winning web design clients without competing on technology
TRANSCRIPT
WINNING WEB DESIGN CLIENTSW I T H O U T C O M P E T I N G O N T E C H N O L O G Y
About Me – Sharon Dibb
• Building websites with Joomla! since 2007
• 358th Joomla! Website went live on Friday
• Had a design business, got burnt out, sold it, took a job for a couple of
years, got made redundant, now I’m back as a freelancer
• Google Adwords Certified across all 5 specialisations
• Joomla! Certified Administrator
WINNING WEB DESIGN CLIENTSW I T H O U T C O M P E T I N G O N T E C H N O L O G Y
TWO STAGES OF WINNING BUSINESS
•Lead Generation
•Conversion
THE FIRST 5 YEARS WAS HARD –FEAST OR FAMINE
TYPICAL SCENARIO
• A Prospect calls asking for website services
• I ask what they need – a little info about their business and what kind of features and functionality they are thinking about
• I demo what we can do (mock up a few wireframes and maybe a Joomla! site)
• I deep dive into the different functionality they need on their project and show them how it can be done
• I send a dodgy one page proposal from WHMCS
• I start the follow up process
THE TECHNOLOGY DEBATE
1 I’ve never heard of
Joomla!
3The other guy I’m getting
a quote off says I need
WP for SEO
5 Can I edit the site
myself?
7 How is the site backed
up?
2 Is it as good as
Wordpress?
4 Is open source any
good
6 Where is the site
hosted?
8 Are you sure you can’t
build the site in
Wordpress?
One day, I
started noticing
a pattern
WHAT AM I ACTUALLY DOING FOR MY CLIENTS?
• Was I just designing web pages and loading content?
• Was it programming and open source and PHP this and .NET that?
• Or am I doing something much bigger for people?
WHAT DOES THE CLIENT REALLY WANT?
I always assumed when a customer
called for a new website, their problem
was that they want a new website.
WHY DO I THINK LIKE THAT?
HBDI -Hermann BrainDominance Index
Businesses are looking to solve sales, marketing, logistics,
customer service or public relations problems.
WHAT DOES THE CLIENT REALLY WANT?
NEW SCENARIO
• A Prospect calls asking for website services
• I ask what they need – I listen…REALLY listen
• They say “We need to be able to update the content on our website”
• I ask “What kind of content do you plan on updating?”
• They say “Our products change quarterly. We also want to blog.”
• I ask “Why do your products change quarterly? And who is responsible for blogging?”
• They say “That is when our catalog gets updated. We haven’t thought about who will blog, we just know we need one.”
NEW SCENARIO
• I ask “Is it necessary for anyone to be aware of your catalog being updated, or do you just need the content changed? And besides knowing you need a blog, what is the problem that needs solving?”
• They say “Yes! We’d love our customers to get an email for a promotion each time our catalog is updated. We’d like to attract more customers through our blog – you know, let people know what we’re up to.”
THE POWER OF A CONVERSATION
We’ve created a compelling solution for:
• A dynamic website project
• Content management training
• Ghost writer with SEO strategy for blog content
• Email marketing (ACYMailing) with hosting solution
• Custom content development
• May even need to freshen up and re-launch their brand
• Traffic generation - PPC campaigns – Google Adwords and/or Facebook, Social
You’ve gone from an order taker to a valuable business partner in a single conversation.
STOP TAKING THEIR STATED NEEDS AS ABSOLUTE
NO ONE ELSE TALKS LIKE THIS – EVERYONE SELLS ON TECHNOLOGY
THE CHALLENGE
See how long you can go without talking about technology
