Product Description

This guide contains detailed information on value pricing consulting, revenue management through value pricing, electronic commerce pricing, and the relationship between total quality service and value pricing. It examines the profitability of alternative pricing methods and discusses write-downs, self-esteem, and price psychology. Explaining how to stop undervaluing services, it evaluates which customers to keep and which to take on. A companion CD-ROM contains all the essential checklists and sample agreements.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1079859 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 579 pages

Review
Baker's work is easy to read and his strategies are easy to implement. The bottom line... value pricing is easy money. -- Anjanette L. Thomas, Esq.

I have long been frustrated to watch CPAs leave so much on the table because of their timidity about obtaining the full value of their services. This is particularly true for practitioners who have worked hard to increase the value of their services, but who have no idea how to increase their prices. Ron Baker's Value Pricing provides the long-needed guidance for matching price to value. I highly recommend this book to every CPA. -- Jim Kurtz, CPA, CA Society of Certified Public Accountants

Ron Baker is a true visionary for the CPA profession. He understands both the economic side and the human side of our business. He has taught me how to determine the services our clients most value. When true value has been provided, our clients have compensated us accordingly. This compensation has far surpassed any measurement of hourly rate or time involved. I encourage my fellow professionals to put Ron Baker's concepts into practice and discover for yourselves how richly your efforts will be rewarded. -- Daryl B. Golemb, CPA

Ron Baker is arguably the profession's most original thinker. If you want to make money--and I mean significantly more money--from your practice, this book is a must-read. Ron understands this subject like the back of this hand and he's passionate about it. He could safely offer a hundred-fold money-back guarantee. -- Chris Frederiksen, CPA, Frederiksen & Co.

Ron Baker is one of the master thinkers in the accounting profession. Few people have thought as long and hard about Total Quality Service and Value Pricing as he has. Every serious CPA who wants to add value and be compensated accordingly should own, read, and re-read this extraordinary book. -- Troy Waugh, CPA, MBA, President, Waugh & Co.

From the Author
All business people live the ultimate contradiction: We spend our nights praying for the ability to charge monopoly prices, and we spend our days engaged in the very activity that drives those prices downward--that is, increasing the market supply of our services. The theories and concepts in this book are passed on to you in the hope that your transition from hourly billing to Value Pricing will be easier and less prone to failure.

About the Author
Ronald J. Baker started his accounting career in 1984 with KPMG Peat Marwick's Private Business Advisory Services in San Francisco. Today, in Corte Madera, California, he is a partner in Baker & Barnett, CPAs--the firm he co-founded in 1988. He is a Contributing Editor in PARTNER-TO-PARTNER ADVISORY, published by Harcourt Professional Publishing. He travels across the United States as a frequent speaker at CPA events and conferences and as a consultant to CPA firms on implementing Total CPA Education Foundation and has authored four courses for them: HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE WITH TOTAL QUALITY SERVICE; THE SIFT FROM HOURLY BILLING TO VALUE PRICING; VALUE PRICING, PART II; and ALTERNATIVES TO THE FEDERAL INCOME TAX. He graduated in 1984 from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and a minor in economics. He is also a graduate of Disney University. Mr. Baker currently resides in Petaluma, California.

Customer Reviews

This book will change your life
Having read the previous edition of this book for just 20 minutes I e-mailed the author to tell him that "I have seen this book described as the most important book in the profession. Without a shadow of a doubt, it will change my life."

The new chapters make this latest edition even better. Read the chapter on Total Quality Service to understand how to compete in the future. Ron Baker will completely change your views on pricing professional services. You will start to charge what you are worth with a consequent improvement in both income and self esteem.

Recently I was in a group of 70 accountants who listened to the author speak on Value Pricing for just ten minutes. At the end he received a standing ovation. In my 30 years in the profession I have never seen accountants show such enthusiasm for a speaker and his subject.

If you want to change your professional (and personal) life for the better buy this book.

The most important book to hit our profession in many years
Run, don't walk, to order your copy of this book. Ron Baker does for pricing our services what Montgomery did for Auditing.
What a novel idea, to get paid for the value of the services that we provide to our clients.
Ron Baker's goal, as he so aptly describes it, is "to trash time sheets forever". Keeping track of time is the biggest waste of time ever perpetrated on professionals. Accountants have become slaves to the concept of "the almighty hour". We are not selling hours but intellectual capital.
Ron takes you through every step necessary to start your trip to successful value pricing. You will learn exactly how to present this to your existing clients. You will also learn how to use a change order when there turns out to be hidden surprises that no one anticipated. He will explain the concept of service guarantees as an excellent way of gaining new clients and show you in detail how to draft service agreements to use. The book comes with a CD-Rom that has many forms and agreements referred to in the book.
I don't know too many people who are thrilled about the idea of having any work done for them without knowing exactly what the cost will be. It's like boarding an airplane in Los Angeles, flying to New York, and being told your fare will depend on how many minutes you're in the air.
Ron Baker is truly one of the very few original thinkers in the accounting profession. Listen to him; learn from him, and I promise you that you will improve your professional life and most important, your bottom line as well.

Wish I had read this book 20 years ago
I bought this book on a trial basis, due to its cost. It came on a Friday, and I scanned it that night. I wrote the check next morning.
This book changed my attitude about my profession. I was ready to quit. Burned out, tired, frustrated, and angry.
Within one month, I had identified 5 major clients and had more than doubled the revenue from those clients. My staff is happier because they feel they are being treated as professionals and generating fees more in line with their abilities. We have "dismissed" several non-productive clients, and haven't missed the revenue. We work fewer hours at more enjoyable work and actually make more profits. It has positively affected my home life as well.