Number thirty-one: Keep your process
Good day. I'm Troy Dean from Video User Manuals and Agency Mavericks. And this is the 101 Ways to Elevate Yourself and Demand Higher Fees, a practical guide for WordPress consultants to start attracting better quality clients, work on better, more interesting projects, and get paid better fees. Now, let's go elevate.
Number 31, keep your process. Okay. Here's the thing. From the moment you walk into any professional's office, whether it's a doctor, whether it's an accountant, a lawyer, even a motor mechanic, from the moment you walk into any of places or even pick up the phone and call, you fall into a system. You fall into a process. Let's look at the doctor. It's a great example. You walk in. You check in at reception. You take a seat. You wait. You might have to fill in a form if it's your first time there. The doctor then comes to get you. You go into the doctor's office. You're in there for 15 minutes. You're out the door with or without a prescription for whatever you need. You pay the bill at reception before you leave, and you probably make a follow-up appointment to come back next time. And at every point during that process, you don't question it.
Why? Because the doctor is positioned as somebody in authority and somebody to be trusted and somebody who knows what they're doing. Now from a medicinal point of view and a treatment and care point of view, that's absolutely right. But no one has ever questioned that business model of paying the bill before we leave and checking in and waiting in the waiting room and, you know, being made to wait. And the doctor comes always late. No one ever questions that, because the doctor is well-positioned. Think about an accountant. Think about a lawyer. Think about a motor mechanic. It's the same. They all have processes that you must respect. So why is it that every time I talk to WordPress consultants, they're complaining about clients trying to throw added features into a project, or clients, you know, trying to get the project done faster, or clients dictating what kind of plug-ins they should be using.
We need to stay true to our process, and we need our clients to respect our process. And this is something that you should be working on from day one. In one of the previous videos I talk about the importance of getting clients to fill in the website worksheet before we actually pick up the phone and call them. That's a real red flag for me. If a client is not prepared to fill in that website worksheet when I first start interacting with them, that's a red flag to me that they're not going to respect my process, and they might not be a client that I want to work with. So it's really important that you stay true to your process and that you insist that your clients respect your process every step of the way. In the next video, we're going to talk about the importance of keeping our deadlines. Until then, go elevate.
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