point – once you become more experienced, once you have been in business for a couple of years – you need to start pivoting and really focusing on actually saying “no” a lot more, so you can have that ideal business you envision.
Building your ideal business
As your business grows, or you seek to grow, your goal should shift to saying “no” more often to the wrong clients and the wrong opportunities, and actually say “yes” to a smaller number of clients. You start saying “yes” to your ideal clients and the clients that will enable you to build the business of your dreams – the business that you want to have. It’s not usually an easy transition, but as I said before, when I started saying “no” to lots of the wrong opportunities and started saying “yes” to a lot fewer clients, my business took off.
Tips for success and ‘red flags’ to watch out for
At this point, you might be thinking, “Okay, Veronica. I hear what you’re saying, but who exactly do I need to say “no” to?” Well, I’ve learned a lot in my 10+ years of building my bookkeeping business, so I’ll share my tips with you.
First, you need to really learn how to read your prospective clients. There are some telltale signs to watch for during a discovery call or initial conversation. You need to really listen to what they’re saying, and then figure out if they would be a good client for you. Here are a few different types of prospects I have encountered, and my tips and cautions for each type:
Penny-pincher
By far the most common type of prospect we get is one who’s asking, “How much do you charge?” When they lead the conversation with that, typically what they’re saying to you is, “I am price sensitive.” You don’t necessarily have to turn these people away, but just be aware that those are the issues that you’re going to come across. You have to decide whether this is an ideal client for you.
Brain-picker
The next type of prospective client is the one that is asking, “How do I do this?” or “How do I do that?” If they lead the conversation with a question like this, they’re typically picking your brain and looking for free advice. So this is the kind of prospective client who wants something for free and they may eat up a lot of your time.
Again, I have been there. I know what it’s like when you’re trying to be so helpful and you’ll spend an hour or more giving them all this information because you think, “Oh well, if I give them all this information and if I help them for free then they’ll hire me.” And then, very often, they don’t because they’re typically looking to get free advice and go the DIY route.
Procrastinator
The next prospective client that comes our way will likely say, “I haven’t filed a tax return in three years,” or “I’m trying to get myself organized, but it’s been five years since I’ve done anything with my bookkeeping.” What they’re really saying is, I am a procrastinator, and this type of client is probably the most difficult one to deal with because you want to help them, but because they procrastinate, it’s very, very hard to help them.
I have worked with procrastinator clients and even when they’ve paid me a lot of money they end up disappearing on me and it gets very frustrating. It’s just so time-consuming to try to get them back on track, and many of them just sort of vanish. So, my advice is to beware of the procrastinators.
Dreamer
Then you have some prospective clients that have big plans. They’re telling you about all the great things they’re going to do like, “I’m going to start three companies and I’m going to need your services.” They just talk and talk and take up a lot of your time telling you all about their big plans. But what they’re really saying is, I’m a dreamer. And they just want to share all their dreams with you, but they don’t do anything. They’re not really implementing any of their ideas or doing anything about their dreams.
Beware because often this type of prospective client will take up a lot of time telling you about all the great things they are going to do, but they don’t become a client.
Controller
Then there are the prospects that say, “I want you to only do this for my books,” or “I only want you to do XYZ,” or “I want you to do it this way. I don’t want to use any apps,” or “I only want you to use this app and no other app.” So what they’re really saying is that they’re a controller. They want to be in control, but you need to be aware that if you are the professional, you should be in control.
The client hires you to do, is to solve their biggest problems, to bring solutions to them. So when you work with someone who’s trying to control things, they’re not going to let you be at your best because they will continually control everything that you do and ultimately they’re not qualified to do that. Control freaks are usually very difficult people to deal with anyway.
Tax evader
I’ve also talked to prospects who say, “I want you to make the books look as good as possible, but I also don’t wanna pay taxes.” Whether it’s explicit or implied, they’re asking you to do something illegal or unethical. When I encounter the smooth-talker, I usually will say, “The numbers are what they are, and it’s up to your tax accountant to figure out some tax strategies for you. I can’t change the numbers for your desired outcome.”
These are people who can’t be trusted. Please stay away from these kinds of clients. Just say “no”. Absolutely say “no” to someone who wants you to do something illegal or unethical.
Talker
Finally, there’s the person who just wants to talk…a lot! They just want to know all about you and they’re so friendly. They can take up a lot of your time just talking. What they’re saying is “I want to be your friend, but I can’t afford you.” So they’ll just talk for an hour and you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m gonna get this client.” And then you realize that they haven’t even ask about pricing, so you have to bring it up. When you do, they say something like, “Oh I didn’t know it would cost that much.”
Saying “no” with confidence
Now that you know some of the wrong types of clients to look out for, how do you say “no” with confidence? As I said, that was a very hard thing for me to learn, because I am introverted. I wasn’t very assertive when I started my business. I didn’t like confrontation, and I just felt guilty for saying “no”. But learning how was absolutely crucial to my success. So let’s take a look at some ways you can confidently say “no”.
Set the tone
First of all, you need to set the tone from the beginning. What I tell my prospective clients right from the beginning is, “This is a free discovery call for me to learn about you and your business needs and for you to learn about me and my business, and to see if we’d be a good fit for working together.” So I’m basically saying, “I’m not here to give you free advice, I’m not here to waste each other’s time. We’re going to learn about each other and figure out if we should work together.” That sets the tone right away.
If they try to ask me for free advice, I may answer a couple of questions here and there, but only to really position myself as the expert. If they continue to ask me questions, I just say, “Sounds like exploring that would require a paid consultation.” and then I give them pricing for that.
Keep it short and simple
So how do we say “no”? First of all, you need to keep it short and simple. Remember that this is business. This is not personal. It’s not a confrontation. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s completely acceptable in a business setting to say “no” to another business person.
It’s easier than you might think, and you’ll get more comfortable over time. With practice, you’ll learn how to be more assertive in saying “no”. Your confidence gets reinforced with practice. Every time you practice saying “no” helps you dodge a bullet with a bad client.
Saying “no” gracefully
You can say “no” in a graceful way without confrontation. You can just say, “Thank you, but…”. Here are a few specific examples I’ve used in my own business:
- “Thank you, but I only work with Shopify sellers, this will not be a good fit.”
- “Thank you, but I will not be a good fit for working with you.”
- “Thank you, but this is not a project I’m interested in taking on right now.”
- “Thank you, but I’m not taking cleanup clients right now.”
- “Thank you, but I’m not taking training clients right now.”
- “Thank you, but this project is not a good fit for my business model.”
Let me give you an example of how has worked in my own experience. In my bookkeeping business I work with Shopify clients. Some of them want to use Shopify and some prefer another app integration that I don’t use. I prefer to use A2X to integrate Shopify and QuickBooks Online. So I just tell them, “Hey, I would not be a good fit for you because my workflow uses QBO and A2X. I don’t work with this other app.” Anytime I’ve said this, they just say, “Oh, okay. Thank you for your time.”, and we end the call.
Closing
To create a thriving bookkeeping business, you need to know who your perfect client is and practice saying “no” to everything else. Have a couple of go-to responses you can recall, and that you can say confidently. If there’s one thing I want you to take away from reading this, it’s that “no” is a complete sentence. You may want to explain why to a prospect but you don’t ever have to justify yourself if you don’t feel someone would be a good fit for you. Practice saying “no”, and you’ll soon be confident enough to say “no” to the wrong opportunities freeing your time and energy for great ones!
I hope this blog post gave you some insights on how to say “no” when you’re an introvert bookkeeper. For more content just for virtual bookkeepers, subscribe to the ‘Successful virtual bookkeeping business’ playlist on my YouTube channel: 5 Minute Bookkeeping, and the Bookkeeping BIZ section of my 5minutebookkeeping.com site. I’m here to help you, so let me know in the comments if there are any other topics that you’d like me to cover in the future.
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