159 - My nephew makes websites too

Discussion - My nephew makes websites too

This is another of the discussions that we've had concerning the book 'Watertight Marketing' by Bryony Thomas. In that book she discusses the idea that there are so many ways that we can 'leak' clients away before we've completed their work.

Although, no mandatory (!), you might benefit from listening to them in the order that they were created, which is as follows:

• 149 – Marketing funnels don’t exist!
• 151 – Are we leaking clients?
• 153 - Losing clients before you even get them
• 155 - Are we boring?
• 157 - Honey traps for website clients

Today the podcast is about the fateful process of needing approval from others. Gosh, I'm sure that we've all experienced this at some point in our careers as WordPress website builders.

The client needs to seek approval, whether knowingly or not, from other people before they can make decisions. The title of this episode is a little bit of cynical nod to this... you know how this goes...

"My nephew is quite technical, and he thinks... [insert banal, meaningless, irritating comment here]."

But it's true. People want, or need, other people to give their approval before the job is considered completed. The problem that we face is that we don't know who these people are, and more worryingly, we don't know anything about their real expertise in the decisions that need to be made.

So all of this is happening in the background, away from us, until it's too late. The nephew has sown the seed that all the buttons throughout the site should be #FF0000; and use Comic Sans. The client, having a great relationship with their nephew now starts to believe this, "because they're good with technology", and they come back to you with this apocalyptic vision of how the website should be amended.

This is, of course, over doing it, but the point is valid. Is there a way to overcome the objections of the clients' friends, relations, bosses? Can we find out who these Powers Behind The Throne are before they create havoc for us?

Perhaps the best course of action is to explicitly ask the client who these people are. Ask them to tell you about all the people whose opinions are going to be sought about this project. At least if you know who they are, you've got chance of knowing what's coming?

One of the things that I like to do when starting a project is to make sure of two things:

1. Make sure that all the decision makers are in the room during any meetings. Cancel the meeting if they cannot all be in attendance.
2. Ask that only one person is going to the conduit for all conversations about the WordPress website. This creates a nice barrier in which all the nephews can fight and argue in their own time and the final ideas come to you directly via this one person.

I got these ideas from WP Elevation and I'm happy to report that (in the main) they have worked really well for me.

David has a funny story about a project that started going south when the girlfriend of the nephew mentioned over lunch that she wasn't sure about the logo he was going to use! Unless David had asked about why the logo was now in question, who had they talked to, he would have been in the dark and unable to explain that sometimes you've just got to let the pros get on with their job.

This is all a little dramatic, but there's a serious side to this as well. It might be that there is a set of protocols in place at the clients' workplace, a list of people who need to me informed (and who can inform) about the WordPress website. Do we need to know about all these people and what level of interference they are able to get away with?

Perhaps though, there are things that we can do... processes that we can put in place. What about a thorough contract? What about explicit FAQs that you need the clients to read? What about Terms and Conditions? What about Roadmaps and milestones.

I'm not too sure that we truly get to the bottom of this one, and I'm certain that no matter how litigious I become, this will happen to me again many times. But thinking about it is, I suppose, at least going some way to working out a solution which works best for me, and perhaps you too?

Mentioned in this episode:

Watertight Marketing by Bryony Thomas