 Yeah, you guys missed Adams talk earlier all clients suck, right? Yeah, okay. All right. Let's time. Let's get started So we're gonna be talking about mastering the client consultation. My name is Nathan Ingram. I am from Birmingham, Alabama Yeah, how about that? I'm gonna I'll be slipping in a y'all every now and then is that okay? Is that allowed up here? Okay? I'm the host at iThemes training. We do WordPress education two or three live webinars a week virtually everything We do is free. It's like being at word camp all year. So the kind of talks you'll hear Here is the kind of things that we do online all the time I'm also the host of the WP business podcast, which is a little premature It's gonna drop in about three weeks if you work with clients is the podcast designed for People doing wordpress working with clients. How about that? It's my WP business comm if you want to sign up there I'll send you an email when it drops. I'm also a business coach for WordPress freelancers I've been doing that since 2014. It's a lot of fun My passion is to help WordPress business owners grow and blow up the common obstacles That's one of the reasons I've given this talk today and last of all I myself had been a freelance business owner in the web space since 1995. That's ancient I realized that's when I built and sold my first website and I've made a million mistakes since then so I Used to start a talk like this with a slide that says I am not an expert But now decided that I am an expert according to dr. Niels Bohr Who says that an expert is a person who is found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes a person can make in a Very narrow field by that definition. I'm an expert So if I can help you not make the same mistakes I make have made Then that's why we're here today and a lot of the times a lot of the places we make mistakes as WordPress business owners is in that first Initial client consultation the coffee meeting right where you're meeting with a client the first time trying to figure out if this whole thing What this project is about so here's what we're going to talk about over the next, you know, 40 minutes or so The first is why you desperately need a strategy for client consultations And I promise you desperately need a strategy Then we're going to look at why are we doing this to begin with what is the purpose of the client consultation? Last of all we're going to talk about the scope strategy, which is really the meat of the presentation By the way, I love talking about clients. This is my second most favorite talk. I give on clients I'm glad you asked that question. I actually wrote a book about it. It just dropped last month on Amazon It's called dealing with problem clients building for instance fences around friendly monsters It's a lot of fun So it's out there on Kindle and in print and I may give a couple of books away today depending on what kind of time Okay, so we are going to pause for questions at the end of each section Okay, also you can tweet at me if you'd like. I'm at Nathan Ingram on Twitter in the hashtag WC Dayton and by the way so that you don't have to furiously scribble if you're typing Pay attention download the slides later Nathan Ingram comm slash WC Dayton There you'll find all the slides everything you see on the screen is there as a PDF also at that link You can get a one pager of the whole scope strategy So everything is put into one page. It's right there. Go download it. It's there There might also happen to be a link to this book That's all right, so but that's all there for free check it out. All right, so why is it important to have a Strategy for the client consultation. Why is the scope strategy important? So I'm sitting in a coffee shop and maybe you can relate to the story I'm sitting in a coffee shop and I'm meeting with a client for the first time How many of you meet with clients over coffee at their place your place Starbucks I do that all the time. There's a Starbucks about a mile from me that is like my second office. They it's like cheers They know my name So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking okay This client has real potential right like this is gonna go. Well, you know good great conversation everything's going great and then all of a sudden we keep talking and He starts telling the story about how his dog got out from the fence and it's going on and on and all of a sudden It's 45 minutes later, and we're still talking about the stupid dog I mean I love dog got I have to they're both rescued. It's great. Love dogs. No problem, but 45 minutes Give me a break So I've spent 45 minutes with this client and we finally get around to talking about the website This person has no idea what they want. They have no goals. No, they don't know what they want So I've just wasted an hour of my life with this person So have you ever been in a situation where you spent hours talking to a client and gotten no queer that sounds familiar Yeah, me too. Okay, so I'm sitting in my car one day, and I just Meeting I just met with this particular client, you know, I'm thinking about you know, this is going really well and You know it's It's been a great meeting and then I'm sitting there and I'm thinking oh my gosh, I forgot to mention the fact that I Offer WordPress management services We talked all about their website and I didn't talk anything about Recurring services on the back end and if I've learned anything over my years of working with clients It's that if you're gonna sell a WordPress management plan security backups hosting any that stuff You got to start at the first conversation. You can't add it on later. They never buy it It's got to start at the first conversation So I'm sitting there in my car and I realize I forgot to talk about this So have you ever gotten through a meeting and realize you forgot to cover something that was important for the project? Me too, that's why you need a strategy for that first client meeting. How about this? I'm checking my email and I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the client to respond after I'd emailed them a proposal And I got agonized over this proposal, right? You know how it goes you sit there You write everything down and you get a good scope of work and you put a price tag on it And then you erase the price. Okay. It's thirty five hundred. No, no, no, no, $4,500. No, no, no 41 20 no, no, no thirty seven seventy five. That's yeah, right? You ever do that anybody else do that? Yeah, okay So I'm sitting there and I finally get the email and the client says wait a minute. I Thought this was gonna be like five hundred bucks So if you ever met with a client and spent time agonizing over a proposal Only to realize you're way off the client's price point Yeah, me too That's why you need a strategy for the first client meeting You've got to take control of the meeting. You are spending your time with this client You got to make it count now I've bolded that word spending because far too many of us don't realize that's exactly what we're doing You are committing some time to this particular client who's made no reciprocal commitment back to you You're choosing to spend time with this client. I don't know what your hourly rate is But that's what you're investing my hourly rate for web work is a hundred sixty five dollars an hour So if I'm gonna spend time with this client and invest an hour in this initial client meeting It is as though I'm spending a hundred and sixty five dollars on that client You're spending your time you got to make it count and if you'll make that switch in your mind this becomes incredibly important Incredibly important how much money if you put a dollar per hour How much money over the last year have you wasted on clients by spending too much time in the first meeting and getting no return on your investment? Far too much probably right Okay, so let's talk about what is the purpose of the initial client consultation? Why are we there to begin with now? The first answer is we're trying to sell a website, right? Most of us that's pretty I mean why else do you meet with a client? You're trying to figure out what they want and sell them something and that's part of it, but it's not the whole thing It's not just a sell a website. I would submit to you that the first meeting with a client is like a first date Okay, you've got to be sure that this relationship is going to work How many of you have worked with a bad client? Yes, okay, we all have if you're if you're working with clients you've had a bad one That's why I call them friendly monsters in this book You've worked with bad clients. Okay. Now. How many of you realize at the very beginning from the first conversation This was a bad client You did it anyway. Yeah, so we've all done that too, but so here's the thing You got a position this first meeting like a first date You are getting the best version of this client that you're ever going to get It's like a first date. I mean you go and you know, it's been a long time since I was dating many years My wife and I'll celebrate 25 years this year whoo-hoo. We made it But you know so way about you know, but when you're meeting with the first day You think about you're on your best behavior and the client consultation is that way So you're gonna figure out if this whole thing is going to work Now let me let me talk about what the client consultation is not because a lot of times It's easier to define what something is by figuring out what it's not first. It's not just to sell a website That's part of it, but it's not the whole thing First of all, it's a test the waters test the relationship. Second of all, it's not to refine the client's business plan How many of you have spent time with a client and you realize I am offering business consulting to this person? Yeah, by the way, that's a separate service And you should be charging for that If you have the ability to do that kind of thing the website may need to come later We'll talk about that in just a minute. You are not there to refine the client's business plan How much have they committed to pay you at this point? $0 Okay, that's a whole other call Also, it's not to answer how questions This is an important distinction how questions are intellectual property I'll answer all the what questions all day long. What are we going to build? What does it need to be? What does it need to look like those are free? How questions cost money? How questions are intellectual property? So those are some of the things the client consultation is not now if you're like me you wasted a lot of time with clients doing those three things and Never gotten a dime back return on investment for the time that you expect for the client So what do you do? What is the purpose of the client consultation? I want to give you a very easy to remember acronym. It is simply scope There's five purposes of the client consultation each of which is one of these letters Now we're going to do a deep dive into each of these in just a minute But the first one is easy the essence scope. Are you ready for this? stands for scope you got it Okay, this is the easy one right the essence scope stands for scope the first thing you're going to do in the client consultation You're trying to learn enough about the project to create a proposal for the client now for most of us That's what we're doing already Where they're talking to the client we're trying to figure out what they're what they want What can we do just to gather all the information so we can present an intelligent proposal back to the client for what they're asking for Right sounds familiar. This is what we do but for too many of us it stops there I'd like to suggest there at least four other purposes The C in scope stands for chemistry You've got to figure out if this is the person you can work with and you better do that in that first meeting If you're in that first meeting and things are not going well It's time to gracefully exit and maybe suggest another web developer that could make them successful the O in Scope stands for ongoing ongoing services Explain the importance of the ongoing services you offering by the way you do offer ongoing services, right? Every single person who builds WordPress sites for clients needs to be offering WordPress management services If you're not doing that, I promise you you will not be successful in the long term It is virtually impossible To succeed working with clients unless you have some sort of recurring revenue Starting with WordPress management Contracts coming into your business That's a talk on its own in that conversation by the way has to start at the first meeting That's got to be positioned as part of the price That you're offering The P in scope stands for your process Set expectations early by walking through the process you use to create websites and you do have a process, right? If you don't have a process that you use for every client every project every time you need to work on that That's one of the most important things you can do Especially if you're just starting out you need to codify a process that you use every time and don't get caught in the lie That oh, I build custom website me too, but I do it the same way for every client every time There's a process and by the way that process has as much value as your end product to the client And if you have to explain that okay the e in scope stands for estimate and this is really the secret sauce in the strategy Estimate providing a ballpark estimate and getting client buy-in. We'll talk about that again in just a minute now Using this method last year I closed over 90% of the proposals that I wrote now always struggle matter of fact I set right back in the back corner debating on whether I was going to take this slide out and I literally I Gave this talk about eight times last year different word camps and every time before I speak I'll I struggle over this slide because what I don't want to come across as is some you know slick weird marketing That's not me. Okay, and those of you that know me. You know, that's not me, but I just want you to know this works Okay, now why MMV your mileage may vary But this works if you'll do this sort of process tweak it for yourself that use this sort of process this will increase Your conversion rate on proposals Okay, let's take a deep dive. You're ready The essence scope stands for scope We're going to learn enough about the project in order to create a proposal now again This is where most of us spend the entire time and that's good We're going to spend most of the time if you allocate an hour probably 45 minutes of it It's going to be on this step working through what the client actually needs now you may have a way to do this And if you don't you need to have a consistent checklist of questions that you ask for every client every project every time To make sure you don't forget something if you don't have a checklist You're going to forget something and Murphy's law says the thing you forget is going to be the most important thing that you should have Ask or you'll be sitting like me in my car thinking I forgot to talk about this Right, so make a checklist use it every time and I would suggest Doing it this way now do what you want. This is what I do. I Break the conversation up into five main buckets of questions And I like this approach because we can modify this depending on the client We're talking to in other words, you know, we can start with various buckets depending on what is most important to them There's a business bucket. We need to find out about them. There's a the purpose of the website There's the website itself. There's a launch questions and there's budget questions now depending on the client We can rearrange that Just for example, I was meeting with a client who is a local Entity of a national nonprofit organization. I Do a lot of work with nonprofits by choice Now if you know anything about local entities of national organizations, their budget is zero dollars Especially for marketing and so guess where I started the conversation Right there budget because we're not going to go any further if there's no company You can modify this based on the client now. I'm going to put a bunch of questions up on the screen here Okay, it's all in that one page download or feel free to snap or whatever But here's some questions you ought to ask in these five main buckets and again, turn this into a checklist I have a template in Evernote that I just duplicate for every client meeting check check check that make notes check check Do something like that so you make sure you don't forget anything So here's the business bucket These are the sorts of questions you ought to be asking to every client about their business What's your elevator pitch? What's your coffee shop answer when somebody asks you who you are and what do you do? What's your answer to that question if they can't clearly articulate what they do in two or three sentences? You may have a marketing problem This person may not be able to articulate it and if they can articulate their business How in the world do they expect you as a web developer to do it? Right What do you do? What do you make who's your competition? Who's your ideal customer? Why do they choose you instead of your competition? What's your price point? How do you find your customers now? Do you have any existing brand identity? These are questions you need to figure out the answer to The goal of this bucket is to understand how much they Understand their business. I am constantly amazed at the number of small business owners and even Professionals who don't know who they're serving. They don't know why they don't get their market at all And they're hoping that well they say I have to have a website and that's going to solve all their problems But wait a minute if they can articulate the message of their business How can you a third party who build websites do that for them now? You may be able to you may have the marketing chops to help them create that but guess what that's different than the website That's work that has to happen first That's a marketing consultant and you may or may not be able to do that if you can't awesome That's the first thing you pitch to them then we create a website. Otherwise You're no different than somebody that's building, you know, do it yourself stuff on Squarespace If you can't help them to articulate their message to reach their market the website is not going to be effective Okay, those are the sorts of questions now and again by the way The client may not be ready for a website and marketing consulting Maybe the first step how many of you get stalled on content? The client takes forever to give you content for the website I you know, I've been stalled for almost two years for the client on content Years ago This is why content takes forever because if you're doing your job and you're asking the right questions about what it is The website is supposed to say The business owner freezes up because oh my gosh, I don't know how to articulate my message And so they sit there with the blank screen and they don't know where to start So marketing consulting maybe something they need at the beginning the second bucket of questions is the purpose the purpose bucket How does the web fit into your marketing strategy? It's remarkable how many times I get a deer in the headlight Look from that question when I ask it to a small business owner marketing strategy Don't I just need a website if we build it they will come You know that whole approach why should your ideal customer even come to your website? What are you offering them? What are your goals for the website that last one is the most important thing to figure out because we said earlier, you know The conversation about you know, we're not building the website for the client We're building the website for who? The clients clients the clients customers And so if at the beginning you get written down a great purpose statement for what is how do we know the website? It's going to be successful then The questions of is that shade of blue right which Lord how many have had that conversation? Those questions don't matter if they don't get you to the goal at that point We get into personal preference and quite frankly frequently I'll have a conversation with the client that goes something like this. We're not building this website to reach you You're already reached. I Hope I mean I hope you're already a fan of your own business We're trying to reach your constituency or your potential market So the shade of blue just trust me it the call to action button doesn't need to be blue It needs to be bright orange because that's what people are going to click Or whatever it needs to be Bringing conversation back to the goal. That's all on the purpose So get all that down at the beginning again by the way the client may not be ready for a website if they can't answer these Questions your step needs to be we need to step back and do a discovery phase Well, we're going to figure out all the answers to these questions that you don't know the answers to and a discovery phase Sounds really fancy. It's simply a list of all the questions. We're going to answer in a price to find those answers It's a scope of the price just like a project and at the end they get a nice report and That's what they pay for and from that we can now build the website and be successful. Does that make sense? Scope and deliverables for price. All right, so we've talked about the business We talked about the purpose now we get into the website bucket now for most freelancers This is all they ever ask about they don't get into any of the other buckets And if that's what you're doing you need to expand the questions you're asking But these are important right do you have a domain name? Who's our point of contact at your company? That's there's a loaded question here, but you want to know that am I working with an 18 committee or am I working with you? The business owner because that's important if there's a layer between me and you we're not going to be successful probably Who's our point of contact where will the content for the site come from? There's a huge assumption that's made by most clients that you're not only going to build the tech behind the website You're going to create the content as well And maybe you can do that But if you do it your price needs to go up or you need to bring in a copywriter and charge accordingly Most clients aren't qualified to write the content for their site In a way that is digestible by their target market Roughly how many pages will site include now? That's a soft question because you and I both know that in word presence copy paste boom published page done And so back in the day when we were doing everything by with HTML the number of pages was important today Not as big of a deal unless You're using a page builder in your hand crafting pages So I will frequently in a proposal, you know talked about we're going to create custom crafted pages for these sections And like there's five of them and that's going to affect the price point because those take a lot more time than just copy paste Publish right all right. Are you going to be blogging or sharing news items? Are you selling things online? There's another subsection of questions that come if it's going to be an e-commerce site Do you need an event calendar? Do your clients need to log in for any reason? That's a big question to ask because I've gotten to the end of the project and they go Where do my clients log in to get their bills online? Oh? What we need to talk about that massive assumption you got to ask all these questions at the beginning Do you use social media which networks do you have video you want to use testimonials? Do you have them already or are we going to be waiting six months for you to get around to asking your customer for testimonials? Are there any third-party? Integrations needed because if so then we've just added a zero probably at the end of your project depending on what it is Should the website simply be a credibility piece or do you want to generate leads from search results? That's such an important question to ask if you're not doing it now If a lot of clients don't need to pay for SEO If you build the website with good solid best practices for technical SEO on page and it's done well They may not need advanced SEO a lot of small businesses especially They don't have the manpower to deal with 20 leads a week off the web. They want one Some clients would be happy if they had three solid leads a month off their website You know if if people search my business name, are they going to find me? Yes, if you build the site, right? Virtually always just a word press out of the box as long as you're not intentionally screwing something up You're going to have pretty good technical SEO right off the bat just with the way word press feeds the information To the search engines do they need to pay for more? I don't know But that's a question to ask last of all this is the catch-all question This always ends this bucket of questions for me aside from communicating information and other things we've talked about Is there anything else the website needs to do? Because we need to know that is there anything else at all and sometimes later on the client They come back and say well, I thought it was going to do this would remember I asked you Is there anything else the website needs to do and you said no? I'm happy to do that, but it's kind of cost me Right Okay, the launch getting to the fun part There's some questions you need to ask about the launch of the website. Do you have a deadline and is it tomorrow? right How do you handle email? How many of you have stepped into the black hole of hell that is client email. Oh My gosh We stopped providing email services years ago For that very reason that's a that's a long conversation last of all Who will be responsible for maintaining the site after it's been launched because that's important Okay, the goal here is determining the timeframe and starting the discussion about those ongoing services last of all The budget bucket the budget bucket is hey, do you have a ballpark budget for this? What are we talking about here? Do you have $500 or $5,000 or 15,000 or 20? Yeah, what is it? Sometimes don't want to answer that question, but I simply tell them look I need to understand what we're talking about here because Maybe we can simplify or do things in phases if you have a small budget we can work with that We can build you something good and solid fit it in your price range and later We can expand to add these other nice things that you'd like to have what is by the way the decision-making process for Selecting your web developer for this project. How you know is are you happy you have to get three bids? Is it whoever you personally like are you just having to get a number of bids? So you can really select your next-door neighbor who you want to do the website to begin with What's the decision-making process? Is it you that's making the decision or is it your boss or some committee? What is that process like and when do you expect to make that final decision the goal here? Just make sure you're not wasting time. I Don't respond to RFPs simply because it's like too long. That's not my market You know if you're interviewing 10 other web developers probably not my client You know, it's not that I couldn't compete in that world But I just don't want to deal with the hassle and the length of time if you want to hire me hire me Let's go. Let's let's do the work Okay, so those are the five buckets of questions that makes sense any questions on this stuff that we've talked about so far before We go into chemistry Yes Okay, I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. Yep. We'll get to that if that's in the e of scope the estimate such as Okay, yeah, so what do you do if the client for the recording? What do you do if the client is wanting something? That's just not the best idea That's a so in the first Meeting you don't want to spend a lot of time there But it's a great test of the water for you to push back and go, you know for what you're describing That doesn't sound like the best idea. What if we did this and their response that that Their response to what you tell them in that scenario is going to tell you a lot about whether that's a person you want to work with or not Are they going to insist on having their own way or are they going to listen to the professional because if they push back? No, I'm probably going to start landing the plane in the meeting because they're not going to take this is a tip of the iceberg Yes At what point do you? Yes Okay Did you guys get that you see how important that question is? Okay, the answer to that question is the answer to this is the same answer to this question Which is how can you compete designing custom website sites when there's free options like wicks and we wouldn't square states? The answer is we're always a console The reason they hire us is not because we can put a site together in WordPress. It's that we can solve their problem They may not be able to fully articulate the problem But we may be able to help them understand it and then bring a solution that solves the problem to reach more customers to get more Whatever it is. That's the value you bring It's the reason why I'm hiring a tile person to come in and tell my bathroom instead of going to Home Depot and buying a bunch of tile It's the same issue I don't know if I'm answering your question or not, but you're always a consultant. That's the value you bring That's why you can charge the money that you're asking otherwise Send them to square space and let them figure it out. You know those websites look beautiful on TV But if you ever see one in person It's like me trying to do tile in my bathroom one's gonna be like a my wife's gonna go. This is not gonna do Yes I'm gonna answer that in just a minute. Yeah, we'll get to that at the end. That's the e-part Yeah, okay, so let's press forward here because I'm running short on time. Actually, I didn't realize So let's talk about chemistry. You got to decide is this a client you can work with okay huge hugely important Listen when you're at you probably spent 45 minutes or so with a client at this point roughly During that time listen just listen to what they say and most importantly how they say it When you push back on things, how are they, you know, are they are do they respect you as a professional? They respect your opinion watch for those red flags because at the end of this point when you've reached the scope into The scope questions you ought to have a good feeling of whether this is a person you can work with or not Are you going to be able to do something good good work for this particular client? And for everybody the answer is not always the same You know this may not be a client I can work with and that's okay. You got it's it's like dating You got to see if there's chemistry there. Can I actually work with this person? Now there's a few red flags that I see a lot of times from my own experience and in coaching You know, I've had hundreds of coaching conversations with freelance web developers over the last several years And the first is unanswered questions that the client doesn't know what they need Obviously a discovery face can be helpful So watch for those unanswered questions if they can't answer it then you're going to have to add more time in for that Another red flag is being disrespectful if the client doesn't listen to you If they're not taking your advice if they interrupt you if they're already nickel and diamond you out of the gate Oh, I can get hosting for five dollars a month over at blah blah blah dot com Run Okay, if the client is a jerk This is not a person you want to work with and you don't have to work with everybody If there's scheduling problems if the person you're trying to meet with Is hard to reach or if they reschedule if they're late this again It's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's a red flag that you better pay attention to Because if the client is hard to reach now that's probably not going to change when you're working with them on building the website It's probably not going to change if the client complains About a web developer who did everything wrong That's a full stop We're going to dig into that. Okay. Now. Let me say this I've been in the web space a long time and I know that there are a bunch of knuckleheaded web developers out there Okay, how many of you've done rescue work? This is the kind where somebody built the website and god They made some stupid decisions when they built that thing. I don't know I inherited a website one time that had 33 different custom image sizes defined. Who does that? Who does that? I mean really it was stupid and then the web developer poof They're gone and disappeared the clients locked out of their website. They don't have their dome. They don't have anything Right. So, okay There's a bunch of knuckleheaded web developers out there that said if a client complains About a previous web developer who did everything wrong I'm going to stop and dig into that because it could be this is the client that cannot be pleased And if I don't weed that out early Then six months from now that guy's going to be sitting across the table from another web developer complaining about me Right complaints huge red flag Emergencies the client needs everything done immediately again not a deal breaker But you better figure out why A couple of frequent mistakes I see folks make and that's ignoring those red flags We want to work with somebody we want to get paid for our work So we'll ignore the red flags and take on a bad client if you think a red flag is no big deal You're making a mistake again. This is the first day red flags are the tip of the iceberg There's a whole lot more underneath that you better figure out don't make excuses for the client in your own mind I want to work with them. Therefore. I'll kind of ignore these things that I feel just not quite right Trust your gut when it comes to working with clients Another frequent mistake is the hero syndrome The hero syndrome is the need to fix the client The hero syndrome is going above and beyond doing way more than you're paid for to come in with your boots and cape and Save the day and that will destroy your business As a reformed hero, I tell you this from personal experience This is our talk on this and I want time to get into it today. All right. So you with me. That's the scope That's s and chemistry now. Let's talk about the oh, which is your ongoing services Explain the need for your ongoing services now What I've learned over the years I mentioned earlier is that when it comes to selling wordpress management products If you want to build recurring revenue by selling word hosting and backups and security and wordpress updates and all those things Education is the key and it's got to start from the first conversation Take it to the bank if you try to add this on later or it comes in as a gotcha. Oh when you're launching the site Oh, by the way, you need to pay me 50 75 150 dollars a month to manage your website. The client is going to feel screwed You can't it cuts that they has to be talked about from the first conversation So and I just explained to him. Look, this is wordpress needs to be kept up today There are certain things that need to happen and I'm not, you know, they don't need to make a decision right now But we'll teach you how to do it or we provide a white glove service that does it for you You just need to be aware that's part of the pricing here The kind of client that I work with is relieved to know they'll have somebody in the web space They can trust to manage their website I'll pay you 100 a month 200 300 a month depending on what you're doing. I'll pay you for your work I'm just I'm glad to know that I have someone to call I call it having one neck to strangle when it comes to everything about your website Right, I provide everything for them. Okay education is the key The P in scope stands for process Set expectations early About walking through your process and again, you do have a project right that you use for every client every project every time If you don't have that you need that so you're working every project the same way Talk it through with the client Explain the steps that are involved Explain the tools that are involved and by tools. I mean the stuff they're going to interact with as a client Explain the value that your process brings we are not those kinds of web developers You're going to disappear on you halfway through the project We have this is the way we do every product by explaining your process to the client It builds up your credibility your process has as much value as the end product And when you explain this to the client, you know, you're you're not going to be left on your own We're going to walk with this is how we build websites Set expectations for what that's going to look like doesn't have to take long just explain it Last of all the estimate Provide a ballpark estimate at the end of the conversation and get client buy-in now. This is key Because I have spent lots of time Working on a proposal far too much time Fiddling on the price fiddling on the price 3,500 4,000 3725 3775 until you find some number that resonates magically with you And then you send it off to the client It is much better to talk about price at the very beginning of Your interaction with the client We hate talking about price for the most part most of us are scared to death to talk about money with the client But if your Your ability to talk about money with the client is one of the things that will make you successful In the web business You got to get your head around it So what I do By this point you want to know enough about the project to offer a ballpark ballpark price I usually give a thousand dollar range. You do what you want to do. This is what I do Okay, so I'll finish up this conversation I'll say mr. Client mrs. Client based on everything we've talked about today What you're describing as a website that's probably going to be between five and six thousand dollars to build If I return to you tomorrow a proposal within that price range, are you ready to start? And if not, I'm going to figure out why not Now you go back you build the proposal And it comes in that price range And they ought to be ready to start If they're if they're not good with that price range Why would I invest any more time in this client relationship than I already have If they're you know without them being committed to that price range I'm not going to spend the hour that's going to take to write that proposal or 30 minutes or two hours or however long It's going to take you why why would you spend more time? I've wasted hours of my life doing that. Maybe you have to So You come back with a proposal. It has no surprises. It contains the management fee every month It contains the website within the price range that you quoted No surprises. Let's do business together Does that make sense? So that's the scope strategy it starts with the scope of the project chemistry with the client your ongoing services An overview of your process and that estimate to get the client buy in before you go any further You do that Last year I closed 90 of the proposals that I wrote It works All right, let's take questions again. My name is Nathan Ingram. You can find me at Nathan Ingram.com Slash wc Dayton for the slides in the one page summary Also training dot ithemes.com as ithemes training where we do WordPress training all year long two or three live webinars a week virtually everything else is free Everything we do there is free and my wpbusiness.com for the podcast launching in a few weeks Yes, sir I feel a trap It's a great question I'm actually building a service right now called disaster flow that's going to help freelancers Answer those questions and have a backup plan. Okay, so how many of you have a backup plan if you got hit by a bus You have a document somewhere that says in case of my death. This is where all my passwords are This is what my hosting is. This is my account. This is if you hate your family die without that document Listen, let me tell you why this is important after word camp Atlanta Two years of 2015 word camp Atlanta 2016 I was having a conversation with the guy in the hallway. He hired me as a coach the next week We started working together. We had one call. This is the guy that was 32 years old in great health mountain bike all the time He went in the mountains of north georgia got on his mountain bike and dropped dead Left a wife and two small kids We don't know what tomorrow holds So this is an important question to answer if you don't have that start putting something like that together, okay Um, what do you do you develop a network of freelancers? You have some for me personally I have a support manager that handles all my client Support needs she has the key to the kingdom for everything in my business and my wife knows who she is and if that happens then We're covered. You know, I have a step-by-step document that guides through all that we all need something like that And it can be as simple as I have a friend that's a freelancer and we do this for each other We have our master last pass password. We understand how our business, you know, whatever But you need to have somebody like that in your life. Thanks for asking that question. Did I answer it or did I skip around too much? Thank you very much. Yes How do you fire a client? Okay, that's a great question. Um, okay, so you you know I work these days exclusively by referral. I don't spend any money on advertising never really have and so The answer to that question is how do they find you if they just found you off? you know online It may be a little simpler if if a client comes to me and I realize they're not a good fit Or you know and it depends on where in the process of the project they are Um, the answer varies. It's a you know, we can talk after I'm happy But like if you're in this Conversation you realize this is not a client that you want to work with But that client has been referred to you by one of your good clients You want to make that referral look like gold. So you don't want to say I can't work with you You need to give them what's your next I don't think we're a good fit Based on what you've described. I don't think I'm going to be able to help you Let me offer you a few other recommendations if the client's just a jerk First of all, most of my clients are good people and they're all good people and they're not going to refer jerks Good people like to refer good people to good people. That's why it's good to build your network Um, but you know if you're in the middle of a project then you need to have a clear documented process of what happens if you're if you've been engaged by a client and that relationship needs to Sever what happens next that needs to be outlined in your contract Uh, so that's a long answer Get a contract If you look at nathan ingham.com in the courses section, there's a process course of which this talk is a part And my whole contract are used for clients in that course Yes How do you get the content from the client a vacuum cleaner? It doesn't work Okay, so it's hard and the reason clients stall on content is they have trouble articulating what they do It's hard. How many of you by the way have been sitting trying to redevelop your website For forever and you're having trouble with your own content Right, okay, and we're supposed to be the professionals So have some empathy on the client. You have to do it for themselves. All right So, uh, there's a couple of things I do the client first of all Every project starts with a content guide where it's just a big long word document that asks lots of questions To help them start thinking through this is your about page. This is where you're going to talk about this and this How do you describe this and you how do you describe it? It's just full of leading questions and they start typing Okay, if they have trouble with that there's two options We can hire a copywriter to come in and basically walk through that whole content guide interview style Or you know, I do a lot of writing myself and some depending on the client I'll schedule a half a day or a day to sit down with them and help them process that information But it starts with, you know, all every project we do has a content guide and that will that does goes a long way Now there is something that's very important It's a phrase that a friend of mine named adam walker from Atlanta used years ago and it's totally changed my business Okay, you ready for this? No code before content No code before content these days I call it content first Which means we don't move an inch on your project until we have a hundred percent of your content in-house ready to go Because otherwise what happens is you get one day the about page And then you're the website to sleep for a week and the next day you get the next day of the bio and six months from now We're still waiting on the ceo to get his freaking picture taken, right? We give them the content guide And we don't move an inch until we get it back And all the assets for the website every picture every video every everything Then we build the website how quickly could you build the website if you had a hundred percent of the assets at the beginning? few days Then why not do that? It's your process That's what your that's what your process needs to be right? It's it's so simple But I've wasted months of my life not doing it that way It's coming. I don't have it out yet Yeah, sorry Sure Yes Okay, so here's the thing Something in the way that you said that makes me think I don't know if she thinks that's a great idea or not But so here's the thing. I've tried everything. There are lots of services out there You know and some clients are intimidated by you know a service like content snare, which is a great solution I know the guy that built it, you know, it's a good solution Some clients are intimidated about sitting in front of a website and typing in their stuff Everybody can open a word processing document and type So it's a word doc or google doc whatever you want to use But the point is you want to ask a bunch of questions leading questions And the content guide is probably 80 percent the same from those sites that I do Probably 80 percent the same but you know other parts and by the way in that content guide It's not just the content for the website it asks questions about their domain name and the registration and Different things when we get that guide every single thing we need to build that website is in it And you know, I'm I'm I'm one for simple solutions and I just can't get away from the word doc Yes Yes, and so in particular and I'm working on a content piece for that issue right now Learning at the very beginning is the client. I'm talking to a people person or are they a task person? Those people are one or the other, right? That's just brainwiring If it's a people person It might behoove me to as part of the scope of work schedule in a half a day To sit with him in there because a people person is going to struggle sitting in front of a blank you know and typing away, it's just Schedule time for them just and just ask them those questions directly And the price goes up on the website to accommodate for that time But I'll sit in front. I'm with evernote and record the conversation and take notes and you know right in the time Oh, they said that you know 50 minutes and 32 seconds They explained it this way and it was great and I'll go back and you know as we're putting all the content together That's what the content comes from if they're a task oriented person That process will scare them to death because they want to think about it They're the person that's going to do better with a document on the screen. So, you know, just know who you're dealing with Okay, here's the question. Are they selling are they? The question is are they selling bug zappers? Then the bad idea because if they're selling bug zappers, that's genius And and that's where I love I love it when the client has bad ideas during this first company Because what that can do is short circuit a bad client relationship before it starts No pun intended with the bug zappers. But so here's the thing It's like the question we had a minute ago when you push back on a client and say that's a bad idea Their next response to you is going to tell them if you can work with them a lot And so I look for those sorts of things in those conversations. It's a test of the water. It's a chemistry test Yeah On the fly All right So if let's just say in the scenario that this came up three, you know, we're in the project Oh, hey, look at this nice shiny thing. Literally that I want to do We're going to end the puns about bug zappers now So here's what you say You know if we did that it's going to cost you about a thousand dollars to do Is it is it that important and we do and I professionally I don't think that's going to get us to the goal The goal that we agreed that this website is supposed to accomplish Right Yes Yes There's so much wisdom in what tofu just said They're hot. Well, they've hired you because you know more than they do So don't be afraid of that. All right. Any other questions we need to wrap up Yes Yes Oh great question Great question So in my in my process a good process and a good contract is a balance of expectations and consequences, right? And we're very clear Any relationship is based on commitments And we're going to we're going to commit back and forth to each other. Okay. I've just committed to use some time I'm not going to commit back to you more time to write a proposal until you commit to me that this price range is good I'm going to give you this proposal the very next thing that needs to happen is another commitment back to me of a check Okay, so they're going to pay half up front typically in my process It's always half up front now what depending on the length of the project they may pay 25 25 or a half You know the last half upon launch if it's a small project So, you know, we'll start the work Not until we get the deposit and we don't launch until the project in full is paid for And I don't have collections problems at all Sure, actually actually having my contract that the deposit is non-refundable for any reason and I stand on that Because I put a you know by the time we get to the even the point of the proposal I've got several hours into the project dealing with them and don't think that all the The nurturing that got you to the point of the signing of the contract that has value. It's just as valuable as what comes after So, you know that for me, I don't do any refunds at all You know, I can't think of a thing even even when there's a bad situation. I've never refunded. Yeah Sure It depends if that's a particular concern to the client Yes, if it's the most client don't ask about that. It's very plainly worded in the contract. So Yeah, it depends on the client Any other questions? Yes sir There's no such thing Yeah, there's no such thing, you know, you need to You need to You have to figure out enough about the project in order to make a scope of work that has a price If you don't know enough about the project, then you step back and do a discovery phase Which has a scope of these questions. We're going to get answered and from those answers now we can build another proposal for the next part Yeah, we're way over. Yeah, I'll be here if you guys have questions want to come up