There’s a simple enough strategy for driving up the value of your WordPress business and keeping finances in the black. If followed, your business could be quite prosperous in just a short amount of time after launch.
But what happens if you lose sight of the value of your WordPress business?
It’s easy enough to do. And with the perceived and actual value of your services driving how much money your business makes, anything that throws it off kilter could effectively wipe away all that hard work you did to make it profitable in the first place.
Are You Killing the Value of Your WordPress Business?
When we talk about ways to obtain and maintain financial security with a WordPress business, we focus on strategies such as:
- Putting profit first.
- Avoiding shiny object syndrome.
- Setting reasonable goals.
- Hiring and entrusting tasks to others.
Here’s the thing though:
All of this assumes that you provide a valuable service to clients. Not only that, but it needs to be one which they are more than happy to pay for and one that empowers you to work at your level best so that you may continue the cycle of delivering valuable services to clients.
In all honesty, it can be very easy to lose sight of the value you provide when you’re racing towards a goal of boosting profit margins.
If you’re nervous that this is happening to your business or you want to ensure you avoid this in the future, let’s run through what some of these value killers look like and make sure you and your business stay on the right track:
Killer #1: Undervaluing Yourself
You have to have a thick skin to go into business for yourself.
This means having confidence in your capabilities as a WordPress consultant. This means charging a rate that is commensurate with the value you provide. This also means not allowing fear to rule your decisions.
If you sell yourself short, the value of your WordPress business will be viewed in much the same way by prospects and clients.
As you cut prices, perform tasks for free and agree to work with bad clients because you fear you can’t get work elsewhere, word will get around. Plus, there are plenty of people in business who won’t hesitate to sniff out your weakness and exploit it.
Don’t be afraid to embrace your personal value as well as the value of your business.
Killer #2: Providing Subpar Service
This typically doesn’t happen because someone is lacking the skills necessary to get the job done. If you’ve launched a WordPress business, then you know what you’re doing.
But when you’re overworked, feeling burned out and work desperately to bill as many hourly jobs as possible, you can’t possibly give your best.
When you agree to take on tasks that are beneath you, outside the scope of the job, outside your skill set or force you to work obscene hours, this is when what was once a stellar WordPress service becomes subpar. You make mistakes. You become irritable and unprofessional with clients. You deviate from the process and half-ass your work just to get it off your plate.
If you’re fighting to survive and clients can’t rely on the value of your services anymore, it’s time to take a step back and reassess what you’re doing.
Killer #3: Feeling Untouchable
Mike Michalowicz is the writer of Profit First, a great guide to generating and sustaining profit the right way in business. The thing is, it was only after he lost everything and his personal stock plummeted that he learned this lesson. Until then, though, Mike was riding high on a big ego and let his arrogance steer him towards bad business decisions.
When you believe that you’ve become untouchable, that your business value is beyond reproach, this is when you run the risk of destroying everything you’ve worked towards.
This one is a bit harder to define as everyone displays an exaggerated ego differently. But let’s see if I can narrow this down a bit:
- You’re unwilling to listen to clients or take suggestions from anyone else because you assume they’re dumb, have bad taste and don’t know what they’re talking about.
- You won’t admit when you’re wrong or have made a mistake. Even if you did.
- You lie. It could be to your clients, it could be to your loved ones and it could even be to yourself. There’s no good reason to lie except you believe you’ll make more money if you keep others from opposing what you want to do.
- When you first meet someone (a prospective client, contractor, business partner, etc.) you can only talk about yourself and your business. You have absolutely no interest in hearing anyone else’s story.
- You openly talk disparagingly about clients, employees and the competition.
- You’ve stopped marketing yourself as an expert and thought leader. Heck, you don’t even market your business anymore. People know who you are, so there’s no reason to “sell” anymore.
It’s one thing to lack the confidence to maintain a profitable business. It’s another thing to be so overly confident that you no longer see how you could do any wrong and, by consequence, fail.
We all make mistakes though, and we all have to take time to lean on and trust others while we grow. If you forget that, you can expect the public’s perception of you and your business to drop significantly. And, with it, your profits.
Wrap-Up
When large quantities of clients cancel their contracts, when prospects refuse to believe your services are worth what you charge, when the name of your brand doesn’t mean much in the community you once thrived in, something has gone wrong.
Don’t let these mistakes kill the value of your WordPress business.
