Number forty-six: Collaborate
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 46: Collaborate. You know, building a website is a collaborative, creative process. The client has goals, and they have problems that need solving, and we have skills that will help them solve those problems. And we need to collaborate as a team to bring this idea and bring this project to life. So whatever project management software you use, I would encourage you to invite them into Base Camp, for example. Show them the calendar. Show them the To Do's. Show them the files that you're sharing. Show them what's going on.
Be really open about your process and get them to come in and collaborate with you. Leave comments on To Do's. Talk about milestones. Talk about dates in the calendar. Say, “Hey, are we going to meet this date? Is this date going to blow out? How are you guys going with the content? Have you uploaded it into Gather Content yet, or have you shared the files here with us yet? How are we going meeting these deadlines?” And be really transparent and open about your process, and get them to buy into it.
Get them to collaborate on the project with you. Don't just go off and start building the site and stop communicating with them. You need to be communicating with them on a very regular basis to make sure they continue to buy into the project.
So I would really encourage as much collaboration as possible. In the next video, I'm going to talk about why you should never launch on a particular day of the week, and I'll reveal what day of the week that is. Until then, go elevate.
Make sure you subscribe to the 101 Ways podcast in the iTunes store. Just search for 101 Ways to Elevate, or visit us at wp101ways.com and download the free 101 Ways ebook.