 Can you all hear me okay? Alright, so first of all, this is a testament to my self-control that I have to stay still behind the podium for you today. So, I'm going to see how good I can do, but I haven't actually sat still since I was a child, and I don't even think I really did it then. So wish me luck on that. I really, I want to thank you for having me here today. It's a pleasure to be a WordCamp Boston. This is actually the first chance that I had to come up to WordCamp Boston. At the beginning of this year, I set a personal goal for myself that I would go and speak at four new WordCamps this year. I did Atlanta, which was wonderful. I'm here in Boston. I'm super excited. I'll be at a WordCamp for publishers next month in Chicago, and I've applied for a few more. I almost hit that goal before, and I'm really, I'm excited to have Boston on the list. I actually, my dream was to go to Boston University. I had not accepted, but I got a scholarship to a different school, so I never made it. So it's a little bittersweet because I always thought I would end up here, but I'm certainly happy to visit. So to the organizers, to the volunteers, you're amazing. I know how much work goes into these events. It is appreciated beyond belief. Thank you. So now, getting to this talk, and I know everybody's a little tired of that four o'clock spot. I hope you got some snacks and coffee. You know, did some jumping jacks, and you're ready to go. We're going to be talking about selling to enterprise clients. A little note here. This is applicable to so many different things that you're doing, whether it be designing, project managing, or doing small businesses. I'm going to just share with you some basic principles and tools that I use that I hope you can use in your everyday life. And I've given this talk a few times in different variations of it. I've actually changed it up a little bit for today, but I'd like to think that I got some good reviews for doing this talk. One that happened today, my mother. She said I'm going to do really well. And if you know anything, you always listen to Mom. So many think this will be entertaining. About myself. My name is Jody Rachele. I live in Philadelphia. I'm sorry if you're Boston fans. I am. But again, Philadelphia. I love the city. I've lived there for a really long time when I consider it to be home. A funny story in my Uber last night. The Uber driver asked me where I was going, and I said the newly haul. Because my self-filling Italian American accent read it like that. I have now learned how to pronounce it correctly. But I feel free to share that story because I sound like an idiot. I work as the director of client strategy for a web development company called Web Dev Studios. I love my job. I have the opportunity to work with clients on a daily basis and really help them find solutions that fit them in their life. I studied music and interpersonal communications in college. I met my husband on MySpace. Yes. We started a small business and needed marketing materials. So one day I came downstairs and he had downloaded a GIMP and some tutorials on WordPress. And he said, can you figure this out? This was about 2006. So I started making WordPress websites and then eventually transitioned into WordPress today. But I... Listen, I am working on the spelling. I promise you it is a thing, it is a personal goal. But my brain thinks a lot faster sometimes than the way that I type. So I'm just letting you know. I certainly don't have the all the answers. I couldn't pretend to, but I'm here to share what I know. I'm not a developer. I'm not a designer. And I'm certainly not a good slide maker. I used to say that I was not technical. But I don't find that to be true anymore. Because over the years I've really done a lot to learn as much as I can about development so that I could better service my clients. Forward this way? Oh, because I'm too loud. Yeah, sorry. Quick story. I was in about sixth or seventh grade. And I was always very responsible. I had a job, a simple job, that on a student's birthday, when their parents brought in cakes or cupcakes, I would deliver it to the class. So on this day, the cake was in the back of the room, the teacher nodded. I walked to the back of the room. It was these old wooden closet doors. And you were stuck. I shook it, I rattled it, and got it open. But graceful is not a word that I would ever use to describe me. I tripped, and I fell into the cake. Now, when you are sixth or seventh grade, this is a traumatic experience. I'm sitting in cake, basically, in the back of the room, of the classroom. It is a moment that has impacted me to this day. And now you all know my most embarrassing moment. So no matter what happens, no matter how good or bad this presentation goes, there's no cake to fall into. It will never be that bad. And listen, you all have a cake metaphorically in your life, something that has happened or affected you that you can substitute for that particular story. If you don't have one, feel free to use mine. Just think you will never be Tony falling into that cake. That is okay. I say this to say, you need your inner inhibitions to be put down so you can be open and honest in your communication with them. And the only way to do that is to get rid of fear. And if we have already faced our biggest fears, we can let go of it. Might happen to be cake when I was 12 years old. Think of the word sales. I don't believe that it is a dirty word. Daniel Pink, who is an author and a brilliant author, wrote a lot about the art of persuasion. Had done a survey where he asked people what they thought of when they heard the word sales. What do you think people said? Just call it some answers. Liar. Liar. What else? What was that? Sneaky. Sneaky. Yes. Actually, pushy. It was the number one word. Lovely. But you know what? The truth is it's not a bad thing. The real definition of sales is the exchange of a commodity for money, the action of selling something. My definition, I'm going to make it a verb. It's about providing a solution to challenges a client may be having while being respectful of their budget. That's essentially it. You have a problem. I have a solution. We're going to exchange something for it and we're going to move forward. If there is someone in your life who solves a problem for you, don't you praise them. Are you grateful? Don't you want to thank them for the work that they're doing? This is the same idea. You have a problem. I have a solution. We're going to get together and exchange ideas. And in the core of it, that is what sales is. What is enterprise? I mean, on a basic level, it's a really big company. We're talking thousands of employees, typically. I want to know that a lot of what I'm saying today is us talking in generalizations. Of course, there's going to be a million exceptions to every single thing that I say. I understand that. I wish I could address all of them. But we're talking in generalizations for the purposes of this talk. These are some of the clients that I have the pleasure of working with every day. Viacom, Campbell's Soup Company, Microsoft. We're not their only vendor, for sure. But these are the direct clients that I spend most of my day working with. Coming up with solutions to the challenges that they're having. The basics. When you're working with an enterprise client, it is a long sales cycle. It's longer than you would normally think. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. So you have to be patient. Understand this is not typically something you're going to be turning around in a few weeks, sometimes not even a few months. You're going to be working with a lot of people and sometimes different departments. If you think about the structure of the way a company is set up, you have marketing, you have IT, you have content, you have all these different pieces that have to come together in order to reach a decision. So one of the jobs that you play is facilitator. I would like to recommend a fantastic book, and I have these resources listed at the end. It's called Game Storming. It's a brilliant book that gives you some tools to help brand new clients to come to decisions through gamification. They're using games to make that happen. It's a really brilliant book. It's typically not, hey, we're building a site and we're going to be done. This is a long-term engagement. You're building pieces of things as you move along. Think of this as a long-term relationship. This is typically not one estimate. I'm a big believer in a retainer engagement with clients and having a more agile system. So in the beginning of the project, you may set a monthly amount that the client feels comfortable with and you feel comfortable with and they're paying you monthly and you're working through the tasks as opposed to saying this project is X amount of dollars. How many times have any of us gotten into issues where we've given a project price and what happens when you get into discovery and what happens you get into the project? There's always factors that pop up that make it much more difficult to stick to that project value. So by going for a monthly rate using that retainer method, it is less risk for you. You'll have to invest more time up front. We're going to talk about this on another slide in a little bit more detail but the reality is it's just like it is a long sales cycle, it is a long proposal cycle for you and embrace that. You want to spend that time up front building that relationship with the client so that they will trust you to do their work. You're going to have to travel. You're going to have to see people face to face. I know we live in a very technical world where we're using things like Zoom and Skype and all these other wonderful video conferencing services that certainly have their place but nothing will substitute being able to sit face to face in front of your client, look them in the eye and build a relationship with them. I love sitting with clients whether it be a dinner or a lunch or going to a meeting at their office to neither is nothing better. I can get everything I need in that face to face meeting. I think it's really important. I was saying earlier, I believe that we have skills and marketing principles but just modernizing them for the work that we're doing today. Gather your team. This is not a one person job. I certainly don't do anything by myself. I have brilliant strategists that work with me. I have engineers, front end, back end and creative leads that work with me when we're entertaining a client. I want to be a united front when we are with the client. We are in-smeeting. And I believe in that so much. We have some very specific needs for their projects. One of them is that usually whatever you're building will need to be scalable. These companies are growing, let's face it. So that web infrastructure whatever it is that you're building for them will need to grow with their business. There's some great talks on security that I heard today share the website where you can check your password to see how many times it's been compromised. 1,692 on an old password that I used, so having something that's secure is increasingly important. These companies have a lot at stake. We talked about Equifax earlier in another talk too. Think about what that did to the reputation as a business. I can't stress security enough. It's going to be that again, to great with all the things. Usually when you're working with an enterprise level client, they have some kind of single sign-on system. They have an email subscription system. They have certain forms that they're using. They have a certain e-commerce product that they're using. They have a lot of third party systems and you need to build a web infrastructure that will integrate with all of them. It will often work in a global world. So again, with enterprise clients, it's very important that these websites have the ability to be multi-lingual. Localization is a key element. When you're talking with an enterprise client, they want to do business in other countries. They're working with businesses in other countries. So when we're talking about multi-lingual, we're also talking a little bit about GDPR here, which is another conversation for another day. It's something to think about. One of my favorite things to do with a client is to work through how they actually use the admin of their WordPress website. The front end's all well and good, but I want to sit with the client and see how they add content, how they want to add content, how they upload images. The needs that they have on the back end, to me, are just as important as the needs that they have on the front end. This includes creating user roles that make sense for their business. What can an intern do that a C-level executive, or I should say what can an intern can't do that a C-level executive can? I want to break all of those things out in details, so that when I'm creating the admin for them, it is custom-built for them. You're going to need to be flexible because projects will often change. You know, a couple months in, something new happens. They want to make changes to their business. You're going to need to be agile to bend and be flexible. Project management is essential. It is the singular, I think, one of the singular most important pieces of this project. A project manager's role is so vital to keeping the client on track, the engineers on track, the designers on track, meeting that timeline and staying within budget. They have so many things that they need to be considerate of when they're planning a project. They're vital. Structure and timelines will become your best friend. You will have to push back. You will have to say no, that is okay. Scope creep is one of those things that inevitably we will face in projects. I had, one time a woman described it as hope creep, where that's just as bad, right? There's some things that you want to give your client, but you know they're out of scope. That's hope creep. It's really important to create that structure and stick to it. Believe me when I tell you that your client, when they have boundaries, they will respond to you better in the long run. Oftentimes, you're going to need to be flexible in terms of invoicing and billing. A lot of these companies have a system in place already. Sometimes it's net 60. Sometimes it's net 90. Sometimes you need a PO. Sometimes you invoice another person. I often recommend when smaller businesses are starting to tiptoe into enterprise clients to make sure that you have some cash flow in place because those enterprise clients are going to take a little bit longer to pay you and I don't think that you should ever rely on that as your main source. And that's really important. I don't know the magic formula, but I think for every business across the board, there is a happy percentage of enterprise versus one-off projects that you should have for your monthly income. And I think you probably have to determine what that is for you. Because often with enterprise projects, if you think about it, they are a lot larger. So if one were to go away, it's actually quite a bit of the income that you had anticipated, whereas the one-off projects can be a steady revolving door for your bottom line. You need to do more so when you're working with these larger clients. You need to research and plan as much as possible. You have to understand the client and this really takes some time to do. I'm a big believer in looking them up on LinkedIn, you know, setting Google alerts for that particular company to find out what news is coming out about them. I look at their executives on Twitter. I will sometimes look at things like done in Bradstreet reports to find out as much as I can about the company. Did they have an acquisition recently? Do they have an acquisition that's rumored coming up? I want to know all of those things. So walking into that meeting, I am as educated as I possibly can be on that client and their executives. You will be surprised at what you, a Google alert sometimes will tell you. So anytime I have a new client, I'll always set a Google alert, find other social media. It sounds so stuff-arific, but I promise you it's in the name of research. Researchs are competitors. Also a very important thing, find out their competitors and find out information about what their competitors are doing well and what they are not doing well. Learn their current environment. It is not a website hosted somewhere. I mean it is oftentimes much more complex. Whether it be multi-site, they probably have a ton of different technologies that they're using. Some are being hosted in-house. Sometimes they might play around with a host, like Pantheon is here today. They might have some of the WordPress sites of Pantheon host environment. If that's the case, it's different for everyone. You gotta learn the environment. I'm a big believer in making a diagram of that environment so you understand it. A flow chart to be really clear and what areas you can help them and what areas you can't because we don't do everything. But I don't think anyone does and that's okay. So understand where your strengths lie. If they're giving you an RFP or documentation, any kind of written paper work, study it. There has been so many situations where I have found the Easter egg in an RFP. And I'm often very proud of them, happens. But I promise you that they are there. Like for instance, have you ever, you know, well I have got an RFP the one time where it said get 10 thumb drives with their proposal on the thumb drive. Get 10 printed copies with a thumb drive and a proposal in an envelope. They all get addressed differently. There's all these extra steps. And if I really started to think about it, I thought this is a test. This client wants family thumb drives. We all know that, right? They want to see if we're paying attention to the information they have provided us because if we can't do it during the proposal phase, we're not gonna be able to do it during development. You will often find these Easter eggs in RFPs so you need to study it, find them, and follow every direction to the team because there is a reason behind it. Gather examples. So this is, you know, one of those situations where you're talking to your client about websites that they love and websites or even that they don't really like, but you can also bring to the table things that you have done or websites that you have seen that they may be interested in saying. Be very clear in your communication. And I mean very clear. And I wanna share with you a real-life example of where clarity, where I thought I was being clear and it completely went wrong. So in this situation, I am the client. I was actually not the vendor. If any of you were at Work Camp US the very first year, Kevin you're laughing as you know. 2015 Work Camp US Philadelphia, anyone? There, yeah, okay. I was really proud to be one of the organizers that year and I was tasked with a very important job and that was to get the stuffed wapus that were the swag that year created. And I was really excited because I found this great vendor in California. We're gonna talk about this quote in a second but the single biggest problem in communication is the inclusion that it has taken place. I love that quote. I think it should be plastered everywhere. So I found this vendor and I was very clear. I said to them, this is a character that's similar to Pikachu. You need to notice the yellow and blue colors. I gave them all the logo specifications. I sent them a million examples of images. This was over the course of a few phone calls just like I would have with a client when the client is telling me everything they want or need. And I thought, I'm a strategist. I got this. I know exactly what to tell this company to get delivered the wapu that I need. So you ready to see what I got? The first iteration of the stuffed wapu. There were four more after they still got to the right one but this is the first prototype that was delivered to me. I was horrified, right? I couldn't look at the w. I mean the ears, everything, just everything was wrong. And I'm working with a group just like an enterprise. You have multiple people, multiple departments. I had to go back to my organizing team and say, I am sorry. I really thought I gave them everything they needed. I thought I was crystal clear and when this gets delivered it really got me thinking. I used to have expectations of my client when they gave me specifications for their projects and they believed that I will understand them. I'm not asking enough questions. I have to ask more questions with my clients because I can't deliver that as a mockup. So you get to the proposal phase. You've done everything you can. You've researched. You've planned. You studied competitors. You're feeling really good about the work that you're going to be able to do with this client. You have to set expectations. As I said before, setting boundaries is super important with your clients. Write a personalized and thoughtful proposal. How many of you use proposal software or have a template? How many of you have used that template and forgot to change maybe an old client's name that happened to be laying out there and sent it to a client? I've done the tip. We've all done it, right? I actually just did it as if by accident recently and it was caught, thank God, before it really got sent out. But this happens, right? If you have a template, I'm telling you go through it, pull out all of that identifying information, leave those blank, make a copy before you make another proposal. That is one of the best tips that I can give you. Do it today. Like, don't hesitate. Secondly, when you are sending a proposal to a client, take the time. Write an overview letter. Make sure your client's information is peppered through the proposal. Take screenshots of their current site and point out things that you know you can help with. Personalize that proposal so they can never say or think that you sent them a template. It will change the way they start to believe in you. Unless specifically asked for, don't sell WordPress. Sell the best tool, which in most cases will be WordPress. Again, this is really important. You can't just throw WordPress as the answer to every client challenge that they bring you because it's not. So it's really important to understand the challenges that they're having and in the event that WordPress is the best solution, you tell them you have the best solution and to accomplish that solution, you're going to use WordPress because you have to be, you want your client to believe that you're listening to them. So by throwing answers at them, it's gonna be as if you didn't hear what they said. Answer the challenge that they're having and show them the tools that you are using to answer that challenge. Focus on the ongoing relationship, not the price. All right, there's a caveat here. Yes, you have to charge them. But my husband always tells me don't trip over dimes to get dollars. So, and I think it's so true. You will need to make concessions to build a long-term relationship sometimes with clients. And I think that that's okay. It shouldn't average out at the end of the year. Sometimes you might wanna throw in an extra moth up. I'm just gonna make up examples or an extra page template because you know that there's a phase two, a phase three, a phase four of that project coming. You're negotiating, essentially. And it's okay to do that if you can handle it. Right, if you can handle that overhead. And secondly, at the end of the year, it needs to, you still need to be profitable overall with all of your projects. You must demonstrate value. This has nothing to do with price. Why are you the best at what you do? And why can you do for that client something better than anyone else can? I love paint discoveries. I will try to sell it as much as I possibly can. It is, to me, the best thing ever. You're working with a client. They have a big project. The time that it's gonna take you to really dive into that project and get them an estimate that they need, you should be compensated for. You're going to have to do discovery regardless of the client. Why not isolate it from the project to get all the information that you can to give your client an accurate and thorough estimate so that you can then move forward on the project. I think paid discoveries for big projects are a great option. It allows you to do wireframes. It allows you to do mock-up, site maps. All those things that I know you always want to do when you're estimating the project, but you're not able to because there has to, you need to get the job in to get the money. Just make discovery and don't think. Again, I think that this is a great option. Clients appreciate it. And what happens during that discovery session is you make magic and you can really put together a more detailed, thorough proposal. Deliver the proposal in person if that's an option. Again, I love sitting with people. I like, if I'm able to, I will tell the client, hey, I have your proposal ready. We jump on a Zoom call, I'd love to walk through it and then I'll send it after our call, I'll send it to you. But if I can take that opportunity to walk through the proposal with a client on Zoom or in person before they see it, I could wrangle all of their questions about the proposal immediately, address them. Immediately answer them so that when they get to the price, their questions have been answered and it makes it a lot easier. Gather your team again. If you can show up in droves, it shows that you have support of your team and that as a whole, the team is excited about the project. Get in here. Guys, this is my dog. He speaks into every presentation. That's Frankie, you can follow him on Instagram. And there he is with the real Wapu that came out of our camp. That's one of his favorite tours. One of my favorite books ever is by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's called The Four Agreements. It is not a sales book by any stretch, but to me it's one of the most important books you can read when you're dealing with people. It has four very important roles. Be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions and always do your best. These are the four principles that I try, my hardest to live by every day, especially when I'm representing my company to clients. My tips for success, don't multitask. You're on the phone with a client being present, be on the phone. Engage with people that are around you with the cell phone down when you can so that you can continue to engage, multitasking, it has been proven it is not effective. Choose your words wisely when you are speaking with somebody, take action when you can. Be seen and be heard. Use a CRM to keep your contacts organized. I use Prosperworks, which is a Google product. I love it, it integrates directly to e-mail. Stay informed on as much as you possibly can, especially within your industry. A role that I live by every day, if a task takes two minutes to complete, do it right now. That is really important with answering e-mails. If you get an e-mail and you're not able to respond to the e-mail in its entirety, it's okay to say, hey, I got this, I just want you to acknowledge that I received this. I'm gonna give you a more thorough answer tonight. Don't let them sit in your inbox. Acknowledge people when they take the time to reach out to you. Track and measure your results so that you can see your progress and celebrate your wins. These are just 10 minutes left and I wanna get to questions. Some things that I found to be true about relationships. You know, you will get tired. Take care of yourself. Never stop learning and I will share these slides with you. Say thank you when you can. And these are the resources that I used in putting this presentation together. I mentioned some of them, Daniel Pink Game Storming. There's a great blog post that I have up here from DevWP on seven reasons why you should avoid estimates. I think that that's great. Web Dev Studios is the company website and it is about DevCom is my blog and my mom loves that too. So I highly recommend reading it. Thank you guys, I'd love to do some questions. Any questions you have to use the mic though, that's the caveat, the one in the middle of the aisle. No questions? Oh wait, you have one, thank you. I still have a lot more to say. What are your, let's say top three questions that when your filters are using an RFP, so when do you respond to RFPs? When do you respond? How do you determine if it's a good one? That's a really great question. And I could probably give a whole talk of that to be honest with you. I think that RFPs are most beneficial when you have also another connection to the organization or the company. Somehow, you went to a networking event, you met somebody from the university, you've got their RFP and you can leverage that relationship. Oftentimes when organizations are sending RFPs out, they are sending out to companies that they already know or have some relationship with and it's hard to kind of like break through unless you're coming in obviously as the lower bidder, lowest bidder. And no one wants to really do that, right? You don't want to be the lowest unless you can afford to and that's a totally different story. But I definitely think of finding another connection to the institution, business organization and leverage that to get more information and make an introduction to the people who are administering the RFP. This is where your network is vital, right? Like your network is everything. So if I'm lucky I've met someone or know somebody that knows somebody that's involved with that, that I can kind of filter through that. I use LinkedIn a lot to do that. I like to stay in touch with people. If I'm talking to a client and like let's say they mentioned to me that they're a Patreon spam, I'll make a note of that in my CRM and interesting article comes up about the Patriots. Instead of reaching out to the client about sales, I'll reach out to the client and say, hey, saw this article, thought of you, thought you'd enjoy it, have a great weekend, no call to action, no nothing. It's just a touch point with that particular client so they know I'm thinking about them. And again, just building that relationship. Any other questions? Go again, one more. What's your name? Scarlett. Scarlett. I have a real hard time with the customers and their expectations of pricing. Yeah, and I was wondering if you had preferred pricing models you know why or in terms of also like do you get a down payment on the product, you know, do you have some suggestions in that area? I don't know necessarily what your business model is so I'm going to speak what I think would be an ideal situation but again, it's important to do what's best for you. Yes, always get a down payment. Always, always, always. It's just a sign of good faith. Whatever you want that to be said at, you'll have to determine from your operational goals. I like the retainer system exactly to avoid those pitfalls that you may get into with an estimate. And as I mentioned, I'm a big fan of doing the discovery upfront so that you can come to a more accurate estimate. You have to determine your hourly rate for all the areas of developing a project. For project management, to design, to development, to maybe advanced backend development. What is your hourly rate for those different things? And you start building on the tasks for the project and you know my method is low and high for each particular task and I end up going with the average for the estimate. So I like that system of estimating low and high for each task and coming up with the average to give the client because some, you know it's gonna balance out at the end of the project. So if you have to come up with an estimate, I would highly recommend doing that and start tracking how much time it is taking you to do tasks. So you know if every project you do has a contact form, document how much time each of those forms took and the average is what you typically spend on the contact form. So the next client that comes along who has one, you can say, I know data showed me history has proven on average it takes me 10 hours to build out a contact form for a website. I feel confident giving an estimate for that particular task. It is time consuming, it's certainly not easy and I don't really believe that anyone has the definitive answer on how to price a project yet. If you do, please talk to me. But I think we can get there. I think data is what's really crucial in that. Any other questions? Yeah, Jessica. Hi, Johanna. When you set up a retainer system with clients, is that set like a certain number of hours, like you know, you pay me this amount and you have about the 10 hours of my time or whatever and whether they use them or not or like kind of how is that structured? Is there a rollover? Yeah, just have you. So I think one of the best, the ideal situation is is you find out how many hours you want to allocate to the project per month. Let's say it is 10, right? In the beginning of that month, you're project managing and you're planning, you're forecasting, you're coming up with a priority list of what you want to use those 10 hours on, right? And so at the beginning of the month before you've even jumped into it, you should have accounted already for that work. You should have planned accordingly. And you're not gonna get into a situation where you're saying, you know, I'm gonna use random numbers here. Let's say the entire project is 20, you're not gonna say, well, you need 60 hours a month, right? You know, generally speaking, on average, what a monthly amount of hours would be good. I don't love rollover. I think it kind of gets you into, it's just like a lawyer, right? You put a lawyer or a retainer, you have his availability for X amount of time per month. It really is the same idea. But again, you know, in your situation, you really wanna build a relationship with that client and they're kind of unsure and they're wavering about their specifications. So you say, you know, okay, we're gonna give you 100 hours over six months. Let's figure out how we're going to use them for the next six months and you forecast ahead. That might be okay for your situation. Any other questions? We're done. Thank you everybody, it was a pleasure.