Process Refining Through Lessons Learned

Refine your process when things work (and especially when they don’t work) to improve your position in the market. One of the reason fledgling business fail is because they can’t quickly enough learn from their mistakes or their initial mistakes are too much to overcome because they didn’t take baby steps. While I’ve managed to avoid devastating mistakes so far, I’ve had my fair share of lessons learned over the past 4+ years. I presented a lot of them at WordSesh, but here is a nice, tidy list.

The 10 Commandments of business

1. Respond to initial inquiries quickly. The number of projects I’ve landed because I was the first (and sometimes only) person to respond is too great to guess at this point. Hundreds. Some people don’t even reply to perfectly good requests.
2. Don’t give away the goose. When you’re doing an initial quote, proposal, or call, don’t tell them everything you’re going to do – they just might find someone in India to do your plan for $300 – at least charge for your time if you’re going to give that much info away.
3. Charge how much you need to make ends meet. A sure-fire way to fail in business to to charge such low rates that you can’t pay your bills. If you need help with pricing, I’m available for coaching on this, along with many other areas of running your business.
4. Under-promise and over-deliver. Few things will cause you more work dealing with frustrated clients than over-promising and under-delivering. Sure, timelines can slip, but be open and proactive when they do.
5. Don’t make it too easy for people to grab your attention through your site. I’ve recently seen a few of my fellow Genesis developer friends tweet that they were taking their phone numbers off their websites. I was shocked that they were published in the first place, but most people are more extroverted than I am. It comes down to adding layers of contact processes for vetting potential clients. See my Contact page.
6. Do what you say you’ll do. When you say you’ll do something, do it. If things start to unravel, reach out to those affected by an issue.
7. Do no harm. This is a big one for me. I get a boatload of bad ideas and preconceived notions coming at my via contact form for what people want on their website that should never, ever happen. As a quality dev, it is your job to educate people and help save them from a bad choice. I at least make them insist twice and then inform them that their work will not appear in my portfolio.
8. KISS. “Keep it simple stupid” is a phrase from WWII and are words to live by when it comes to site organization and design. Visitors don’t want to think, so don’t confuse them with a crazy homepage.
9. Clear communication. I’ve never used contracts before. Before this week, that is. It’s more of a “what to expect” and “here’s how we’re going to handle payment” agreement, but it really clears the air for what is to come and who is responsible for what.
10. Ask for referrals. When you finish a project, ask for a referral from your extremely happy client. Chances are, they know someone who could use a good website and you’re just the person to do it.

There’s a lot more to write on the subject, but I hope you find these to guide you to the next level of doing business with great success.