Don’t Assume the Buyer’s Priorities

In the last episode, Sharon McClafferty explored the time–cost–result triangle from the buyer’s perspective.

In this episode of High Agency, she flips the triangle around.

Because one of the most common mistakes in business happens when sellers assume which corner of the triangle matters most to their client.

And once you assume the priority, you usually start solving the wrong problem. 

Through a series of stories, including a Mercedes dealership that lost a six-figure sale, a high-stakes accounting engagement, and a financial advice client seeking peace of mind, Sharon explains why the most effective sellers focus less on pitching solutions and more on discovering priorities.

Because people rarely buy the cheapest option.

They buy the option that solves the problem that matters most to them.

In this episode

• Why assuming price sensitivity is one of the biggest mistakes in professional services
• The van dealership story that perfectly illustrates lost sales through assumption
• How one accounting firm turned a $12,000 job into a $75,000 engagement
• Why urgency and outcome can matter far more than cost
• Michael Spinks’ rule: “The fee you charge is proportional to the problem you solve.”
• Why some financial advice clients are buying peace of mind, not financial strategy
• The simple discovery questions that make selling easier

Key Insight

Most deals don’t fall apart because of price.

They fall apart because the seller misunderstood what mattered to the buyer.

When you understand the buyer’s priorities, pricing becomes much easier — because the value of solving the problem becomes clear.

The Three Things Every Seller Should Discover

Before proposing a solution, understand:

1️⃣ The result they actually want
What would success look like?

2️⃣ The timing pressure
How urgent is the problem?

3️⃣ The consequences of getting it wrong
What happens if this doesn’t work?

Once those three things are clear, the right solution — and the right price — usually becomes obvious.

A Question to Reflect On

Where in your business are you assuming what your client values?

And what might change if you simply asked instead of guessed?

Coming Next

In the next episode, Sharon explores a concept professional negotiators rely on constantly:

BATNA — your best alternative to a negotiated agreement.

Understanding it might completely change the way you approach deals, pricing, and leverage.

About High Agency

High Agency is a show for owners of accounting and financial planning businesses who want more clarity, more courage, and a better life.

Hosted by Sharon McClafferty, the podcast explores the decisions and insights that help business owners create a better business — and a better life — years sooner than they thought possible.

If you'd like to know more about Sharon's company Slipstream Group and the results their clients achieve, visit https://slipstreamgroup.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is High Agency, a show for owners of accounting and financial planning businesses who want more clarity, more courage, and a better life. A few years ago during COVID, when apparently everyone in Australia wanted a camper van, I decided I was not going to miss out on hashtag van life, if you know, you know. So I walked into a Mercedes-Benz dealership ready to buy a sprinter van. I'd done all my research, I knew the configuration I wanted. I just needed four quotes to see the trade-off between engine power and carrying weight. The salesperson came back with two quotes and said the other two weren't worth printing because they were over $100,000. Not worth wasting the paper, he said. The only problem with that assumption was I was planning to buy the most expensive version, which I did from another dealer group, or dealership rather, the very next day. The sale didn't disappear, it just went somewhere else. That moment stuck with me because it's a perfect example of something I see all the time in business. People deciding what matters to the buyer instead of asking. This is HighAgency, a show for owners of accounting and financial advice businesses who want more clarity, more courage, and a better life. Hi, I'm Sharon McLaffy. I use evidence and experience to help business owners create a better business and a better life years sooner than they thought possible. Last episode, we talked about the triangle of time, cost, and result, and how as a buyer you need to decide which one matters most. Today I want to look at the exact same triangle from the other side of the table when you're the seller. One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming which corner of the triangle their client cares about. And once you assume the priority, you usually start solving the wrong problem. So don't project your priorities onto the buyer. There's some common seller assumptions. The biggest one in financial services is that you assume cost sensitivity. Oh, my clients won't pay that, oh, the market won't pay that, that guy won't pay that. It's just this assumption of cost sensitivity, uh, which is funny because particularly accountants are known as cost-sensitive people, and then you're projecting that onto a whole market of people who are not known to be cost sensitive. You can assume time sensitivity. I dropped my clothes off today at the dry cleaner and they said, Oh, we we can't get this back tomorrow, it'll have to be Friday. Like, I didn't need them back. I never said I needed them back anytime soon. And you can assume quality sensitivity. So we have this new client at Slipstream Group who has identified they have nine different types of clients in their financial advice business, and they offer the exact same service to all nine types of clients, like this premium A-class service. Uh, and most of them don't value it and don't require it. But they sort of assumed this level of quality was, you know, minimum when it absolutely is not required and probably not important to a whole bunch of their clients. So the buyer might care about something completely different. Some want certainty, some want speed, some want the some want the best possible outcome. So people aren't always buying the cheapest option. They're buying the option that solves their problem. Which leads me back to our Mercedes dealership. I just want to flesh that story out because I had done my research. So I knew all of the codes for the long wheel base, the high top, the every little code in their book. Get my leather seats. I just had to get the four quotes to find out the trade-off. So essentially I had the layout for the camper van that we were going to build. I suspected that weighed quite a lot. So I already knew I was going to have to go with the van that took the most weight. And then I wanted the quotes around the engine power. I was much more knowledgeable than I've forgotten all the details now, but I wanted those two quotes just to see what the cost was for upgrading to that more powerful engine, which I knew I was going to do, but I thought in case it's a stupid cost, I better get the two quotes so I can compare them. And I reflect on the conversation, with the exception of asking for quotes. Never once did I tell that salesperson my budget. I never once insinuated that I was cost sensitive or that I wasn't in the market to buy a van. But, you know, telling me it wasn't worth the paper to print out those two quotes. The reality is there was the minimum I needed to build this van and to put my children in it on the road. So he assumed price sensitivity, but my priority was the result, the finished camper van, without regrets because I couldn't do the fit-out because the van couldn't carry the weight. He didn't lose the sale because of price, although potentially he thought that that was the reason. He lost the sale because he decided my priorities for me. And I think the moment a seller starts deciding what the buyer cares about, the deal's already in trouble. Now he did manage to insult me throughout the process. And the annoying part was I had to take time the next day to go to a different dealership, which was not as close to get to buy this ban, and it was awesome. We had a new client at Slipstream a few years ago, and in their first week with us, something unexpected happened in their business. So essentially they got this lead from like an MA professional who called them up and said, I've got this sudden deal happening, and the Australian company, it was a manufacturing company, have the world's worst accountant, and it's an absolute mess. And they've just been approached by a German company to buy them, and the buyers are flying to Australia in three days to start their due diligence. Can you please help? Now, the cool thing about where this manufacturing client got referred, I know a lot of accountants, and they got referred to just the perfect, the perfect firm, like capable of doing this at a really high standard. So the financials were an absolute mess. The potential deal value was somewhere between 10 and 12 million dollars. So the stakes were pretty high, and it was an unexpected offer. So the other important detail is even if the deal didn't go through, that work still had to be done. So the financials would still need to be cleaned up, reporting still need to be organized, and the business would eventually need to be ready for scrutiny. But whether the buyer is German or someone else in the future, the work was critical to running this business a much better than it was. So it wasn't optional, it was inevitable, but it became urgent. So normally in a situation like this, the accounting firm would simply start work immediately, hustle, hustle. She actually said to me the first thing I do was cancel my plans on the weekend. That's step one. And then I just get to work. So they pause other work so that they can prioritize this because you know that Germans are getting on the plane. They would work around the clock, and at the end they would send the client a bill based on the hours. But they would use their consulting rate at $500 an hour. So it would be a premium hourly rate to their normal service. So like a pretty traditional professional services approach. In this situation, they did something different. They paused. They called their coach and explained the situation. And the coach asked a really simple question: what actually matters most here? So when you look at the type triangle of time, cost, and result, the priorities were pretty obvious. The results mattered. It was a potential $12 million transaction. The timing mattered because the buyers were arriving in three days, which meant the variable that was the least important was cost. So instead of just running the clock, they made a proposal. They would prioritize this work over everything else. They would get the financials organized and ready for due diligence. The fee was $75,000. Afterwards, the accountant said to me, uh, she's certain that the buyer would have accepted twice that amount very happily because the buyer's priorities were completely clear. The timing mattered, the result mattered, the cost was just the least important variable by far in a $12 million transaction. So, for context, the most they had ever billed on similar work before was about $20,000. The client accepted the proposal immediately, and the accountants worked around the clock, and the information was ready when the Germans arrived. So the deal progressed. And the client was incredibly grateful for the speed and accuracy and the accountants' willingness to help them if the financials need to be scrutinized and more work needed to be done. So the firm was well rewarded for their work. But what's interesting is this the entire job only took 24 hours on the clock. So in their traditional do the work and charge the hours method, the bill would have been about $12,000. But the value of the work had nothing to do with the hours. It had everything to do with outcome and urgency. The clock said $12,000, but the situation said $75,000. So when you understand the buyer's priorities, pricing becomes much easier. So you could say, Sharon, this is just a value pricing story. And it is. But it's actually something more important than that because there's this subtle lesson here. If the firm had done the work first and then sent the bill afterwards, which is what they used to do, uh, the conversation would probably be about the fee. And they used to do this work and come up against fee conversations after they've delivered the work. And someone would want to question how they got to that number and question the fee. Because once the work's finished, the clients already received the result and they've already received the speed. So therefore, the only variable that can matter the most is the one that's left, right? Cost is the only variable left. You've already delivered the result at that speed. So the conversation naturally becomes about price. So understanding the buyer's priorities before the work begins changes everything. One of our coaches, uh, Mr. Michael Spinks, has what he calls the five rules of business. And when he first explained it to me, he sort of said it like, I can't believe you don't know and haven't internalized these five rules. I later found out they're not published anywhere. They're actually just Michael's five rules of business, and they are the hard-fought lessons he learnt running his accounting and financial advice business for 17 years. And the third rule in business in Michael Spink's Five Rules of Business, the third rule is the fee you charge is proportional to the problem you are solving. So when the problem is $10 to $12 million acquisition with the buyers arriving in three days, the value of solving that problem is very different to a normal accounting job. That's why the client was happy to pay $75,000 and almost certainly more, because the problem's big enough. So the conversation around price becomes much easier if you have it at the right time. Now, that example involved like an urgent business transaction, but the exact same pattern shows up completely differently in financial advice contexts. So let me tell you a story that is not really a one-off, but I'll tell you this exact story. But this happens fairly often at Slipstrain Group. So we have six soon-to-be-seven coaches who have all owned, operated, and successfully sold their own accounting and or financial advice businesses. And occasionally, many years down the track of selling their financial advice businesses, clients reach out to us, financial advice clients, and say, Hey coach, or hey Slipstream, we understand that you don't offer financial advice services, but we're wondering if you could recommend someone to us. So that happens fairly often at Slipstream, and we, you know, ask them what they're interested in and send them a couple of names that we think would be a good fit. In this case, it was a fairly significant client. So had about $30 million to invest in assets and was really concerned because he was 10 years older than his wife and he was in his early 80s, and he wanted an advisor that his wife would get along with. So while the advisor that he was currently working with was fine for him, they'd been there after my coach sold that business for three to four years, happily, but the husband noticed that that relationship was not going to work for his wife in the event that he passes away. So he was looking for someone pretty specific that his wife would feel comfortable with after he had passed away, potentially. So, you know, that's not timing or a cost issue. And we we know we just knew the right fit for this person. I mean they had to be capable, obviously. That's you know, to manage the $30 million and capable to deliver advice to this couple. But we did say when we were referring, this is one of Brisbane's more expensive financial plants. And the reason for that is he takes on fewer clients, he has a nicer office, it feels like you're being cared for in this business and he charges accordingly. So the reason he's able to provide that level of care, that level of service is because he takes on fewer clients. And of course, this client said, the price is largely irrelevant. I just want somewhere that my wife feels comfortable, you know, in the darkest days, like after I pass away, and that she can maintain that relationship without having to go find a new advisor. So he wasn't buying advice, he was buying peace of mind. And peace of mind is rarely the cheapest option. So there's this tiny example that I think of all the time. It's everywhere in modern life, uh, so everywhere that you will barely notice it anymore. When you're shopping online, almost every website gives you the option to sort the results. Price, high to low or low to high. What the website is really asking you is how important is the price to you? So some people immediately sort low to high, others sort high to low. And plenty of people don't sort by price at all. They sort by reviews or brand or delivery time. The most important thing is that I need to acquire an 11-year-old's birthday present in the next 48 hours. So the platform isn't guessing the priority, it's asking the buyer to reveal it. So when you step back and look at all the stories like the van dealership, the urgent transaction, the financial planning client, the pattern becomes obvious. In each of the cases, the outcome improved the moment someone understood which variable actually mattered. So the practical rule for sellers is really simple. Before proposing a solution, you need to understand three things. Need to understand the result they actually want in detail. So, what would success look like here? This is my favorite part of Slipstream is talking to potential clients and saying, what do you want? If you're happy that your business looks exactly the same as it does today in three years' time, we're the wrong people. If you want a transformation either in your business or a transformation around how your business interacts with your life, like let's talk about that. I had this great conversation with a firm. They said, you know, we want to grow and we want to work less and we want more freedom and more money. It's like fantastic, let's document all that. But why? What's that gonna give you? And after we chatted for a little bit longer and chatted for a little bit longer, one of the partners says, Listen, I want to send my two kids to private school without worrying every single year that I'm not gonna be able to afford the fees, or without the fees being a big part of our family budget. And I thought, you know what? That's it. The result we need is enough profit pumping sustainably and consistently through that business so that she has the confidence to sign her two children up to private school. That's the game, that's the result, right? So the other thing I want to, the more you can understand what success looks like, weirdly, the more fun you're gonna have in sales, but also the more likely you are to deliver the value to clients. The other thing we need to understand is timing pressure. How urgent is this problem? So this morning at the dry cleaners, that was not an urgent problem. I don't care if I pick them up in two months. How quickly does this need to happen? Maybe rather than someone saying, Oh, we can't get this back tomorrow, without me even asking, maybe a better way to handle that is how quickly do you need these back? The third thing we need to understand, so the result they want, the timing pressure, and the third thing is the consequences. So what happens if this goes badly? What's at stake if this doesn't work? In the German manufacturing deal, the consequences of delay, you know, the deal could collapse and probably would. And the financial advice example, the consequences of the wrong advisor is stress for the spouse, or probably both sides. So the consequences of choosing the wrong advisor is long-term stress. In my van story, the consequence of buying the wrong spec is years of regret. So what you're really diagnosing is what happens if this goes wrong. So once you understand the result they want, the timing pressure that they're under or not, and the consequences of getting it wrong, the right solution usually becomes really obvious. So don't project your priorities on the buyer, just discover theirs. The process is way more interesting and enjoyable. So it's one of curiosity and discovery, and it's sort of like a feature pitch fest because most deals don't fall over because of price. They fall over because of a misunderstanding of what actually mattered. When I walked out of that Mercedes dealership, the salesperson probably thought the problem was price. But the problem wasn't price, the problem was assumption. He assumed what mattered to me instead of asking. He was corrected a day later when I sent him an email with the contract. Anyway, uh so every buyer is sitting somewhere in that triangle between time, cost, and result. Your job as a seller isn't to guess which corner they're in, your job is to find out. Because the moment you understand what the buyer actually cares about, the deal just becomes so much easier. So in the last episode, we talked about choosing your priorities as a buyer. Today we talked about discovering your client's priorities as a seller. Because great agreements don't happen when everyone wants the same thing. They happen when both sides know, understand what matters most. In the next episode, I want to talk about something closely related. How to walk into any negotiation or deal or even relationship with real leverage. And the concept that explains it is something negotiators call BATNA. Thanks for watching or listening to High Agency. If you know someone who would enjoy the show or benefit from the ideas, please send it through to them. And if you have requests for episode topics, you can reach me at hello at slipstreamgroup.com.au. I'm heading off to Canada on my annual ski trip. So if you'd like to follow along with that adventure, you can find me on Instagram, sharon.maclafferty. And who knows, I might even record an episode from the Burfield chairlift at Sun Peaks. It takes 21 minutes from the bottom to the top of the mountain, which feels like just enough time for a podcast. We'll see. Thanks for listening. Until next time, decide what matters most and behave accordingly.