 Hi everybody, thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate you all showing up to listen to me speak. My name is Tara Johnson, and I own a design agency, a web design and marketing agency in Concord, Massachusetts. We work with small businesses to amplify brand awareness, boost online activity, and visibility, and increase engagement. In other words, we serve as a sort of virtual marketing department for a lot of our clients. So to kick this thing off, how many people are here are parents to tiny humans? Show of hands. Awesome. Anyone familiar with tiny humans? Great. I have come to realize that kids and clients are really similar. I would say the main differences might include having clients might have a slightly better vocabulary, hopefully a longer attention span, and their shoots are normally tied, unlike this guy up here. So these, of course, are my two kids. I have Henry on the left. He's eight, and Matthew on the right. He's five, and they spend a lot of time harassing and wrangling her chickens. So here's the thing. Clients and kids, they need a lot of managing of expectations. We have to keep them focused. And I would say the most important of all is they just want to know they're special. They want to know that you're taking care of them. They want to make sure that you have your best interest at heart. And that, I think, is the very center of your client relationship. You've been hired to provide some direction and semblance of order to your clients. We all seek comfort in order. We all want to know, as my kids say, mama, what's next? We want to know what's next. We want to make sure that there is a plan that's been put in place. And so that is essentially your job, is to provide information and to provide a plan, whether or not your client's election utilize that information. It isn't a different story, but it's good to have that there. So before jumping right into managing clients and, of course, blowing them away with your awesomeness, I'd first like to talk about putting a system in place for qualifying your leads. So what is a lead qualifier? A lead qualifier is basically a boundary or series of groups for your prospects to jump through that allows you to determine whether they are, in fact, a viable prospect. If you don't take the time to qualify your leads, you're going to waste a bunch of time, which I have done plenty of. So up here, you see it's maybe a little bit difficult to see, but this is my website worksheet intake form. This is what I use as one of my primary lead qualifiers. This is, of course, on my site, it's a live web page. And it's obvious it's actually a series of five pages, so it's actually quite lengthy. I'm able to gather some key information from them. And I'm able to figure out if they're willing to follow my process. I want to talk about budget upfront as well. So at the very bottom here, where you see the orange button, there's a range. There's a budget range, and it starts at $5,000. So it goes 5K to 10K, and it goes up from there. So immediately out of the gate, any prospect understands that we don't build a website for less than 5K. And that's all right. So we're able to get that out, it's clear, and then we're not wasting any of this time. And it's also nice to know. So if you get pushed back on something like this, it's obviously a red flag, right? If they're already giving you a hard time about having this hoop to jump through, you know that that might not be a great relationship. There are a number of ways that you can set this up. I made it a little bit fancy. So this is gravity forms on my website, but you can do this with a PDF. You can put together a word doc, send it in the mail, fax it, whatever you want to do. You just want to put this in place and make sure that you're expecting something from your client out the gate to sort of gauge their level of interest and willingness to work with you. And quickly, I just want to give credit where credit is due. This is not my idea. I got this from a gentleman by the name of Troy Dean of WP Elevation. Is anyone familiar with that program? Right, so WP Elevation really quickly is just, it's a series of courses that are online. It helps you kind of gain clarity and put some processes in place around your business. Troy is a really lovely human. He's become a friend of mine and he's a mentor. And this is one of the things that I've implemented into my business and it's helped me work tremendously. So once you've gotten that worksheet back from your client, now it's time to sort of sit with it and see what you think. So I have an internal client scorecard that I use. No one else sees this but myself and my team. This takes three minutes to fill out and there are three primary categories in which I'm judging the potential project. I'm judging on the budget, the project itself and respect. And it's simply on a scale of one to five. So starting at the top, the budget, do they have money? Are they trying to do something that they're trying to build a 10K site with $1,000? So where do they land there? Secondly, the project itself. Is it interesting? Are they gonna give you creative freedom? Is it gonna open doors in the future? Is it a good portfolio builder? Is it super boring of the project or the budget is amazing? And then lastly, probably the most important one for myself is the respect piece. I'm not sure if any of you have had this problem before but I've had pushback from clients, I've had interesting interactions out the gate that just doesn't sit well with me. And particularly if they're not willing to meet me where I am and respect our process, it's a no-go. So you bat these puppies up, three to six is a no, seven to 11 is a maybe, and 12 to 15 is a pretty solid yes. So before we jump into communicating and managing our clients, I'd like to first talk about making the pitch, getting the business and gaining your client's trust. So first and foremost, whether it's by way of a proposal or a pitch that you're making to your client, I highly recommend that you make sure that all of the decision makers are in the room. So anyone who has anything to do with signing that check, you want them in the room. I will if there is a meeting that's coming along and I'm there and I'm prepared and I'm ready to rock and I show up and two or three people are there. Number three decided to go on a golf vacation. I'll say, it's really nice to meet you guys. I think we need to reschedule. Let's get another meeting on the books and that maybe sounds a little bit harsh, but I think it's really important that they respect my time as much as I respect their time. When you get into that room, you want to appeal to the emotional brain. They first and foremost need to decide if you're their friend. We don't, our brains do not like salespeople. We need to make an emotional connection first. So that's our right brain. That's our emotional brain. And in order for them to really absorb your tech information and getting into the nitty gritty of the project, you need to break through that emotional barrier first. And you also want to make sure that you're speaking their language. You're speaking the language of their industry and their niche in particular. So make sure that you do your homework and stay within your client's shoes, right? And really speak to their pain points. The brain has a very short attention span getting worse and worse all the time. So once they've decided they like you hopefully and you've made nice and you've done some high fives and some hugging, get to the nitty gritty of the thing. And the best way to resonate with your client is to gear your information to what's in it for them, right? You need to appeal to their right brain first, as I mentioned, by connecting the dots and appealing to their needs, their goals, their concerns and opportunities that will arise once they start working with you. Once you've gotten that emotional brain's attention, you can get right into the problem solving and their pain points. And you're more likely to have their full attention once you've appealed to their right brain. And you want to focus on the results because that's the point, right? You're going to get them results. You're going to increase their ROI. You're going to boost visibility. Whatever that is, make sure that you're speaking to that thing that they're hoping to achieve by working with you. Now you got the gig ready. Time to party. Time to hit the bar with your colleagues. But before you do that, I strongly suggest that you get your contracts in place. Make sure that they're crystal clear. Leave no stone unturned. Trust me, if something bad is going to happen, it will happen if it's not in your contract. I've learned the hard way and I say, go meet up with the lawyer, make nice, get it done and then you have it. Into the view you have it moving forward. So you want to cover things like payment terms, copyrights, required sign-offs, all of that stuff. Just get it done and you'll be happy you did. And you also want to get very clear on your process, right? So are you going to be using some sort of project management application or are you going to be inviting them in on that internal structure, which could be dangerous? Make sure that you have a handle on that. And if there is in fact a learning curve, you might want to put a video together for them. Some sort of video tutorial. One thing that I tend to use quite a lot is loom.com, L-O-O-M. And so that allows me to walk through a process like this is how you use the Google or this is how you use Dropbox. And they can see my face and they can see my screen and you can share it with the link and it's free and it's amazing. Okay, so this is the onboarding. This is a document of the very first piece of information that I will send to my clients once they've signed on for a new project. This document sets the tone, of course. It gives them that comfort that they are being well taken care of. We have a plan, we're putting that plan into place. We've got their back, right? So this is going to cover how they can best reach us if there's a project management tool that they need to be mindful of. It also sets, and this is really important, general expectations around feedback and revisions. How many of you have had revisions go on for months and months, right? So, sorry, excuse me. One thing that I've tried very hard to do is we're doing two rounds of revisions, gather all of that information and all of your thoughts and feedback, and you're gonna send that to me in one document or one email. That's it, okay? You gotta keep your email free of craziness. Okay, this is just gonna suck all the life out of you. I also like to put other things in here, like web care. So that is recurring revenue that we implement and I need my customers to be very aware that they're going to go on this care plan and here's some of the information because once you've built a site, that's when the work really begins. And then, oh, and then there's also other key information that you can be gathering from them straight away. So once you get this document out, it's in their hands and they have this to refer to into the future. Then you can ask them for Google login information. You need all of the WordPress dashboard goodies, their C panel, whatever it is, all of that housekeeping stuff, do it straight away because once you need it, someone's gonna disappear and you're not gonna get that information. So get it straight away. I have a good friend who has set up a portal on his website to gather this information. It's secure, he'll receive it via a secured email. Looks fancy, I think it's a fantastic idea. I've not done it yet, but I will someday. Okay, so getting into the deadlines, benchmarks, and expectations, as I said in the beginning, clients are kinda like kids and they want explicit parameters and guidelines. They need to know what's next. They wanna make sure you're working on the thing. So here is an example of a very simple timeline that I put together for a web project. You'll see that it's broken down into four steps. I have quite a few additional steps now, but again, this is a very simple web build. This informs them that content is due at the very beginning, right? So it's a little tough for you guys to see, but on the left, the very first column, sitemap and interactive prototype is due. Content is also due. The second one is the proposed design that also takes a required sign off. Web development, which is the build itself and then the launch, testing and then the launch. There are dates at the bottom and they know what to expect. I also require, as I mentioned before, digital sign offs at every single stage and I use a tool called HelloSign and it's amazing. HelloSign, H-E-L-L-O-S-I-G-N dot com. And these, so they can make digital sign offs. You can see when they've opened the document, you can save templates and they're all legally binding. It's awesome. And then this also hopefully motivates them to keep things moving from there and as well so you can complete the project in a timely manner. So in general, I would highly urge everyone here to consider integrating the following into their process. One thing that I try very hard to do is to under promise and over deliver. That is within respect to timelines in particular. So I like to be very generous and kind to myself and to my team. So I look very hard at the timeline itself so that if there's a lot of buffer that's built around it, at the very least, we will be on time but most of the time we're gonna totally kick ass in terms of the time. We're gonna deliver early and then it'll be blown away. We also like to send weekly updates via email. You wanna make sure that you're keeping your clients engaged and that they know you're doing stuff because there's so many horror stories out there of their dev team disappearing. We all like to get the job and sit at our computer and do the thing but I think weekly updates and it does not need to be complicated. It could be three simple lines. Tasks completed, incoming tasks, what we need from the client. Done. Email per view, that's another one that's really has become quite important to me is that my clients need to understand that when they send me an email, they will hear from me within 24 hours. That's all I can guarantee. I can't be shifting gears constantly and digging through email. I also do not email on the weekends and we also have a dedicated support email that they can do support at Alchemy 3 and they can get in touch with someone if it is an emergency. If I do find time on the weekends to write emails, I will schedule those to go out Monday morning. I will not send emails to my clients on the weekend. That's gonna set a precedent and that's gonna spiral out of control really fast. Dormant clause. I was here, I think it was WordCamp last year, maybe the year before and someone mentioned putting a dormant clause in place. Do you guys know what a dormant clause is? It's the best. Okay, sorry if I could close. So what that does is in my contracts, I state if I do not hear from you in 10 days, if you go tell me, some people go on vacation, right? And you'll let me know they're on vacation, that's fine. But if a client goes dark, which happens because life happens and stuff, I totally get it. If it goes up to 10 days and I haven't heard from you, the project goes on hold and you will have to pay me X amount of dollars to reinstate that project. I know that that sounds harsh and a little bit hardcore, but they need to, we're all running businesses. We all have work that's worth, we have valuable people and businesses and we have families that we need to support and there needs to be that mutual respect, right? So time that I'm waiting on them for say content or sign-offs, that's time that's taken away from me and from other valuable clients. Content is the vein of every web designer's existence. As I mentioned in the beginning, I've had projects go on for literally years. Has anyone else had that problem or is it just me? Thank you for helping me feel better. So as we all know, going back to the contract, make sure that the content collection is essential. If you don't receive it, you could say, we're gonna continue with the builds, we're gonna implement dummy copy. We've already, we've managed our side of the deal. And you don't need to be unpleasant about it, right? You've given them lots of heads up, you've tried to work with them. You could always hire a copywriter, put that into place, right? And SEO-savvy copywriter, you could build that into the quote. Another idea, which I think is really great, is running a content planning workshop. That is maybe a one-off that you could put together for them, you could recognize that they're really struggling with it and offer to sit down yourself, a writer, camera it out, get the sign off done, and then complete, you can check that off of your list. So there is an awful lot of hand-holding, right? We all are very familiar with that. But they need structure, right? We all need structure, and they're looking to you for that structure. So I'm gonna show you a couple tools for collecting content. These are all free, and these are all likely tools you are well aware of. Your clients need a safe space to put their things, and it's important that it does not go in your inbox because then it's just gonna disappear, it's gonna fall through the cracks, it just gets messy so quickly. So here, of course, is Dropbox, our friend that we all know and love. I will send my links, and my links, my clients links to a Dropbox that I've organized ahead of time, and I think it's very simple. So here you can see it's organized by pages, contact services, home, about, keeps your inbox nice and clean, and then you can also leave comments in the sidebar if that's a conversation that needs to happen, then it's still away from the inbox. Also, Google Docs is great for this as well because you can put it into community mode. There's collaboration that can happen, so that's also pretty handy. You could put a Trello board together. This is something that I just recently started doing. A friend of mine, Simon Kelly, showed this concept to me, and I think it's brilliant. So I have a couple clients that have purchased time blocks with me, which means, you know, they say they purchase 25 hours, and they're looking to me to check a few things off of their list, but they like to do emailing me. They love emailing me three times a day, and so what Simon suggested that I do is invite them to a Trello board, keep it very simple. On the left column, this is the wish list. This is the brain dump. This is where you put all the things, right? They think of something, they want to email you. No, it goes here, right? Middle column is in progress, so they can see what I'm actively working on for my team. And then the last column, of course, is complete. These are the tasks that we have completed. What I, my preferred mode of working right now with some of these clients is that we have this board. I give them an update at the end of each week, and then we have a set very, very fast recurring meeting at the beginning of the week, so say 10 or 15 minutes, where we chat about prioritization. What are we working on? What do I need to hammer out this week? And that's it, and then I don't need to hear from you guys. I'm gonna go away and do the thing. You'll hear from me at the end of the week. So if they have something that they need to get off of their chest, they can do it here. If they're curious as to what we're working on, they can see it here. Okay, so now, how am I doing? How am I doing on time? I'm doing okay. Now that you have a system for collecting what you need from the client, now you need to establish regular points of contact. My brain is already shutting down. Because we all know if you leave a client hanging, they're destined to stray. Something shiny is gonna show up, right? Someone's gonna offer something way cheaper. You know, they're gonna think someone has danced. So you just wanna make sure that you're paying some attention to them, that you think they're really special and awesome. So be thinking about how you can add value to your clients. Maybe surprise your clients, especially your top clients, right? You don't need to do this for everyone. Let's be honest, you have your regular retainer clients that are really keeping the ship afloat. So you can't be everything to everyone. So think about the people that you would love to clone, right? You'd love to have more of this particular client and do what you can to infuse as much value as possible. So I'm gonna give you a couple of suggestions for ongoing value ads. Webinars, you could run, say, monthly webinars where you're showing, you know, maybe running a strategy call that could be a group call for your VIP clients. You could put together a client dashboard. So for instance, if you are, if you have a client where you're managing their social media accounts or you take your doing SEO and you're keeping an eye on Google Analytics, you can give them a place to see everything, right? They can check in and see where you're at, how they're gauging, what's the level of engagement. You know, they can see those things on a nice dashboard. You could use something like Cyphe, Cyphe.com. You could factor in consultation calls and check-ins, right? You could call them out of the blue and say, hey, I was thinking about X, Y, and Z. Maybe we could implement this into your business. And then you could also try a closed Facebook group for your key clients, your most important clients. You could build a little community around your business and that extra value that you're providing to keep the conversation going. So the project is finished, your clients are super pumped, party time. You built a website and your customers are thrilled. You've increased online sales by 120%. It's amazing. So whatever the case, now is the time to strike while the iron is hot. So before you go party and brag to people about your success, I would get it while it gets good and ask that client for a review. Now testimonials are great, you can ask for those as well, but reviews, that's where it really, really matters. This is, you want to reach out, you want to send them to places, legitimate places like Google and Facebook, whatever, pick your poison. You want to work this ass into your process, right? So once you've completed the project, everyone is happy, they are singing your praises. Hey, would you mind filling this out and sharing your thoughts? And then, you know what, you can use, you can use those reviews as your testimonials. It doesn't need to be two separate asses. And then you're also boosting your visibility online as well. And then in turn, you can ask them if they're looking for referrals. Who are your ideal clients? What can I do for you? Are you looking for more people? I know a lot of people, I'd love to have a chat with them about the services you provide. And that's it, guys, that's all I got. Thank you very much. This slide deck is of course at the bottom, if you guys want to comment on that. I don't know if there's any. 15 minutes for questions. Oh, okay, anyone have questions? I went faster than I thought. Okay, yeah. In your dormant clause, that fee that you charge, is that a restart fee? Can you come up to the mic, actually? In your dormant clause, the fee that you charge, is that just the remainder of the project fees, or is that a restart fee that's additional to what you already agreed on? Good question. So in the contract itself, I mentioned the dormant clause. So it's there when they sign on initially. I like to make it very clear and highlight that in the beginning. If the project does end up going on polls, then I will charge them. I'm struggling with the fee a little bit now, you guys. I'm gonna say $500 for now. I'm thinking about boosting it up to a thousand. But that's just, if they go dark, I will send them reminder emails. I need to hear from you. This is in your contract. And then it goes on hold. It goes to the back of the queue. And then for them to reinstate it. So that is a good question about the remaining amount of money that's due. They also owe that to you as well, to be perfectly honest, because that should also be in your contract. Is anybody else? So right, so the question is, what was the video cast tool that I mentioned? And that is L-O-O-M dot com. Loom, and it's free, and it's fantastic. Yes, sir. What's your take on website maintenance after you've totally finished with the client and where did you proceed from there? Okay, so the question is, what is my take on website maintenance? It's super important. So, we have three tiers of what maintenance. You can cruise over to my site and take a look. It's on the left-hand side bar. So, but I'm not sure what you mean by take, but our approach is we have a recurring monthly fee for backing up the website, for maintaining the updates of plugins, or just keeping an eye on the over, we install uptime robots, and we know that if the site's gone down, we know how to do it for how long, we keep an eye on the optimization of the images and the speed of the site, all of those things, but there's various tiers, and then there's also support timelines factored into that. So, our first tier is 30 minutes, second tier is an hour, third tier is something that no one ever buys. It's like dual or something. So that's built into the contract before you start the project? So, that is an option for them to sign on. I don't like, I really don't force them to sign on to web care. I give them a really hard sell, but the thing is if they don't sign on, and then they encounter issues later, which is sure to happen, then they have to pay X and hour dollars for a website audit, because it's been out in the wild. I have no idea what's happened to it. So then if they change their mind, that's an additional key to onboard to move to this care. But I educate them throughout the process, and I make sure that they're aware of web care and that it is essential. Yes, sir. Your advice on saying that you will have a problem if it's not in the contract, right? So the question is, how much of the do-it-stake do you want to be, do you put all those on the mind and say that unless you agree you don't move to the next page, or who do you draw that line? Okay, so are you, okay, so the question is around, I think contracts, is this around the sign-offs that I mentioned? Oh, yes, sign-off. Okay, right, so it does tend to be a very linear process at the moment, so right, the next part of the process will not happen unless there is a sign-off. Something could come up, they might change their mind, clients like to change their minds a lot, and I make that very clear that if you're not pleased with where this is going, or if maybe something else has come up, let's talk about it, I'll be happy to scope that out and give you a quote, but this is not what we scoped out originally, and that's gonna be an extra cost. But in order to complete project A, these sign-offs need to happen, and if there's more revisions, that's also an extra, that's also an extra fee. So yes, those things are in my contracts in the beginning. Anybody else questions? Yes? Do you hand hold your clients through the contract, or do you just send them to them and wait for them? That's a really good question. So subtle. I love to put them in a chair and I give them snacks, and I stroke their face and I sing to them very softly. I sit down with them, I do, I like to sit down and go through the contract with my clients so that it is crystal clear. I'm not trying to pull a fast one on anybody, and I let them know exactly what's happening, and I try very hard to keep the verbiage understandable. There is a really nice structure, it's called Killer Contracts by Andy Clark. I don't know how I remember that. And it's, you know, you can reach out to me and I'll give you the link, but it's very like clear and kind of cheeky and very straightforward, and that's a really nice baseline for these kinds of templates. Anyone else? Yes. Hi. So you mentioned earlier that you are, you're doing like this, you're selling a block of time. Yes. It's your clients, like how does that look? Is it like, no matter what you can say, I want to add some Madsense work done, or is there anything? Right. That's a good question. So there are, there's a certain scope of things that they can use that time block for, so that's usually around strategy, website updates, maybe a little bit of content, which means I'll hire a writer and just build them for the time. If it's, so I'm a photographer as well, and I also do brand design. So those are very different animals, and those kinds of things would not be included in the time blocks. But the way that I do the time blocks, I don't like charging nitty grid, I don't like doing per hour necessarily. So I like to say I will sell you, it's a five hour, I mean, it's still by hours, it's a five hour minimum, right? So let's say it's 675, I haven't looked at my pricing in a little while. And it goes all the way up to 25 hours, and there's a percentage, there's a discount that's factored in. And if you want to hear, I'd be happy to talk to you more about the time blocks afterwards. Oh, there's a woman here, and then can you just go now, sorry, I'm sorry, she has a mic. Hi, in terms of website maintenance or care, we manage websites for businesses and we're adding to their blog on a continual basis. Do you do anything like that? If so, if not, how's the best way to get content from them for these ongoing blogs? If you can recommend anything? I hire. I like to, God, content, man, it's the worst. Okay, so to answer your question about the maintenance piece, I don't have any blogging that's included in the maintenance piece, it's very bare bones. The support time that they're paying for per month is, you know, switching out images, update, give them sending content and me updating it. It's usually really simple things. But I also, we do some social media management as well and we have various packages that factor in content generation, a number of, you know, how many blogs per month, is it one a week, is it one a month, and then I have writers that I work with on various levels, just depending on what the package is, and then we work together and we also try to gauge how much the client wants to be involved, right? So we try to factor that in and kind of customize the package for them, I hope I don't switch your question. Yes, no, we can talk afterwards too if I didn't do it before. Yes? Since a lot of times we're small companies and we're potentially selling to larger organizations that have accounts receivable and accounts payable departments, since cash is always king, cash flow. What I always did is I, right on the contract, I put a line, it says PO number, get a purchase order number assigned at before the contract was signed so that when you bill, you could pay it in a timely fashion. That's an excellent suggestion. And then the other thing is on the onboarding meeting we were reviewing the initial project plan, I put great big bold letters, one a payment is due. Yeah. So that when we complete this, if you sign off, I'm gonna bill you and you're gonna pay me in five days or whatever. Yeah, and if it's delinquent, we're gonna charge you some money for that. So I put it right in the contract and right in the project plan because you've got the finance department doesn't know what the buyer was, what the marketing department want, you know, you got all these different people, the three or four decision makers. Right. And once they have your initial meeting, they are talking to one another. And this all affects your cash flow. Absolutely. That's right. That's right. And we're running businesses, people, right? Like we have families that we're trying to support as well and it's important to have that mutual respect and it's good to sort of nip it in the mud straight away. Those are good suggestions. Thank you. Hi. Do you have a way of managing the use of these time blocks? Can I go back to the time block idea? If someone purchases like 25 hours or whatever and you have other projects going on and things like that, can they just say, oh, here's 10 hours worth of things to do? Or do you kind of...