Discussion - Losing clients before you even get them
This is a little mini-series based upon the book 'Watertight Marketing' by Bryony Thomas. It might be a good idea (although it's certainly not essential) to go back and listen to the following episodes with you have not already. These are the episodes which came before this one:
So, what's this episode all about then?
This is about that time in the client / project lifecycle when they (the client) have made some kind of commitment to use your products or services, they might even have signed a contract, but you've not delivered anything yet. It's a time when they can still 'get away' from you. Yes, you might have a contract in place whereby you can insist that they are obliged to give you this or that, but honestly, have you ever enforced this, or is it better to just let them walk away and save yourself the legal fees and headache of trying to get them to pay up what they owe you?
David calls this 'The Welcome Window'. You think that you have them as a client, but it's still possible for things to go wrong.
Now, it might be that in your process, The Welcome Window is pretty short and you don't really worry too much about this. But for longer projects, this period of time might be many months. There's been a verbal or written agreement, but you've still not started on the WordPress website. The client still needs to send the assets over, they cannot decide upon what pages they really need or what palette of colours they're going to finally go with. You know how this goes. It's a dangerous time and one in which you and the client can grow apart, and ultimately, they might even walk away. Not good!
One of the things that we discuss is the fact that the first job that you require from the client, getting copy, assets and all the other stuff that you might need... well, this is a pretty boring job. They've got all excited about the new website that you've promised to create, but then they have to go off and gather up images, make videos, write effective, SEO optimised copy, before you even start work. I can see how this might be a real turn off!
So what can you do to make this Welcome Window a more positive experience? One of the things that you can do is to send out some documentation to explain the whole process in more detail... giving them the low down on what it is that they've signed up for and what the next steps are. This welcome pack could be nothing more than a summation of what they've signed up for, but it could be anything that you like. Perhaps some sort of small gift might be in order? What about a little video to say thanks and here's what you do next.
I guess that you've got to be careful about this though. If you set up the entire process to be automated, then it might feel a little hollow. We can all spot the email with {merge tags} and this might actually be a little off putting... a chance to do something nice could have been spoiled.
As I've said many, many times before, I find that keeping in touch with clients via the phone is the best thing that I have in my arsenal. I am happy to call them up and tell them that things are going to take a little longer to get started. I'm pleased to say that this basically works! Also, I'm pretty upfront about saying that, even though I have your deposit, it's still going to be a few weeks before we can make a start - almost zero push back on this front too. I should make clear that the kind of WordPress websites that I'm building don't take all that long and so I can have complete oversight over this, and don't rely on a team to assist me with any of this.
Mentioned in this episode:
Watertight Marketing book by Bryony Thomas
