Friday, November 28  

My Top 6 Secrets For Business Success

1. You have to be in the game - Opportunity only dances with those on the dance floor.
2. You must have passion for what you do.
3. Have great communication skills - basically you have to be able to sell stuff: your vision, your product, the benefit of working for you, etc.
4. Get a great team about you.
5. Believe in yourself - don't quit.
6. Do something - Ideas are great, action is better.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: Business Tips

Friday, November 14  

Under The Bright Light - Questions To Ask your Web Design Client

In the "How To Sell Web Design" post below I mentioned asking a ton of questions to figure out what the client needs.

Only then can you offer him a solution to his problem - and sell something.

What to ask?

But what to ask? Well, here are some resources to help you figure out what to ask your web design client when he is sitting in front of you:

Buy The Web Design Business Kit - comes with a ton of forms and checklists. Contains a specific Needs Analysis Form

and/or

Check out Sheppard Web's brilliant (and free) Website Planner.

Great resources to help you do a great job.

Chers

Brendon

Labels: Business Documents, Business Tips

Thursday, November 13  

How To Sell Web Design - Step 1

Following on with our post of "Why Your Web Design Skills Don't Matter" today we'll take a look at what to do at the first face to face client meeting.

You're finally in front of your prospect client - what now?

It's the moment of truth and you don't want to screw it up.

I'll take you through what works for my web development business. I've been doing it for years and it works a treat.

Step 1: Take control.

Do this by saying at the start: "Okay Bob, we're here to discuss your web site needs and how we can assist. We'll start by going through a checklist of questions etc etc."

Step 2: Don't sell anything.

You can't sell anything until you know what the client will buy. The client will happily buy a solution to their problem.

The client's problem is (always) that they don't have enough money.

So ask a ton of questions to figure out how a new web site will make them more money.

Step 3: Get the hell out.

Once you've asked your questions, shut the hell up and get the hell out.

Don't even think about trying to sell anything now.

Go home/to the office and formulate a plan on meeting the needs of the client. The very same needs the client spoke about when answering your questions.

What you're doing at the meeting is simply a Needs Analysis - figuring out what the client really needs to solve his problem.

Sure, you might mention how you've solved particular problems in the past as a way to demonstrate your expertise but mostly you're just on a fact-finding expedition.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: Business Tips, Client Care

Tuesday, November 11  

The Only Thing The Boss Has To Do

Whilst I'm on this topic about what's important in business, this is the most important.

You're in business. Your job is to get in business.

I once worked with a small company (5 employees). We had some plants delivered.

3 Hours Arranging Plants

The boss spent 3 hours (I kid you not) arranging the plants around the office. An office that no clients ever visited.

That ain't gonna help you get more business.

If you're the boss your job is to get more business. Try and get out of everything else because everything else is mostly a waste of your time.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: Business Tips

Monday, November 10  

The Most Important Thing About Your Business Card

Don't waste time on them.

• Get a nice design.
• Get them printed on decent card.
• Don't spend more than 5 minutes deciding on the design.

I've seen people spend 10 hours+ agonising over ever font, every colour, every positioning of every word.

You have better things to do with your time.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: Business Tips

Thursday, November 6  

Why Your Web Design Skills Don't Matter

I wondered where to start with my new focus for this blog in terms of getting back to the basics of building your web development business and web marketing.

So I thought I'd start at the start. Not a bad place to begin.

I opened up my Web Design Business Kit and started reading.

One of the first things I touch upon is this:

Your web design/web development/whatever skills don't matter.

Those skills don't matter in helping you to get clients or be successful in business.

Why The Best Graphic Designer Does The Worst Work

The best graphic designer I know has been working for 5 years for absolutely minimal profit and lots of stress because he charges 1/3 of what he should.

Because he's so cheap he gets tons of work. Work he then can't keep up with.

Most of his clients get angry with him and leave on bad terms. They bad mouth him to everyone.

The ones that do stay get poor quality work because he's rushing about trying to please everyone at ridiculous prices.

People Can't Judge Your Skill

The vast majority of clients in just about any profession can't judge your skill. They have no idea how to assess the best web developer or programmer or doctor or mechanic or carpet layer or whatever.

People make judgments on a whole range of things and then apply them to make an assessment on your skill level.

We all do it - they say you can't judge a book by its cover, but we all do.

Understand The Influences

So what you need to do when your selling your services is understand what influences the decision of the person buying.

It won't really be your skill level.....because the client will almost certainly not have the ability to judge that.

It will be on other factors that contribute to how the person perceives you. This includes:

• how you dress
• voice intonation
• handshake
• footwear (one of my competitors once wore thongs/flip flops to a business meeting)
  
• quality of your business card
• how much time you spend with the person
• how they heard of you (referred clients buy more than clients found found advertising)
  
• how your business answers the phone
  
• and 100 other factors

I did some research a few years back on how many clients had seen my own web site. Almost none.

I asked how many clients had looked at other sites we'd done - again, almost none.

Clients don't care about you or what you've done in the past.
They care about themselves and what you can do for them right now.

• When selling web design services your web design skill doesn't matter.
• When selling web programming services, your web programming skills don't matter.
• When selling car mechanical services, your car mechanical services don't matter.

It doesn't matter that you're not the world's best at what you do. No one can judge that anyway.

What does matter is that the person in front of you will make a decision to use you based on a multitude of factors you may not even be aware of.

Provide The Right Solution

Do you provide the right solution to their problem?
(And by "right" I mean the solution that resonates with them.)

If you can build that bridge to the island of success, then you'll get the job every time.

There was a half decent forum discussion on this over at Australia In Front forums over 4 years ago (I get a bit of a belting at the end!).

Most of the contributors are the designers up on their high horse who have no understanding of commercial reality.

They wouldn't last in their own business mostly because they think their designs are 'art' somehow - they see any editing of a nice looking design as a bad thing, even if that edit makes it better for the end user and increases sales.

A few toss up the old "We're not in this for money" argument.....which is crap of course.

You're in business. You're in it for the money.

Cheers

Brendon

Labels: business marketing, Business Tips, web design business kit, web marketing