Get Paid What You Are Worth
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I gave this presentation at WordCamp Sydney 2012
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Get Paid What You Are Worth
- 1. Recommended for M Mature Audiences Contains Adult Themes & Profanity
- 6. $$$
- 7. yw = (di + pc) / #p
- 8. yw = (100K + pc) / #p
- 11. 2 WKS
- 12. 2 WKS
- 13. 2 WKS 3 WKS
- 14. 2 WKS 3 WKS
- 15. 2 WKS 3 WKS 2 WKS
- 16. 2 WKS 3 WKS 2 WKS
- 17. 2 WKS 3 WKS 2 WKS 2 WKS
- 18. 43wks
- 19. yw = (100K + pc) / 12
- 20. yw = (100K + 14.4K) / 12
- 21. $100K + $14.4K = $114.4K $114.4K / 12 = $9,500
- 22. MYTH BUST ERS
- 23. You Need An Hourly Rate
- 24. You Need An Hourly Rate
- 25. VALUE
- 26. POSITIONING
- 27. Global Avg My Fees 12000 9000 6000 3000 0 2009 2010 2011
- 28. SAY “NO” TO INITIAL MEETINGS
- 30. Q #1: WHY?
- 31. Q #2: WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?
- 32. Q #3: WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?
- 36. Recap
- 37. yw = (di + pc) / #p
- 39. SAY “NO” TO INITIAL MEETINGS.
Editor's Notes
- This presentation is recommended for mature audiences. It contains adult themes. And profanity.\n
- Do you build websites for clients using WordPress?\n
- Have you ever had a client you’d like to tell to fuck off? Have you ever worked on a project you didn’t care about, bored you to death or you just new was doomed for failure? Have you ever been to coffee, or even worse, lunch to listen to someone’s new idea for some great big website that’s going to take over the world only to learn they have no budget - but they’ll cut you in the future profits?\n
- Would you like to double your fees?\n
- In this presentation I'm going to show you 3 very practical things you can start doing right now to build the business you want, work on the projects you want, with the clients you want and finally get paid what you're worth. Because life is too short to do otherwise. I'd like to thank Dan Kennedy for that little nugget of motivation.\n
- Before you can start getting paid what you are worth, you have to know what you are worth. How do work this out?\n
- Use this formula. Your Worth = Desired Income + Project Costs divided by Number of Projects per year. Desired income is how much money you want to make to support the lifestyle you want. Be realistic. For the sake of this example let’s say your desired income is $100K\n
- So your worth = $100K plus your project costs divided by the number of projects per year. Now to work out project costs you need to work out the number of projects you are going to work on. How do we calculate this?\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- By planning your year and deciding how much of it you want to spend living our life. EG: (and this is loosely based on my yearly plan) You want 2 weeks off for Xmas, 3 weeks in Bali, 2 weeks down the coast in winter and 2 weeks worth of mental health days - or what I call “fuck off” days where you get to tell the rest of the world to “fuck off” and do whatever you want.\n
- So that leaves 43 weeks to work on projects. And in 43 weeks you are prepared to devote your time, creativity and headspace to 12 projects. No more.\n
- So Your Worth now = $100K + project costs divided by 12. Now let’s work out your project costs. How much does it cost you to deliver a project, on average. This includes rent, electricity, any outside help, plugins, licenses and any other costs involved in delivering that project. Let’s use a rough estimate of $1,200. So the number of projects (12) times by the average cost of each ($1,200) is $14,400.\n
- Now your worth = your desired income of $100k, plus your project costs of $14,400 divided by the number of projects you want to work on for the year, 12.\n
- So desired income of $100K + project costs of $14,400 = $114,400, divided by the number of projects of 12 equals $9,500 per project. This is what you are worth.\n
- Now let’s bust a big myth in the web design and in fact any service based business.\n
- You do not need an hourly rate. An hourly rate is an arbitrary figure agreed upon between two parties when they do not understand the value being transferred. This is most often the case. More often than not the client does not understand the real value that you are adding to their business, therefore the only measure they have to assign value is your hourly rate. Your job is to illuminate the value you are adding. When you do this successfully, your hourly rate becomes irrelevant. The last time I used an hourly rate, the client agreed to the proposal but wanted the job done a lot quicker than I had proposed. I knew that if I agreed to the shorter timeframe, I was in essence admitting that I could the job in less hours and therefore I would have to admit that I could do it cheaper. However, the final project fee was not a concern to the client, the timeframe was. I realised then that the client understood the value in my proposal and therefore my hourly rate was irrelevant.\n
- You do not need an hourly rate. An hourly rate is an arbitrary figure agreed upon between two parties when they do not understand the value being transferred. This is most often the case. More often than not the client does not understand the real value that you are adding to their business, therefore the only measure they have to assign value is your hourly rate. Your job is to illuminate the value you are adding. When you do this successfully, your hourly rate becomes irrelevant. The last time I used an hourly rate, the client agreed to the proposal but wanted the job done a lot quicker than I had proposed. I knew that if I agreed to the shorter timeframe, I was in essence admitting that I could the job in less hours and therefore I would have to admit that I could do it cheaper. However, the final project fee was not a concern to the client, the timeframe was. I realised then that the client understood the value in my proposal and therefore my hourly rate was irrelevant.\n
- What you need is to know how to illuminate the value you are adding to their business or project. And you do this through positioning.\n
- Positioning is simply helping the client reframe their perception of you as something much greater than just a web designer or developer. If they think of you as a web designer then you’re pricing model must be similar to other web designers, otherwise there will always be a disconnect between your offering and their expectations. The only way to charge more than the average web designer, is for them to decide for themselves that you are more than just an average web designer. You can achieve this through the way you interact with the client from the minute your paths cross.\n
- While the average cost of a website around the globe has been heading south over the last three years, my fees have increased 4-fold. Why? Because I have positioned myself as more than just a web designer. Here are the three practical things you can start doing right now to do the same.\n
- Stop wasting your time by running along optimistically to a meeting with every potential lead that pops up. Only agree to meet with a potential client once you have qualified that they A) are someone you want to work with, B) have a project you want to give one of your coveted 12 slots to and C) they have a budget allocated which is consistent with what you know you are worth. Being unavailable to have coffee or lunch with someone who is unqualified also increases your perceived worth in their eyes. It’s like dating. When you first start dating someone, if they are sometimes unavailable because they have other commitments with their friends, it makes them all the more attractive. If they are always available at the drop of a hat, they kind of lose their shine a bit. Don’t they have any other friends? Don’t they have a life? By being unavailable to meet with a client until they have been qualified shows that you are serious about your work and your business. It also gives the perception that you are very busy. Which is very attractive to potential clients. So how do you qualify a potential new lead?\n
- Simply send them a website worksheet or pre-sales questionnaire and ask them better quality questions than any other web designer. Don’t ask them what features they want on their website. They are not experts and they will not have educated answers for you. They will tell you they want a blog without any idea as to why, only that they have seen other websites with great blogs and they think they should have one. It is your job to tell them what features they need based on their answers to a series of questions. Three of the best questions you can ask are:\n
- Why do you need a website. Nobody asks this. Web designers usually jump straight in with high levels of enthusiasm and start talking about image galleries and social media integration and start thinking to themselves about which plugins they can use to build the site without actually asking the client why they need a website. What does the business need and what does the target audience need from the website?\n
- What does a successful website strategy look like 12 months from now? Have they thought about how they are going to measure goals in Google Analytics? Do they have an email list they are trying to build? How many subscribers do they want? Are they selling items? Do they have monetary targets in mind? This question will instantly elevate you above your competition because it shows that you care about them getting a return on their investment.\n
- How much cold hard fucking cash do you have to stuff into my pants for this job? My web design company had a 6 month arm wrestle over whether or not to include this question in our website worksheet. Since we have, only 1 prospect has left it blank. About 30% have responded with a budget that does not meet what we know we are worth, at which point we send them a very polite and diplomatic pre-written email template explaining the difference in their expectations and our pricing. This saves us hours of unnecessary proposal writing. The majority respond with a realistic budget. Our marketing is now designed to attract those with budgets that match our worth. A few have come back with budgets that have exceeded what we were expecting. In these cases, we offer a proposal under their budget which saves them some money but still gives us a healthy profit. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you only ask. The next thing you can do is very powerful. Once you have qualified them and have determined that they are not a dickhead, they have a project which will not bore you out of your mind and they have sweet cash to spend, then it’s time for what I call the “butt sniffing” ritual, where you get together, smell each others butt’s and decide to do business.\n
- During this meeting, one very cool way to come out smelling like roses is to understand one of the most common fears of clients embarking on a new website. That fear is that they are going to end up with a new website that they will have no idea how to manage and you’re going to disappear into the mountains with a backpack. A great way to help them overcome this fear and position yourself as the smartest monkey on the block is to demonstrate how easy their new website will be to use. I call this the “I’m here to make your life easier not be a pain the ass” approach. Say something like “I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of mocking something up to show you how easy your new website will be to update once it’s done. Here is what the login screen will look like...”\n
- And when you login, you’ll have this nice clean business dashboard with some video tutorials to show you how to update your website...\n
- So you’ll always be in full control of your website and be able to update it and change things whenever you like and you’ll always have training videos to walk you through every step of the way.”\n\nNow as you can see, I’m using our White Label CMS plugin to clean up the dashboard and I’m just streaming a video from Vimeo. Of course there are some cool plugins around that give you lots of video tutorials to help you with this. You can actually do this without any plugins, the point is that by following these simple steps you are illuminating the value that you are adding and allowing your client to decide for themselves that you are the monkey for the job.\n
- So let’s recap.\n
- Calculate what you are worth by following this formula: Your Worth = Desired Income + Project Costs divided by Number of Projects per year.\n
- Get paid what you are worth by illuminating the value you are adding and through positioning.\n
- You do this by saying “No” to initial meetings until you have qualified the lead with a website worksheet.\n
- In the website worksheet ask better quality questions like “Why?”, “What does success look like” and most importantly “What is your budget?”\n
- Once qualified, turn up to the butt sniffing ritual and knock their socks off by demonstrating a rebranded login and dashboard. Remember: “I’m here to make your life easier, not be a pain in the ass.”\n\nThe golden nugget takeaway from all of this is you want your prospect to decide for themselves that you are awesome. That way there is a lot less haggling over price and it’s much easier to manage their expectations throughout the whole process.\n
- Download the free ebook of this presentation as well as a white label website worksheet template you can start using at the link on the screen.\n