Me personally, I can live with a strikeout. I really see it as part of winning the game. Let me explain how sometimes WebManna strikes out and how we use those at bats to improve our overall ERA. Our secret to great games, and by that we mean client relationships, comes down to a few simple rules. Go down swinging, take action on your mistakes, and choose your games wisely.
Stats
Our stats probably blow most marketing companies out of the water. Less than 10 percent of our clients walk away dissatisfied with our work. Think of our marketing service as a game, 93 out of 100 of our games end in a win. Only 7 in 100 games do we lose. We’ll get to those 7 losses in a minute. Now the more revealing number is how many times inside of a game do we strikeout. Of course it depends on how you define strike out. For us it means the clients expressed dissatisfaction. Period. Thats a strikeout. Because we were swinging and somehow we missed. Sometimes we know why we missed, usually we need to go back and watch the tapes. It almost always falls into the category of communication breakdown. We continue to find ways to develop and expand the communication process with our clients. We do this because we really hate to repeat mistakes. Repeating mistakes is not a fun game.
I Prefer Lavender
Often the strikeout is the background color on a website. We design the site in a psd, get approval and once it is coded and live for demo, or sometimes all the way live, we’ll get an email about trying a different color for the bg. I understand why this happens. The shiny new toy is starting to lose its shine and it would be cooler if it was a different color. So how do we address this? Upfront. When we go over the psd we explain how the shine wears off and suddenly you wish it was a slightly lighter shade of blue. While we offer a full redesign, we would like to get you thinking about your visitors experience on your website more than how it “might” look cooler with a different bg color. Some people just get hit with the fear that they could have done “better”. My parents would go shopping for weeks after a major purchase like an appliance, just to see if there were better deals they could have made. I do the exact opposite, I research for 6 months and once I buy it I own that sucker. With so many communication styles and so may personality types and so many opinions its no wonder that relationships of any kind experience a certain percentage of strikeouts and occasional losses. Our shared goal with clients is to keep our eyes on the prize. Sometimes this means letting the uniforms slide until we have the hitting worked out.
Its Not You, Its Me
It’s not just background color, sometimes we are super nice and do a complicated website for very little money. Never fails in these cases that they become the most difficult clients making sweeping changes over and over. Totally our fault. We were not clear on the cost, the resources required, and somewhere we missed the mark on moving the project forward. Truth is we probably should not have played this game. If the game is too imbalanced its no fun to play. We need to be responsible for making sure our “reward” for our work is motivating. Sure, in a perfect world, we are always 100% motivated no matter what the circumstances. Sounds great, and the reality is we need to be responsible for playing games that light us up. Not every game is going to be a thrill, but I hate to be on either side of a blow out. I like an even game where the outcome holds excitement! In plain terms, we are not the best partner for every client, it’s up to us to make relationship choices that will work well for both parties.
Are We There Yet? No Kids, Dad Got Lost.
The other situation we strikeout in sometimes is “time to completion”. Every time the heart of the problem is a breakdown in – guess-communication. We are waiting, the client is waiting, and nobody is talking. Every time was a misunderstanding of who was doing what next. The lesson for us here was more consistent follow-up. We come from backgrounds in working with agencies where we would follow up with our vendors like maniacs. We felt like it was our responsibility that the work got done. Its possible we just expected that same behavior from our clients. Andrea refers to that as being the squeaky wheel. Thing is, with a little timely grease, we can prevent that squeak from happening. So we have revamped our up front and follow up systems to be more effective.
Clueless Maniacs
As a service provider who gets paid to offer that service, I am supposed to say the client is always right. That’s stupid. The client is not always right. Sometimes clients are clueless about elements of design or marketing strategies. The 7 games we lost? Clueless clients. By clueless I don’t mean about marketing, I mean about relationships. Ok both. Not their fault by the way, that loss goes right to our heart. We didn’t recognize the need for us to play much bigger in those scenarios. And it’s possible we just were not equipped to meet those needs. Those games were way out of balance and we fell short. To be brutally honest some of those losses we just had to write off, others we could at least learn from our mistakes. Some days you can do everything right and still lose. i think that means there is more right that could be done, it is just hiding outside of your view. The reason we have so few losses is because our clients are generally not clueless, they are usually fired up committed business owners who are maniacs about being successful. But most clients are not marketing experts, they are experts at their stuff, not ours. These clients understand the challenge of communication and do their part to make things work.
No Really. We ARE Humanz
I am supposed to say we are perfect. LOL. We’re not. We happen to be human beings from the planet humanity and we have our stories and fears and issues just like anyone else of our species. Despite being ordinary humans, we happen to be very good at internet marketing and web design. And we’re very good at supporting people and businesses with a burning desire to grow and conquer.
I guesstimate our strikeout percentage is 20%. Our goal is 10%. Ask your other vendors what their goal is. If they say 100% poke them in the eye. They are not human. Their skin suits will pop and aliens will emerge. And take a good honest look at your own percentage. How often is your service perfect, no issues from your clients. The key to improving our game is establishing a structure that leads to more success. One of those keys is to go down swinging. So when we strikeout, we hurry back up to the plate and armed with new information we can better react to the pitches coming our way. We would definitely lose more if we just moped back to the dugout cursing the way of the world and bemoaning our bad fortune. We keep swinging. We blew it there and we are committed to a great result so we want another at bat. Lets do this. Hey its not like we just stared at the pitches, we were fouling them off. We didn’t blow it because we lack the skill, it was just a communication error. We can fix that. It’s like better footwork for an athlete. You keep adjusting to get the most out of your skills. One change we could make is to bring in someone who is an expert on client communication challenges.
PostGame WrapUp
So what have we learned here. Webmanna is a marketing business staffed by humans. These skilled WebManna humans provide marketing services to a variety of other humans. WebManna is constantly evolving their communication skills with clients to generate the best possible results in every situation. Every relationship will experience moments of misunderstanding and it is how we handle these misunderstandings that define the success of the relationship.
Foul Tip Strikeout in Internet Marketing
Me personally, I can live with a strikeout. I really see it as part of winning the game. Let me explain how sometimes WebManna strikes out and how we use those at bats to improve our overall ERA. Our secret to great games, and by that we mean client relationships, comes down to a few simple rules. Go down swinging, take action on your mistakes, and choose your games wisely.
Stats
Our stats probably blow most marketing companies out of the water. Less than 10 percent of our clients walk away dissatisfied with our work. Think of our marketing service as a game, 93 out of 100 of our games end in a win. Only 7 in 100 games do we lose. We’ll get to those 7 losses in a minute. Now the more revealing number is how many times inside of a game do we strikeout. Of course it depends on how you define strike out. For us it means the clients expressed dissatisfaction. Period. Thats a strikeout. Because we were swinging and somehow we missed. Sometimes we know why we missed, usually we need to go back and watch the tapes. It almost always falls into the category of communication breakdown. We continue to find ways to develop and expand the communication process with our clients. We do this because we really hate to repeat mistakes. Repeating mistakes is not a fun game.
I Prefer Lavender
Often the strikeout is the background color on a website. We design the site in a psd, get approval and once it is coded and live for demo, or sometimes all the way live, we’ll get an email about trying a different color for the bg. I understand why this happens. The shiny new toy is starting to lose its shine and it would be cooler if it was a different color. So how do we address this? Upfront. When we go over the psd we explain how the shine wears off and suddenly you wish it was a slightly lighter shade of blue. While we offer a full redesign, we would like to get you thinking about your visitors experience on your website more than how it “might” look cooler with a different bg color. Some people just get hit with the fear that they could have done “better”. My parents would go shopping for weeks after a major purchase like an appliance, just to see if there were better deals they could have made. I do the exact opposite, I research for 6 months and once I buy it I own that sucker. With so many communication styles and so may personality types and so many opinions its no wonder that relationships of any kind experience a certain percentage of strikeouts and occasional losses. Our shared goal with clients is to keep our eyes on the prize. Sometimes this means letting the uniforms slide until we have the hitting worked out.
Its Not You, Its Me
It’s not just background color, sometimes we are super nice and do a complicated website for very little money. Never fails in these cases that they become the most difficult clients making sweeping changes over and over. Totally our fault. We were not clear on the cost, the resources required, and somewhere we missed the mark on moving the project forward. Truth is we probably should not have played this game. If the game is too imbalanced its no fun to play. We need to be responsible for making sure our “reward” for our work is motivating. Sure, in a perfect world, we are always 100% motivated no matter what the circumstances. Sounds great, and the reality is we need to be responsible for playing games that light us up. Not every game is going to be a thrill, but I hate to be on either side of a blow out. I like an even game where the outcome holds excitement! In plain terms, we are not the best partner for every client, it’s up to us to make relationship choices that will work well for both parties.
Are We There Yet? No Kids, Dad Got Lost.
The other situation we strikeout in sometimes is “time to completion”. Every time the heart of the problem is a breakdown in – guess-communication. We are waiting, the client is waiting, and nobody is talking. Every time was a misunderstanding of who was doing what next. The lesson for us here was more consistent follow-up. We come from backgrounds in working with agencies where we would follow up with our vendors like maniacs. We felt like it was our responsibility that the work got done. Its possible we just expected that same behavior from our clients. Andrea refers to that as being the squeaky wheel. Thing is, with a little timely grease, we can prevent that squeak from happening. So we have revamped our up front and follow up systems to be more effective.
Clueless Maniacs
As a service provider who gets paid to offer that service, I am supposed to say the client is always right. That’s stupid. The client is not always right. Sometimes clients are clueless about elements of design or marketing strategies. The 7 games we lost? Clueless clients. By clueless I don’t mean about marketing, I mean about relationships. Ok both. Not their fault by the way, that loss goes right to our heart. We didn’t recognize the need for us to play much bigger in those scenarios. And it’s possible we just were not equipped to meet those needs. Those games were way out of balance and we fell short. To be brutally honest some of those losses we just had to write off, others we could at least learn from our mistakes. Some days you can do everything right and still lose. i think that means there is more right that could be done, it is just hiding outside of your view. The reason we have so few losses is because our clients are generally not clueless, they are usually fired up committed business owners who are maniacs about being successful. But most clients are not marketing experts, they are experts at their stuff, not ours. These clients understand the challenge of communication and do their part to make things work.
No Really. We ARE Humanz
I am supposed to say we are perfect. LOL. We’re not. We happen to be human beings from the planet humanity and we have our stories and fears and issues just like anyone else of our species. Despite being ordinary humans, we happen to be very good at internet marketing and web design. And we’re very good at supporting people and businesses with a burning desire to grow and conquer.
I guesstimate our strikeout percentage is 20%. Our goal is 10%. Ask your other vendors what their goal is. If they say 100% poke them in the eye. They are not human. Their skin suits will pop and aliens will emerge. And take a good honest look at your own percentage. How often is your service perfect, no issues from your clients. The key to improving our game is establishing a structure that leads to more success. One of those keys is to go down swinging. So when we strikeout, we hurry back up to the plate and armed with new information we can better react to the pitches coming our way. We would definitely lose more if we just moped back to the dugout cursing the way of the world and bemoaning our bad fortune. We keep swinging. We blew it there and we are committed to a great result so we want another at bat. Lets do this. Hey its not like we just stared at the pitches, we were fouling them off. We didn’t blow it because we lack the skill, it was just a communication error. We can fix that. It’s like better footwork for an athlete. You keep adjusting to get the most out of your skills. One change we could make is to bring in someone who is an expert on client communication challenges.
PostGame WrapUp
So what have we learned here. Webmanna is a marketing business staffed by humans. These skilled WebManna humans provide marketing services to a variety of other humans. WebManna is constantly evolving their communication skills with clients to generate the best possible results in every situation. Every relationship will experience moments of misunderstanding and it is how we handle these misunderstandings that define the success of the relationship.