Time's Up!

Put values—and value—over volume with a professional services subscription model

Professional firms are built on relationships. But you wouldn't know it by observing their predominant business model — a model centered on selling transactions and inputs, not outcomes that deepen and strengthen relationships.

Time’s Up! offers you a guide to building a more valuable firm, one where relationships and lifetime customer value are at the center of how you create and capture value. You’ll learn how to:

• Create customer lifetime values that far exceed acquisition and retention costs
• Move customer relationships to the center of your firm
• Leverage the collective knowledge of your customers
• Elevate customers from where they are to their desired future by providing transformations, where the customer is the product.

Only uncommon offerings command uncommon prices. Time’s Up! introduces you to a revolutionary new business model that transforms your firm, your teams and your results with the customer right at the center of the process.

Foreword xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the Authors xxix

The Keynote and the Workshop: How to Read This Book xxxiii

I The Keynote 1

1 What Got You Here Won’t Get You There Thank Goodness! 3

2 We All Have a Story— Here’s a New One for You 11

3 Time- Driven Sucks Impact- Driven Matters 27

4 How Aretha Got It Right 41

5 This Could Be the Most Important Business Question Ever 47

6 Thank Goodness— A New Definition for ESG That Really Does Make a Difference 79

7 The Ongoing Upward Spiral—Perhaps a Different Kind of Legacy 87

II the Workshop 97

8 A Renaissance: The Subscription Economy 99

9 The Direct Primary Care Disrupters 107

10 Business Model Evolution 119

11 Purpose, Strategy, and Positioning 137

12 Marketing, Innovation, and Risk 151

13 Customer Transformations 167

14 Two Timeless Truths and Two Theories 179

15 Pricing the Relationship 189

16 Customer Segmentation and Pricing Tiers 205

17 Pricing the Portfolio 217

18 Measurements and Moral Hazards 239

19 Subscription Business Income Statement and KPIs 257

20 Knowledge Worker KPIs and the After- Action Review (AAR) 279

21 From Zero Defects to Zero Defections 297

22 Adoption Models 311

23 What’s Next? 327

References 335

Index 349

PAUL DUNN is the Co-founder and Chairman of the global giving initiative, B1G1. He holds a Lifetime Service Award to the Accounting Profession in the United Kingdom and is a Social Innovation Fellow in his home of Singapore. He is the creator of the Accountants’ Boot Camp process and he is the inaugural recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to the Profession award given by AccountingWeb in the United Kingdom. He remains the only non-accountant to be honored in this way.

RONALD BAKER is the Founder of VeraSage Institute, author of seven bestsellingbooks, and co-host, with Ed Kless, of the VoiceAmerica.com radio show, The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy (Thesoulofenterprise.com). He is also a faculty member of the Professional Pricing Society.

Customers don’t buy billable hours, or services, which are merely a means to an end. They buy a result. So why are professionals in all sorts of disciplines and in every part of the world still so focused on selling inputs—like hours of work or individual services—rather than the outcomes their customers desire?

In Time’s Up!, distinguished business leaders Paul Dunn and Ronald Baker deliver a practical and engaging guide to building a more valuable professional firm. They’ll show you how to focus your efforts on creating and nurturing relationships and maximizing lifetime customer value, for yourself and for your customer.

In the book, you’ll learn to create annuities that capture customer value that far exceeds your acquisition and retention costs, move customer relationships to the center of your firm’s philosophy, provide peace of mind and convenience, and leverage the collective knowledge of your customers to achieve results. You’ll also discover how to guide customers from where they are to their desired future by providing transformations. The authors also show you how to price your new service, so it aligns with the uncommon and remarkable value you’re delivering to customers.

Time’s Up! offers strategies that create recurring, predictable revenue, an enduring competitive advantage, an end to volatile income streams, and frictionless experiences that delight your customers and result in endless referrals and positive word-of-mouth.

A can’t-miss blueprint to a revolutionary new business model for professional firms everywhere, Time’s Up! demonstrates how to amplify your revenues and your efficacy by placing your customer right at the center of your business model.

PRAISE FOR TIME’S UP!

“There are few thought leaders who have had more impact on professional firms than Dunn and Baker. They have a rare ability to ‘see around corners’ which is gifted to readers of this timely book that describes how a professional firm of the future will be able to successfully harness the full power of the subscription business model to create, and most importantly, deliver and capture customer value. This book is a must-read for anyone who has an interest in what the future holds for professional firms.”
—RIC PAYNE, Co-founder and CEO of Results Accountants’ Systems and Principa

“I first came across Dunn and Baker in 1999 when I was running my accounting firm. Their insights into pricing changed my life in extraordinary ways. They have always been at the leading edge and envisaging the future of the accounting profession, and this book is no different. This book reveals an exciting business model for any accounting firm that wants to put their customer at the heart of their firm.”
—MARK WICKERSHAM, FCA, Author, Public Speaker, and Founder of the Value Pricing Academy

“In their first book, The Firm of the Future, Paul and Ron lead the revolution for professional firms against hourly billing and into a more effective way to serve your customers using the value-based business model. As an accountant running a firm, I look at Time’s Up! as the roadmap to take my firm into the future. Tracking time and focusing on inputs is the traditional business model that our profession is mired in. Dunn and Baker lay out the case for the business model we should all be implementing now, which is the subscription or membership model; to allow our customers the most frictionless way to interact with our firm, the same way they are used to interacting with many of the products and services available to the market. I have been totally inspired to transform my practice into this model and put my customer’s relationship front and center!”
—HECTOR GARCIA, CPA @QBKaccounting

“My top shelf in my library has a new member, Time’s Up! by Dunn and Baker. Some books are merely informative and some are insightful. Dunn and Baker’s latest is transformational. Just as the Joy of Cooking changed the relationship people have with food, Time’s Up! has the same possibility for any and all professionals. The book is a journey from hourly billing through value pricing and now to subscriptions. Changing business models should be embraced by all leaders. Dunn and Baker have hit another home run with Time’s Up! Leaders are readers they say. Change agents are also authors.”
—DANIEL D. MORRIS, CPA, Chief Dragon Slayer, Morris + D’Angelo CPAs

“When economist John Maynard Keynes was challenged for changing his position on an economic issue, he is purported to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” “My friend and co-host Ron Baker” and Paul Dunn show that they continue to create new neural pathways for themselves and others. While in some ways subscription-based pricing builds on the concepts of value-based pricing, this book demonstrates that the differences are greater than the similarities and it requires professionals to think differently than they have in the past. If you think you have the ability to change your mind about the nature of your relationships with your customers and the business model that best serves them, this book is for you. Peace and courage.”
—ED KLESS,https://thesoulofenterprise.com/" Radio Talk-Show HostThe Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy

“Ron Baker has written a magnificent and provocative book on the evolution of the business model and effective and adaptive pricing for value. It is a new paradigm that every professional firm must adopt to remain competitive and profitable. As an economist, I found Ron’s historical overview of economic history and anecdotal business examples and pricing strategies of disruptors to be both inspirational and profound. This book is required reading for any profit oriented 21st century business leader.”
—VICTOR H. MIESEL, CEO, Chief Economist, M+D Bespoke Financial Group

“Time’s Up!: The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms is a compelling catalyst for the revolution brewing in the accounting profession. This book proves how the subscription business model can solve the problems that have plagued our profession for decades and will propel practitioners towards the achievement of their greatest goal – transformation of each customer’s financial future.”
—SUSAN BRYANT, CPA, CTC, Principal, MB Group