Profit Hacking Issue 11 - Sell like a Doctor 2: Specialization

“Sell like a Doctor” has been my best reviewed newsletter to date!

This follow up will serve as a sequel. How to take ‘selling like a doctor’ to the next level.

This newsletter is by:

Profit and Grow is a Profit Accounting and Tax Planning firm helping professional service businesses earn and keep more money by maximize their profit, minimize their taxes, improving cash flow, and making the wisest executive decisions.

If profitability is the most painful part of your business, stopping you from focusing on what you do best and achieving your dream, visit profitandgrow.com and book a call today.

Here’s a random story - Bare with me, I promise there’s a point

A few years ago I played a video game called Vampyr.

A plague strikes Victorian London. You’re a renowned surgeon who comes to aid the city. The game opens at night, your character arriving in the city. While making your way down a back street, a creature attacks from the shadows. You're bitten by a vampire.

Torn between dark urges your Hippocratic oath, you navigate pestilence ridden London. Visiting hospitals and clinics while unraveling the supernatural mystery behind the illness.

It wasn’t the secret vampire aristocracy of London or the mysterious plague that kept me enthralled. It was the reverence in which the doctors and nurses you encounter regard your character.

I use this example because how else can you “experience” what it may have been like to be a renowned expert in this era.

Before the internet, before TV, fame was quite different. Fame required exceptional work, writing profound papers, lecturing at universities. In this game, acting as this highly educated, credentialed, and unmatched surgeon, you encounter fans, jealous rivals, and esteemed peers.

I couldn’t help but wish to one day reach that level of respect within my own industry.

But how do you go about achieving something so incredible?

My initial thought was education.

But there were other doctors in the game with the same degree of education, and they weren’t famous.

In real life, there are plenty of physicians who aren’t Alexander Fleming.

Credentials then?

But, the same applies. Credentials are no differentiator. It comes down to being the best!

In the game, it was the protagonist's specialization. Focus and commitment to a specific discipline. Followed by years of practice, refinement, building experience, and eventually, recognition.

Unlike medicine, and law, the other high professions, Accountants racing toward generalization…

Followed by commoditization.

It’s the culprit behind the devaluation of accounting services as a whole.

Law and Medicine have done the opposite.

Hyper specialization.

Take holistic medical professionals vs specialists as an example.

The average salary of a Naturopathic doctor (holistic) is $138,000. While the average salary of a Neurologist (specialist) is $265,000.

We must do the same in our profession. Support and embrace higher specialization.

Resist the urge to offer a little of everything, and the fear of missing out. Choose the discipline that brings your clients the most value, commit to it, and put in the years.

For me, it’s "Profit Accounting".

A specific discipline within Client Advisory Accounting (CAS). A new category of accounting in itself.

If you’re a Managerial Accountant, you may specialize in financial modeling. Financial Accountants exceptionally skilled at debt management could make that their focus. A Cost Accountant who excels at negotiating with vendors could find excellence in that service.

I help my clients maximize their profit by specializing in:

1. Increasing Revenue

2. Reducing Cost of Sales

3. Optimizing Operating Expenses

4. Implementing tax reducing strategies

Pushing and pulling the core profit levers:

Revenue:

• Sell more

• Offer more

• Charge more

Cost of Sales

• Reduce churn

• Vendor negotiation

• Client Acquisition Cost reduction

Operating Expenses

• Order by ROI

• Cut low ROI expenses

• Double down on high ROI expenses

Tax planning

• Tax classification

• Bonus depreciation

• Ordinary/Necessary expense tracking

By practicing only this discipline, I will progress along the long journey of mastery. Maximizing the impact I have for my clients and teaching others the lessons I learn.

Once you’ve defined your own unique selling proposition, your specialization... Couple that focus with the “Sell like a Doctor” framework, you’ll be unstoppable!

For all things peoplework, offering it to clients or getting the support you need, Profit and Grow has a plan for you.

Thanks for reading the 11th issue of the Profit Hacking newsletter. Past issues will be located on the blog section of profitandgrow.com.

If you need help with anything I talk about, like maximizing your profit, minimizing your taxes, understanding your cash flow, or making the best spending decisions, connect with me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielt6/

If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend so they can join the (48) other profit hackers who receive these every Saturday!

By: Daniel Talbott