Number thirty-four: Keep them informed
Good day. I'm Troy Dean from Video User Manuals and Agency Mavericks and this is the 101 Ways to Elevate Yourself and Demand Higher Fees. A practical guide for WordPress consultants to start attracting better quality clients, work on better, more interesting projects, and get paid better fees. Now, let's go elevate.
Number 34, keep them informed. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, I have a collection of blogs and website that I read on a weekly basis. Smashing Magazine is one of them, for example. The WP tuts series from Envato is another one. A List Apart is another one. And I stay abreast and up to speed with what's happening in the web design world by reading these websites. And what I'll do occasionally is I'll find an article which is relevant to my small business clients and I'll email it to them. Even those clients that I've just put in a proposal for that haven't decided to sign off yet. I'll email them those articles.
So this article, for example, this screen shot I'm using here is just an example about responsive web design. It's a very topical thing at the moment because of the explosion of smart phones and tablets and web usage on those devices. So what this does is a couple of things. You can email those articles to your clients and say, “Hey, just thought I'd let you know this is what's happening in the responsive web design space. And this is all about making sure the website works on smart phones and tablets. Whoever you end up using to build your website, you should make sure that they are building a responsive website that works on smart phones or tablets.”
Now, I'm not saying that you have to build responsive sites. I'm just saying this is an example. What it does is it gives your clients information and questions to ask other suppliers that they might be considering working with. And if client start asking suppliers things like, “Is the website that you're going to build going to be responsive?” If the other supplier hasn't already preempted that conversation and isn't already having that conversation, then the client's going to be thinking, “Okay, we've got two web designers here pitching for our job. The guy on the left over here, keeps sending us the questions that we should be asking the guy on the right and the guy on the right isn't proactive. He isn't answering these questions. He's not actually giving us this information, whereas the guy on the left is giving us this information freely.” It positions you as an expert in your field.
You're not asking for feedback on your proposal. You're not asking have there been any developments on this project. You're just keeping them informed and saying, “Whoever you use, make sure they're building a responsive site. Whoever you use, make sure the website is going to be optimized for search engines. Whoever you use, make sure that they're building a site that is going to have a really seamless checkout process to make sure that you don't lose customers in the shopping checkout process. Make sure that system is really well designed. Whoever you use, make sure, blah, blah, blah, blah…”
It positions you as an expert so when it comes time for them to make a decision, they've got you who's given them all this great information for free and I've got someone else who's calling them up and say, “Has there been any development on this project?” Or, “Can I get some feedback on my proposal?”
Okay, so it positions you as a trusted source of information and it's a great positioning exercise. What it also does is it keeps you informed. So it does keep you abreast of website trends, which is very important. You can start having these conversations in client meetings because you are fueled up on your topic.
In the next video, I'm going to talk about why it's important to have an opinion. Until then, go elevate. Make sure you subscribe to the 101 Ways podcast in the iTunes store. Just search for the 101 Ways to Elevate. Or visit us at wp101ways.com and download the free 101 Ways eBook.
