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
Cheers,
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re not going to believe this, but if I had the balls to write yet another post inspired by your book, this is the exact topic I was going to write about.
I’ve had the following note stuck in my Blackberry for the last few days, just waiting to be pushed out in to a full post:
“Why Poor Web developers own the most successful Web development companies.
They’re not able to focus on selling their Web development skills, so they focus on selling solutions and solving problems”
I’m glad I didn’t write about it now, because you did a far better job than I could have done.
Excellent advice, Brendon. You’re off to a great start!
Jamie
Hi Guys,
You don’t have to be a great web designer to have a great web design business, because most clients don’t know a jpeg from a clothes peg; and they will make their decision on other factors.
I agree.
However, in my experience, no matter how good you are, no matter how well you talk it up, and even if you’re the best belfast web designer, you can’t get business owners in this part of the world to move from their perceived market value of a web site.
I’ve read the kit, I’ve sat in the sales pitches. I think I’ve had reasonable success at impressing prospective clients with my background and approach.
But, there’s still this glass ceiling on the price people in this part of the world are willing to pay.
So, Brendon and Jamie, there’s your next post: How to convince a client that the proposal you gave, which is, let’s say £2k dearer than the other guy, is worth taking a punt.
Seamus you make a good point. In my part of the world, Oklahoma, good ole USA, I have not encountered a glass ceiling yet. As a matter of fact I recently found out I was not expensive enough.
I think just about any price can be justified if you can quantifiable show the value to the client. In my internet marketing business I do not discuss the design per se but rather x number of new leads, times % of click throughs x percentage of conversions = X amount of new dollars.
Since I deal more with direct response web site I can quantify and justify the price I charge. I think if I went in as a strict web designer I would have a tough time since the kid down the street can put a site together for 1/10 my fee. The difference is my sites and services will grow the clients bottom line
Quantify – Justify = Sweet Fee
Regards