Establish Yourself As An Expert In Simple And Easy Ways

Why should clients believe you? There must be other people out there who know more about websites than you do or have more experience than you do. So to project to your clients as an expert means being an impostor…wouldn’t it?

In this episode, Justin Meadows explains why you need to establish yourself as the expert, how to do it and how you can deliver an awesome website to your client without being an awesome coder yourself.

That’s what we are going to discuss in today’s episode of Hassle-Free Websites.

In the video:

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The Impostor Syndrome

One of the things that might be holding you back from leading your clients is the feeling that you are not the best person in the world to do it. That somebody else is better at it than you are. It’s called the Impostor Syndrome.

You aren’t the first person to feel that way—it’s more common than you think. But understand that you don’t need to be the best coder in the world to sell an awesome website. In fact, you don’t need to be a coder at all.

What you need is to have a grasp of how websites are structured, what the best practice is and what is possible. But most importantly, a deep understanding of the business needs of your client will help shed light to the requirements they are asking for. In turn, it will also help translate into a website that can successfully convert and deliver more profit for your client.

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The Importance Of Expert Positioning

But WHY should you project yourself as the expert to your clients? Why not just let them do what they want since they definitely understand their business needs better than you?

Clients might have a more in-depth understanding of their business needs, but they don’t know how this understanding can be successfully translated into the website. If you give them all the authority to guide the project, what usually happen is, they will add a lot of pretty but unnecessary things into the site that distracts their market instead of attracting them to the site’s main goal.

This means reduced results—something your client will unwittingly do.
You want to steer them away from this pitfall. But because you have positioned THEM as the expert on the project and not yourself, they will resist your suggestions. They will push back your ideas thinking theirs are better than yours. The project will balloon out of proportion which will cost you more time, more effort and more money. It will also reduce the profit that you’re going to make on the project.

And that’s not even the worst thing that could happen.

At this point, you know the website project is a train wreck waiting to happen. When it finally crashes, your client will still blame YOU even if they were the ones who led it.

This is why it’s really important to establish yourself as the expert from the very beginning. Doing so means less scope creep, less changes and less skepticism. It makes the project easier to manage and cheaper to produce.

Remember: when you’re selling a website to someone who trusts you as an expert, price is less of an issue. That means you can charge a bit more, therefore, earn more.

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How To Build Authority

The question now is: what can you do to make your clients look to you for advice and accept them without a lot of questions or doubts? How can you make them look at you as an expert?

This may sound a bit too simple, but it doesn’t make it less true: be confident.

Focus on what you know and on the value that you provide. Understand your client’s needs by asking diagnostic questions much like a doctor does during consultation. This will help you determine your client’s problems and put you into that trusted position where you can prescribe them a solution.

If you think you need help in ensuring the delivery of a great result, find an experienced mentor who can guide you. Take online courses like WP Elevation. Get involved in forums. Remember to master a specific niche. A great resource to learn more about this is Consulting Tycoon.

Make sure to create a smooth first experience for your client by providing a professional and smooth on-boarding sequence. Establish rules and boundaries. Be upfront with your client to set expectations as early as possible. This is especially true if you know you lack experience (but knows you can still deliver outstanding results). Perhaps offer your client a discounted rate in exchange for using the project as a “case study.”

You will surely learn something along the way. Share what you have learned. Put it out there on a blog or podcast. Don’t be afraid to share lessons and successes. You don’t know who you are going to reach and how you are going to affect people with your stories.

Knowing all the technical details of web design and development maybe important in selling websites, but it is not the key—you can always pass this on to coders. Knowing your client’s market, business and marketing principles are. These are the things clients will pay a premium price for because these are also the essential first steps in helping them get better results.

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