Number thirty-five: Have an opinion
Good day, I'm Troy Dean from Video User Manuals and Agency Mavericks. 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 35. Have an opinion. Okay, sorry about the rude slide here, but occasionally what I like to do is send my clients an article and say, “Hey, I thought you might be interested to see this article on this website about smartphone usage of websites and why I completely disagree with it. I think this is rubbish and here's why.” So, here's the thing. We all want leaders. We all want somebody to lead us down a path with conviction, with confidence and with strength in their beliefs.
If you are a small business client and you're building a website, you want someone to put their hand up and say, “I know how to solve this problem for you,” without the cliche of the used car salesman saying, “trust me.” That's essentially what you're doing, but not by what you say, but your actions. So, if you can stick your flag in the sand and say, stake your claim and say, “I know what I'm doing here. I know a lot about this topic. These guys over here are saying this and I don't agree with and here's why and here's how it relates to your project,” then you become…
If you can do this politely and you can do this cleverly you become opinionated and thought leaders are thought leaders because they have opinions. Think of Seth Godin. Think of Tim Ferriss. Think of anyone who you look up to in the entrepreneurial space or anyone who you look up to in the business space, Malcolm Gladwell for example. Why is it that we like these people and we read their articles and we read their books and we follow them? Because they have opinions. It's not because they're vanilla. If they were vanilla, then they wouldn't appeal to us.
You need to have an opinion, and it needs to be grounded in truth and in fact and in research and in experience. So, send an article to your client and say, “Here's something that is rubbish. I don't agree with it and here's why, and here's how it relates to your project. Don't worry we're not going to do that, we're going to do this because this is the right way.” Again, we're not having a conversation about our proposals and we're not asking for feedback. We're positioning ourselves as a trusted expert in our field.
In the next video, I'm going to share with you a little idea on how you can show credibility to your new client even before they've signed off on the proposal. Until then, go elevate. Make sure you subscribe to the 101 Ways Podcast in the iTunes stores. Just search for 101 Ways to Elevate or visit us at wp101ways.com and download the free 101 Ways ebook.
