FULL client process for high ticket web design [STEP-BY-STEP]

3 years ago I launched my web design business and within weeks went from charging $500 for a website to booking clients at $5,000 and a huge part of how I was able to do this was creating a streamlined and elevated client process this is what gave me the confidence to raise my rates and then actually deliver that high-end experience that those clients were expecting and so in this video I want to give you a behind thes scenes look at my client process how I pitch my services to clients and all the templates that I use and while I using web design as an example if you're delivering any type of creative service then in this video I'm going to share with you how to conduct sales calls put together proposals contracts invoices get everything you need from your clients on time how to minimize the amount of revisions and then how to offboard your clients like a pro so they Rave about you to all their friends you see the thing that a lot of people don't realize is that once you start working with higher budget clients for the most part the actual deliverables of a project stay the same but the thing that changes is that there's a certain expectation that these clients have for an elevated experience these clients don't want to have to worry about you they want to feel confident that you have everything under control and they can trust you to do a good job and when your client feels this way it makes the whole project go so much smoother they're less likely to question your decisions and you're able to really guide them to get them the results that they want and so to do this you need to be in control of everything from the start and set clear expectations at each stage of the project and this video is going to show you exactly how to do that now just to warn you this video is going to be in depth I'm going to be walking through every stage of the client process in a lot of detail so that by the end of this video you will be able to to confidently deliver this with your own clients so you're probably going to want to save this video to refer back to and I'll leave the time stance in the description so you can skip to the part that you need so before we start I'll quickly go over the tools that I'm going to be using so stripe for creating invoices and taking payments cendy for booking calls with clients Gmail obviously loom for screen recording and presenting to clients and then DocuSign for creating and signing contracts then the most important tool is notion this is where I manage my entire business it's a great alternative to client management software like honeybook or dobado and it also replaces project management software like Trello or Asana you can customize it to literally have everything you need all in one place and you can set all this up for free I'll be showing you my entire notion set up in this video all of the templates that I'm using are available in the client dashboard below so if you want then you can get this and have all the templates set up and ready to use but otherwise if you're familiar with notion and you have the time then this video is going to give you everything you need to set this up for yourself I've purposely chosen option that are accessible to everyone but as you start booking clients do not be afraid to invest in tools the quicker you are to invest in your business the quicker you will grow especially if it's something that's going to save you time because as a service provider this is the most valuable thing you have so with that being said let's not waste any more of your time and jump right in so there are three steps to onboarding new clients first up the application the whole experience of working with you starts before someone even decides to get in touch with you before they even click apply now your marketing and your sales page page should have already done 50% of the work for you not just attracting and convincing the right type of clients but repelling the wrong ones I've heard a lot of people say not to put prices on your website because you want to get people on a call to convince them of the value of your service but I don't like this it's icky and it's a waste of your time and it's a waste of your client's time too this is what your content your marketing and your sales pag is for and this is a much more efficient way to communicate the value of your services to multiple people at once to make sure that you're getting on a with the right people rather than trying to convince people one by one so if you haven't already done so make sure to watch the previous videos in this series which will take you through step-by-step how to create this sales page and this content marketing plan so that by the time your client gets onto this sales page and reach out to you they have enough information to work out whether this service is going to be a good fit for them and they're already 50% sold and this includes prices you don't have to put exact prices but you need to at least put a starting price so you set clear expectations and repel those customers that don't have the budget to work with you so then when they click this button what happens next and how quick and easy you make everything from this point will determine How likely this person is to turn into an actual paying customer so if the goal is to get them on a call then you have two options you can either leave your calendar directly here and let them Book on a call with you right away or you can take them to a contact form to get some information from them first and then send over your calendar booking link it's completely up to you which you prefer but for me I don't want to jump straight on a call with everyone reaching out to me cuz I'm at the stage in my business where I can pick and choose who I want to work with and so not everyone reaching out to me is going to be a good fit But whichever way you do it at this point you want to make sure that you're asking the right questions so you can get the relevant information that you need about this potential customer so either within your calendar booking link or your inquiry form instead of leaving space for a generic message you want to ask specific questions for example their website and social media platforms what does your business do and how did you get here which service are you interested in what's what's your budget for this project and the most important question what problems are you hoping to solve by working with us and what does success look like for this project and so when you get this inquiry come into your inbox you want to get back to them as quickly as possible likelihood is your client has been scrolling and something has triggered them to take action now and so you want to keep that momentum going so the easiest way to do this is to have a bunch of templates set up in your Gmail so that all you need to do is select the template customize their name add a couple of personal details and then you have your calendar booking link already in here so you can set up a call with them and So within this client dashboard below there are a bunch of email templates written out for each stage of the project so you can just copy and paste and get all these templates set up in your Gmail for your calendar booking link I recommend using calendly for this within this you can set up the times that people can book in with you each week do not try and make yourself available 24/7 you're a business owner now and so you need to have control over your schedule so I recommend just blocking out a couple of mornings or afternoons where you leave some space for this so someone's reached out to you you like the application and now you're getting on a call with them the next thing I do now is come into my dashboard where I manage my business and create a new client and then create a discovery call which already has this script lined up here now you want to have a script so that you don't get on a call and your mind goes completely blank but please don't act like a robot I see a lot of videos of people on sales calls with zero personality saying the same lines over and over again your personality and the connection you build with clients is one of if not your biggest asset as a service provider you want to be easy and enjoy able to work with so be a human and not a robot so when you get on this call you want to be the one in control and leading the conversation but it's important that you ask the right questions and then listen don't feel like you need to do all of the talking pitching and selling your service the way that you sell a service is by showing how your service is going to help them achieve their goals and so it's important that you really understand what these goals are first the purpose of this call is to help the client make the best decision for their business so the mindset you want to be in is that you're on their side working with them to put together a solution that's going to help them Reach their goals So within this script the first question here are prompts about your client's business their goals and what's stopping them achieving those goals right now at this point it's also really good if you can get comfortable talking to the client about money because this is going to show your client that your service is all about making them money and you want to see them get a good return on their investment so what I mean by this is asking questions like what's your bestselling service or product how much is that bringing in for you right now how do you plan to scale this in the future and do you have any new services or products in the works this is going to help you really understand the scale of their business and the scope of the project and this is important because the more money your services make your client the more you can charge so it's important that you know the scale of their business so that you're not charging $55,000 for a website that's potentially going to make their Millions this is something that I went through in the first video of this series so watch that if you want to learn how to implement this value based pricing so the next question is are to gather all the technical information that you might need so website Pages functionality any extras sometimes they're not going to have all the answers to this so you can also give them suggestions and guide them in what you think they need by what they told you already then last up you want to talk about the timeline and the price range and so if you have standard packages with clear prices and what the client needs fits into this then this part is easy you can just say based on everything we've talked about this seems like a really good fit for you as it said on my website this service is going to be this much my next available dates are here are you ready to it in if your quote is more custom than this and you need to go away and write up a proposal then you can just pitch a price range you always want to estimate a higher price range than you think and say it confidently and matter of fact even if it feels uncomfortable at this point you can gauge their reaction and ask the client is this what you budgeted for this project depending on how they respond to this in this sales script there are some examples of how to phrase things so if it's clear that this is way out of their price range do not offer to reduce your prices in my experience it is never a good idea to reduce your rates because you end up with a client that doesn't value your expertise and this becomes a problem at every stage of the project if you want to then you can take some of the things out of the proposal to give them a service that fits their budget but otherwise if it's clear that this is really not a good fit then it's completely fine to just finish the call and send them an email afterwards saying I don't think this is going to be a good fit and there's an email template here to help you do that but if you pitch your client at 6 to 7,000 and then they come back saying I was hoping it would be more like 4 to 5,000 then you can then say okay I'll bear that in mind when I put together your proposal because you already pitch them a higher price range you can come back to them with a quote more around 5,000 and they're going to be so grateful that you are willing to work with them and they're more than likely going to be happy with this quote and so at the end of the call everything went okay and you tell your client that you're going to send them over a written proposal so once you get off this call it's important that you keep this momentum going you want to have a proposal contract and invoice over to them as soon as possible when I started this was the most stressful part for me it would take me 2 hours to put this together and then another 2 hours just to hit send but now I have all these temp temp plates ready to go it is so much easier and I can have everything sent over in under 10 minutes within this client dashboard I get off the call and create a new project and then this automatically generates everything I need for this project including this client portal here and I'll walk you through this in a second but first let's go through the proposal so your proposal should start with the goals for the project and you want to basically repeat the business goals or the outcomes that your client told you they wanted in their sales call and what this does is show your client that you understood what they need and that this proposal is tailored to get them these results then you want list everything that's included at each stage of the project here you would also include the price and a little tip instead of using the word price or cost you want to use the word investment to remind your client that this is an investment in their business and breaking it down into installments to helps this seem more affordable next up you want to lay out the timeline and all the different stages of the project you can put the project dates here and if you need anything from your client then you want to make sure you list the deadlines for these two I'll take you through exactly how to put together this timeline later on in this video and last up if you have them you want want to include some client results to give that extra social proof and get them really excited to work with you so you want to include some project examples and then pair these with client testimonials and at the end of this proposal you always want to give your client next steps and ideally we want them to look at this proposal and then immediately sign their contract and pay their deposit so that's where this button takes them and here is a space for you to link the contract there are zero exceptions you have to have a project agreement in place and this doesn't have to be scary or complicated you can keep this really simple I've put my contract template in here to give you an idea of what this can look like I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice and so I recommend getting someone who is qualified to take a look over and help you put something together but these are the things that I include in my contracts so you have your project dates and project fee and then you want your payment schedule I recommend taking a 50% non-refundable deposit to secure the project spot in your calendar because what happens if they cancel the project even if you haven't done any work yet you've still potentially turned down work from other clients because you blocked out your calendar for them so then then you can either take the rest of the 50% at the end before you hand everything over or you can split this into two payments over the course of the project depending on how big the project is and how long the timeline is then you want to list everything that's included and the number of revisions that you allow on this I usually allow two rounds of revisions and then anything on top is extra your cancellation policy just says that if they cancel halfway through the project then they still need to pay for all the work up until this point even if they don't have the fine on deliverables and then for expenses I list all the things not included so things like stock photography or fonts you want to add a confidentiality clause in there cuz you're likely going to be exchanging passwords so this protects both you and the client then you want to make it clear that you own the copyright to all the designs until the final project payment is made and then my favorite part to add in here is client expectations and this basically just gets the client to agree to be on time for all the due dates and reply within three working days or the whole project will be automatically put on hold and an additional fee will be required to start it up again now this might sound harsh but you have to have boundaries like this especially when when you're hopefully going to be booking up projects weeks or months in advance so it's not profitable for your projects to drag on way longer than the timeline because it affects all of your other work and from my experience once you start setting boundaries like this you rarely have to actually use them but you still want to be very clear and protect yourself from the beginning just in case there's that one nightmare client so I have this contract set up in D dubsado but a slightly cheaper alternative is DocuSign and you want to do this because it allows you to collect electronic signatures so they can just open this up really quickly and then sign it and download the PDF if they want once they've done that this button takes them straight to the invoice so I have my invoices set up in stripe which is free to set up and then it just takes a processing fee on the payment which is fairly standard and what you can also do as soon as they pay this initial deposit you can create and schedule all of your invoices for the rest of the project in advance so it's sent out to your client at the right time and you don't have to think about it your client will then receive a link to the invoice and then they can just go on here and pay with card so especially if you're working with clients from all over the world this makes makes it so much easier for both you and the client again the more seamless you make every step of this process the more impressed your client is going to be and the more likely they are to trust that you are going to take care of everything and deliver an excellent service which leads me into how you're going to send this over to your client and really wow them with an amazing onboarding experience so the first 48 hours after a client decides to work with you is the part of the project that leaves the biggest lasting impression on the client this is the peak end rule the parts of the project that your client will remember and judge you on is the peak so when they first decide to work with you and they're most excited for what to come and the end these first impressions confirm to your client that they made a good decision buying from you what you do is valuable and worth their money and it doesn't matter how good your work is after this moment 80% of their mind is already made up so we want to make sure we wow them and really make them feel confident in our service as I showed you before in here a client portal is generated for every new project and this is where we're going to keep all the information for the project in one place so it's easy for you to find and your client has it all here too so it's really important that your client always knows what you're currently working on and when they're going to hear from you next especially when you start working with higher budget clients this is what they expect always overcommunication in questionnaires and actions that your client needs to complete with a clear deadline and a checklist you can easily keep track of the progress then you want to have the project files and a space to gather feedback from your clients and then you have your resources so anything else that your client might find helpful and the good thing about all of this is that you only have to put this together once and then you can reuse this with all of your clients at the start of every project this is all here and ready to go so at this point I've customized The Proposal linked my contract and invoice I'll go in here and lock the proposal so they can't edit this and then before sending it over to the client what you want to do is record a short loom video and this is going to be a personalized message letting them know that I'm excited for the project giving them a quick tour of the portal and then showing them how to go in and check their proposal and sign their contract if you want to you can record this loom video once and reuse it for all of your clients but I like to make this personalized because it doesn't take that much more effort from me but the impact on the client is going to be bigger then to send it over to the client you just come up here and share it with their email address and this is what keeps it secure so all your client needs to do is enter their email address to access this there's no long sign up process to make a notion account it's really simple and then you can go over to your Gmail grab the client portal template and then add in the link to their client portal and just send this over so your client has just got off a call with you and in under an hour they have this in their inbox and then they come on to here and are amazed by all the detail that you've put together and are now feeling even more confident that this is going to be a smooth process and you're going to do a really great job then if they're happy to move forward they're able to sign their contract and pay their invoice in under five minutes now they might not sign right away if your client doesn't sign this within 48 Hours of you sending it over to them it's likely that they're ghosting you and so if this happens do nothing make sure to follow up if you haven't heard from them but until this contract is signed and the deposit is paid don't get excited and start digging into the project do not touch a thing but hopefully this doesn't happen everything's good they sign the contract and we're ready to go so this is what the next part of your project might look like and so for all of your projects you want to have a very clear timeline and within this timeline there's going to be deadlines for you but there's also going to be deadlines for your client they're always going to be parts of any project where you need things from your client in order to move forward so you need to make time for this so that it doesn't affect your planning and timeline for all your other projects and you also want to set clear expectations with your client from the start so you want to check in with them is this timeline going to work for you and this is why we put in our contract that all deadlines need to be met within three working days and this doesn't mean that if a client comes to you and explains that something came up that you can't be flexible and work with them but if you have a client that goes missing for 2 weeks then you're protected you've already been paid and so all you need to do is stop working and then if they come back and want to start out the project again then you can politely let them know that you have other clients now and so the timeline is going to be different and there's going to be a fee before you can start up again this is how you run a profitable design business and stop your projects dragging on for months at a time so here's an example timeline for my web design projects one week before the project the client questionnaire is then we have a strategy meeting after this the designing of the website is broken into three approval stages the client has to approve the strategy the homepage design and then the entire website then you have your Handover and your launch and so it's one thing having this timeline and setting these deadlines but you still need to do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for your client to give you everything you need so I'm going to show you exactly how I do this in the next video I'm going to walk you through exactly how I carry out the strategy and the website design so you know what to do if you don't want to miss that but in this video we're going to stick to the client process so first up getting everything you need from the client this is what this part of the client portal is for and it's broken up into easy stages with a checkbox to easily keep track of everything that needs to be done so after the client has signed their contract and paid their invoice I have this email that I send over to them confirming their project and reminding them that they need to book in our first call and then fill in their questionnaire so I embed my Cy booking link straight into here so that the client can come in and schedule our strategy call and then they can fill in their brand questionnaire here so this is just to get any addition information that I didn't manage to go through in their sales call and so some of these questions do overlap so what I do is add my notes in here and then I'll let the client clarify or add anything if they need to so I don't want to overwhelm my clients so these are the only two things I ask them to do right now and then everything else I'll go through in our call every web designer knows that the worst part of any project is getting all the content you need for a website it can take your client weeks to even send you anything and then when they do they send a 50-page Google doc full of irrelevant information that you have to sift through it's painful for you it's painful for your client but this is the best way that I've found to solve this problem and So within here I have these website copy templates there's a services and an e-commerce version and Within These are guides on how to fill this in and then each page is broken down into key sections with copy prompts and examples so there's two ways that you can use these with clients first thing you can do is just give this to the client and have them fill it in especially if it's a shorter project or a lower budget client and so I'm not offering copywriting included in the projects then this is a great way to do it because it enables the client to do this part themselves and it breaks it up so it's easy to manage and your client knows exactly what you need from them but for those higher budget or busier clients even this is going to feel like a bit too much homework for them and so what I do with my clients is I use this as a template and then I go through it with them in the strategy meeting and so what you want to do is make some notes in here before so you know what to ask your client and then in the meeting you'll just expand on these notes and then after the meeting I'll finish it off for them and then just send it over to have them approve it so it's really what works best for you and your client but what I think is so important especially if you're someone that finds yourself complaining a lot about your clients or struggling with things not going smoothly then it is your responsibility to find Solutions like this that make it easier for both you and your clients which leads us nicely into the next step another thing that a lot of designers struggle with is revisions so I see a lot of people talking about how they send designs over to clients and then they start losing their minds when they get requests like can you make it pop but I don't see a lot of people talking about how you actually solve this problem and it's so easy to do so if you're struggling with huge amounts of revisions from clients or really vague feedback then there's three things that you need to change and the first is strategy now this goes for any creative process whether you're a filmmaker or a web designer the end result is only as good as the strategy and the preparation that you put in right at the start you have to spend 50% of your time getting on the same page as the client before you start anything otherwise you're going to get ahead of yourself and put all this work into something that is completely different to what the client is imagining and this is why you want to break your project into clear stages like this and ask for feedback at every single stage and in my experience since putting more work into this strategy part I now have very few revisions throughout the rest of this project so the next thing you need to change is presentation how you present your work to your client is going to have a huge impact on the feedback that you get you want to do everything you can to present high quality mockups that give the client a Clear Vision of the end result and you also want to make sure that your client understands why you've made all the decisions that you did which is why if you're presenting brand designs and you want to spend time putting together real world mockups and clear explanations of the strategy behind them and if you're presenting a web design then you don't just want to send them a link you want to record a loom video presenting the design and explaining all the decisions along the way then when you send this over to the client instead of saying let me know your feedback you want to make sure that you're asking really specific questions for example this is where I put all the files for the clients to review and you have a little guide on here on how to give good feedback then if I'm sending over a homepage mockup at this point I'm looking for feedback on the overall look and feel of the design and the content layout so I might ask questions like does the design convey the intended messaging does the color scheme appeal to your target audience and is all the important information clear then when I'm sending over the completed web design to review I'm looking for more technical feedback so I would ask questions like do all the buttons and links work have you checked the website on different screen sizes you have to make it clear what you're looking for so your client can give you useful and relevant feedback and having these questions laid out also makes it so much easier to set boundaries when it comes to revisions you're not going back and forth sending NeverEnding emails with tiny small tweaks you're asking them to take their time write down everything at once and then submit this to you and then you can Implement all of this and send it back to them and you can make it really clear that you will only go through this process up to two times when you do this you very rarely get to a second round of revisions because your client does their best to give really detailed feedback the first time so you finished your work the client is Happy they've paid their invoice this is important don't do anything before they' paid and so you send them everything over now the last thing you want to do here is leave the client feeling like you've handed everything over and just ghosted them making sure your client has everything they need and they feel confident in the next steps is crucial if you want them to give you those rave reviews that give you referrals and clients in the future so what I do is I leave some resources here at the bottom of the client portal this is why I recommend sticking to just one platform if you're a web designer because you can pre-record resources and training videos that you reuse for every single client showing them how to make basic changes to their website even if you want to offer ongoing Website Maintenance your client is going to want to feel like they can go in and change some wording or some images if they need to without relying on you to do all that for them and trust me you do not want them relying on you for that you can also leave any FAQs here and there's a guide on how to use different file types if you're sending over any brand assets another thing that I offer is 30 days of support after they launch and so this doesn't include any additional revisions or designing but it's just for the questions that your client might have and honestly it's really rare that any clients actually use this but you just want them to feel supported so there are some email templates for this too and so when I finish the project what I do is I schedule this email to go out 5 days or so before the support period is over just checking and reminding them that I'm here if they have any questions and then I'll also schedule another email a couple of weeks after this asking for a testimonial the reason I recommend waiting longer to ask for this testimonial is that a great testimonial is going to Rave about the results that you got your client and so you want to give it time for them to start seeing these results and again you want to ask the right questions to prompt your client with what you want them to say so a great testimonial go something like before I was struggling with this problem and I felt bad emotion now I have positive outcome and I feel good emotion so there's some questions that you can ask to these answers what were you struggling with in your business prior to the project has your business increased since working with us how did your website help you achieve your business goals if you were recommending us to a friend what would you say at the end of the day the success of your business is all about these results that you get your client this is what helps you attract new clients and raise your rates and so if you're a web designer and you want to know how to get results like this then hit subscribe and join me in the next video where I'll be walking you through my entire web design process

Channel: Anna Hickman

Views: 199,824

Keywords: web design, clients, content creation, marketing

Id: WOmUA7THTXg

Length: 25min 53sec (1553 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2024