 Alright, so this is essentially written from an agency's perspective. I own a small agency here in Singapore. So it's written from that, but it can kind of be applied to anything, right? Anything that you want to systemise and either outsource or just make sure that people are accountable for different actions along a certain process. Something that changed for my business a couple of years ago was essentially putting everything down on paper and having a proper system in a process for first getting client leads in and making sure that they were viable and we could work with them and they weren't just wasting our time or just going for the lowest price that they could find but also once you have them as in a client what to do with them to make sure that they feel confident throughout the whole process. So that's me. I've been in Singapore a fair while. Went to school here then came back and started this agency about eight years ago now, so it's been going pretty good. So like I was saying, so having systems and processes for dealing with common issues will help you grow your business. Using an onboarding process to set the stage to position yourself as an expert once the sales process is finished will be really important to help the client feel at ease and that you have everything under control and looking after their best interests. So the first 48 hours are essentially most important once they've had a look through your proposal, they've signed your proposal, signed your contract, sent through the deposit and then they're ready to go, right? How do you they usually ask what's next and if you don't have an answer for them then that all automatically makes you feel a bit silly, so you know you need to really start out with that trust and to figure out sort of the main issues that pop up through every project because a lot of them are the same, right? Who has the hosting details? Who has the domain details? What kind of format is your logo in? Is it a vector file? Do we need to convert it from a crappy JPEG file to a vector? Do you have fonts or branding guidelines and where are they? You know a lot of things like this It's really handy to have up front. What type of content do you have? Do you have a sitemap ready to go? So it's good to have a lot of this information up front and Not just kind of jump straight into design, which is essentially what I used to do So what's next? So they signed your proposal and they've paid the deposit because we always get a deposit upfront So when I first started ChilliBin, I was interested in just helping people get online The business side of it really came much later because I didn't really think It would turn into a business is something I started on the side Because I had a few websites to do So eight years later, it's still going and I finally put some business acumen behind it So if I'd known that back at the time Hopefully things would have gone a lot smoother. So Yeah, I would just wouldn't have had the disaster projects that we've had over the time But because I've had them it's been able to learn and make sure that systems and processes are better Then they used to be in a not perfect definitely not perfect and most things are still a work in progress But we're getting there So typically doing a new project would come in deposit was paid I would jump in with both feet and either start Start designing straight away and dump kind of whatever project I may have been working at at the time because new and shiny and you know things are always better Rather than delving through lines of code that I you know couldn't fix So there's no process and no structure for any type of success. I was reactionary And poorly managed my time Some email would come in jump straight on it Get lost in it and then five hours later We'd break for the day with you know with nothing actually done. So I Designed straight on the browser and filled the side with dummy content stock imagery got it back to the client as soon as possible Only to find out, you know things like the end of the project. They didn't have enough Content they had way too much content to fill that design They assumed that I'd be searching and licensing all their fonts and images as part of the project Then when you go to set the website live, they send it through to the CEO who absolutely hates it You know things like that. We've been good to know at the initial design phase rather than as you're about to launch Nobody had the domain register information name servers with the previous company that pop three email Hosted on the server, you know all this stuff that the last thing you want on a Friday afternoon To discover as you try and set as a website live So having a proper onboarding process you can provide your client with a comfortable feeling throughout that whole process And like I was saying the first 48 hours will help, you know We'll help you feel better and make the customer feel better and that these guys have their shit together So the first 48 hours, I mean how how people managing this at the moment how responsive are you? Does it take a full day to welcome your client after they've signed the contract and paid the invoice? Do you jump on it straight away like me and forget other projects? Do you currently working on that are giving you problems or do you have shiny object syndrome? And just we'll kind of jump on anything else So are you personal in your communication and how are you setting that tone with the client? How are you setting the stage to talk to the client over the first couple of months? So you generally would have a sales slick a Slick sales process and you've sold them on how awesome you are and then all the problems you're going to solve for them Don't let yourself down then once they become a customer It's much easier to get repeat sales from that existing customer and much cheaper than it is to go out and sign a completely New customer so look after them because you've done the hard work already and having a slick system will make it easier For that as well because you know your shit So we've all in consistency and expectations, right? So we've all encountered issues in a project that are pretty much impossible to avoid Midway through the project you got scope creep the client disappears prefer to have daily phone calls Meetings with each of their departments. You have multiple points of contact with the company And all of them are providing conflicting information Where do you draw the line and how do you get focused on actually delivering the business goals that they came to you for anyway? So the processes go both ways the less stress that you have and the less stress they feel the smoother the whole web design and development process will be The more likely they also will be to refer you to their friends and colleagues because I've had such a great experience working with you on the project Because when something does go wrong you have a system in a process Around that and it becomes very business-like so you're not reacting to anything because you've seen it all before As well you have it all Documentated which means you can grow your team and then you can outsource or hand off that To another team member or assistant So what issues do you repeatedly have with your customers? What happened in your last five projects if you can work that out and go through each of your five projects last recent five Projects and work out kind of what went wrong what went right and you can document that in terms of Decreasing the chance of this becoming a problem in future Or is there something you can write out and save as a template? Save as a canned response in Google Gmail Text expander one of the other tools on your project management software What issues are coming up every project and what are the biggest frustrations that your customer will have? With the process of building a website Are you documenting and addressing issues that come up to from project to project? So you're always improving if not I Guarantee your your competitors are because I sure am so Like I was saying before about logos and not transparent a pixelated JPEG from 2000 and no vectors someone sourced 25 photos from Google images and team photos Have been sourced from LinkedIn and aren't consistent to have a clear background with consistent lighting So add all this information to a document or a follow-up email and save them and send them through at the start of the project so that So that they know exactly what you require from them and what they have to prepare for you in terms of Getting this stuff together so you can build Exactly what they need And do they know what's next right? So if you don't have an answer for that and doesn't really leave a very good feeling with your client We have a basic welcome page that once people sign up for they go to that welcome page It's just a small page on our website Includes the project process our onboarding documents and checklists how to book a discovery call to go through everything And how to book something in our calendar if we're building an e-commerce site Then we have specific documents around that with building your product spreadsheets and that type of thing a Good idea and something we'll probably end up doing is a little welcome video. Just host that on something personal Add that on Vimeo YouTube and just embed it to the page We also have a secondary step where we collect content for the clients and this is probably the hardest initial step because People just don't realize that they need all the content upfront So we don't we try not to start any design until we have finalized content or as close to finalized content as possible because You know, you may design a site or a home page That requires maybe 300 words a text and then once you finally get their content They might have 50 words and they might have 5,000 words that they're trying to crab onto a page So I mean having all these processes helps you establish yourself as a consultant and kind of someone that they can come to to make Make their business and target audience needs Come to life rather than doing that themselves on weeks or square space So and if the client can't figure out something then you can provide them with the right amount of information For example, if they don't know how to get the right information from go data You can have a little snippet that they can send to tech support and that type of thing or the little value ads Then make you more valuable throughout the whole process So people feel much better when they're led down a garden path rather than And you become an important part of their business You can anticipate their needs because you've worked with them closely and you know what's coming next Because you've done it all before so you end up helping people Clients will always have questions. Just make sure you have the answers so I run through a little bit about kind of what we do for our process or We use a piece of software called process Street And that's kind of a little bit of an overview. I don't know how easy that is to see but I'll run through it kind of page by page, but essentially we load this whole process in and our project manager Follows this process and kind of checks off checkbox by checkbox as you go through a certain thing so At the introduction we collect some client information click some web server hosting information Do let me just copy these Yep So clients All right, so introduction we collect some client information. That's you know basic name Email address and who the primary content for contact for the project is going to be we collect the web server and the hosting information Go through we do a client set up and welcome email getting started what we need From the client throughout the process and that just helps kind of position ourselves And make sure that they come back to us with all the right content We set up a contract and get that uploaded into our project management software Set up the accounting and send them the deposit and then duplicate a project within our project management software And set up a slack channels and invite our team members so we can communicate around that project and it's all in one area and not getting lost On a thousand different emails We then go through and do a discovery meeting So we send through email agenda and things like that. So We run through here. So as I say I had all this already Yeah, so that's our kind of really basic client setup Set up the contract Sign contract and upload the accounting stuffs in the deposit project management. We get them all across on to Management software we use rather do a Meeting face-to-face or do something on zoom and then it records that we get that then transcribed So we have access to all that at any time and Complete a many meeting agenda in our project management software So like I was saying the first 48 hours are probably the most important once you have once you have a new client with you So we outline a fair chunk of stuff that we need from them in that first bit of time For the first 48 hours, so we email them a website outline how we work as a company and what we need from them a recap of the meeting including a transcription of Our discussion so they can have a copy of that as well a content worksheet Which outlines what pages we need from them what? images logos and you know essentially everything we try and get up front and Then some design concepts as well design concepts and then We also look at it from straight away as well If we're hosting we create them a new hosting account if the client hosts then we email hosting referral links So we can get a kickback through that through our partners And if they have a host then you know, we have an email done already asking for this information. So Sounds a little long and complicated But these are all just email templates that we send out to them directly. So we've done all the hard work for this And tweaked this over the last couple of years So sending this out is just the press of a button and some of this automated as well And we get shit done, right? So we brief the team go through a wireframe process Do some content design develop tests pretty standard procedure for any web design project launch Thanks, and then we have a referral program as well. So, you know after 30 days will contact them 60 days 90 days 120 days We'll contact them and make sure that What they originally wanted is still what's happening for them Run through briefly a couple of tools we use active campaign for our onboarding process So we run through a sales funnel that way and and some onboarding emails we use process street for our Steps as you know as mentioned before then we zapier to get zappier to connect it all together And that's essentially how we run successful projects Questions we're in through really quickly. Thank you Sean. Thank you very much So yes, we open to questions any questions, please Sean just a question many Many clients are non-technical and they are not ready with this stuff, right? So it it's like we have faced it many times client comes with Inquiry that he wants any commerce website, right? And they only say that it should look like this They don't have any products or so ready I Have asked the client many times like More than ten times that do come with a product but Clients are not ready with that. So how can we help them out in that case? So for e-commerce we have Essentially a Google sheet that we provide them with a couple of very demo products already built And we just asked them to fill in the rest of the details from that And that's just a quick down download that they can have Straight from the on-boarding once they become a client they go and download that sheet We've got a few little documents that help out In terms of filling that out in terms of product variations pricing sales pricing, you know E-commerce can get quite complicated But I won't start an e-commerce build unless I have all that information because the last thing you want to do is Get 90% through a project and then discover that they have 15 different types of shipping and tax requirements Yeah, so we try and get as it is hard, but we try and get as much Upfront as we can and be clear to them that we're just not doing anything until we have all the required information Because we're just wasting everyone's time So that helps right? collecting every information, but it's a Long process it takes long time. So many clients are not ready for that. So in that case what happened what can be the Change I think it's just education to make sure that when a client does come to you and they don't have the information That you communicate to them that that's there really their responsibility to provide you with that information Or if they're not willing to provide you then you can source that for them, but just make sure you're charging If it's going to take you, you know To go in and take photos for them in a place and find a photographer and go and go and do that Just make sure you're always getting paid All right. Thank you. Sean. So any more questions for Sean Yes, no, nobody okay. All right. Thank you very much on thank you for coming today