I love it! Thinking back, purely by accident, the longest-lasting and most successful business relationships I've gained have been the ones where the client and I discussed their business first (and upcoming business needs!) more than the ins-and-outs of the technology itself.

I think this helps when developing as well; after starting to understand someone else's business, the more excited and interested one can become, which makes doing the work itself even more enjoyable.

Fantastic blog post, thanks for getting me thinking!

Yup.

If you bring up the technology, the conversation becomes a matter of the client figuring out whether or not you're good enough at the technology to do the job.

That's the wrong conversation. The right one is about what value you can provide to the client, and you simply exude the competence necessary to make your own technology choice.

It's a little different if you are a representative for that technology, because you're selling the tech rather than yourself.

> The worst part about it was that most of this software we were debating was free and open. There was no cost associated with the platform.

That last sentence. Arrgh. There may be no upfront cost, but there is certainly a cost involved in on-going maintenance, security, expandability and flexibility.

A lot of companies I've worked with on Web projects have come from proprietary or closed source CMSs and have suffered trauma when the only person who knows how it works disapears or the company that provides it has upped the license fees.

So they move to open source. Even so, the following question applies: "If this guy disappears, how maintainable will it be, what's the size of the community? how stable is it? how extensible? If is a complex nightmare of spaghetti for in-house staff to manage. How will I integrate it into existing systems

So yes. I love to hear your excellent plans for the business and your thoughts on how to improve customer engagement etc, but I also want to know that you are a technically competent firm which can articulate the reasons behind your choice of technology in terms better than "Oh, we know Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla and therefore that's what we use for everything.

Our strategy was that by informing the client, they a) knew we weren't backing them into a corner and b) were informed enough to have options in the future. (Most stayed with us anyway, but it was nice to say that they had a choice)

When it comes to winning bids, you need to speak the client's language and address the concerns they have. That's not to say you don't have an ethical obligation to consider long-term maintenance and other issues that are off the client's radar, but if you talk about it too much with a prospective client who isn't aware of it you will appear to be out of touch and not understanding their real needs.

The good part (although not very relevant in the grand scheme of things) is that there's no licensing fees. Either way, you'll be depending on someone—in house, consultant, or automated something or other—to manage the system for you. You said it yourself—the "only guy who knows how it works" can disappear whether the project is proprietary/purchased or open-source. Personally, I think open-source apps with a large community have much less chance of disappearing overnight, and the ecosystem of available consultants is much larger.

Plus, sure, added benefit: no up-front license fees. Maintenance is likely to be similar to proprietary solutions, and everyone knows that already. No one is saying "open-source software is freeeeee" anymore, that common misconception was pretty much put to rest around 2001.

Plus, even discussing the cost of the solution up front reinforces the points the author was trying to make: that discussing the technology, its up-front cost, its maintenance cost, whether it's closed- or open-source—none of that matters. What matters is the solution. And one would hope that you'd use the right technology for the right solution, taking cost and technology into account.

The idea that you don't talk about trivial technology details until you've gathered all the requirements and found the true need is still extremely valid, and the fact that he was discussing trivial costs so soon—whether or not they were misconceptions—was a sign that he was doing it wrong.

As there would be on a commercial platform (plus some extra), so what's your point?

I'm really curious, it seems a lot of people here may have made this same mistake, talking about technology rather than problems. Is this because you thought it was a selling point or because the client brought it up? Maybe I've just had unusual clients but this entire "problem" never really cropped up for me during my time working as a solo designer/developer.

1) They ask about it, which may be because they know a little bit about it. For example they tried to DIY it and failed, or they have a half finished version another developer did. Or they want to know how big the market is to get someone else to finish the project if you don't pan out for them.

Or they just have heard some vague stuff that they have read on blogs "Is Wordpress or Drupal better for SEO?" as if the choice of platform is going to rocket them to the front page of google...

2) I ask about it. Because sometimes they already have hosting that they want to use, in which case obviously you need to make sure the technology is going to fit that. The hardest thing sometimes is trying to persuade someone that the uber-cheap hosting provider they've chosen sucks and they'd have a better experience is they paid a few more $ a month.

I've been burned by this before, developed a system for a client. Installed it on their server and then found out they don't support PHP5 or PDO or anything even remotely modern and won't enable it for you.

We have a strong policy about advising clients like this up-front something like: "Of course we're happy for you to manage/engage your own web hosting. Are you going to be using them or us for first level support in case of problems? We're happy either way, and our usual $150/hr hourly rate, but if you'd like us to be the first point of contact you'll need to supply us with details of your support contact at the hosting company, and authority to incur support cost with them when required."

I simply inform them in a candid way what the problem is, and if they're reasonable they'll probably switch services or find a way to accomodate. Otherwise if I detect a tendency for cheapness, then I know there either needs to be a longer discussion or that they are in fact a red flag.

Sometimes it's also a pretty good discussion early on to help to start getting the feel of the type of respect and consideration potentials clients may hold for the consultant's advice.

Eons before I got into web dev, I was hocking HP printers in brick and mortar tech stores. One of the things I was taught that I would never forget is that you sell the experience, not the product. It's not an all in one printer. It's a way to get the photos from your vacation off your camera and onto paper. Or a way to privately print your own photos. Products don't exist to be a list of features (if they're good products). They exist to solve problems. The best ones don't even need to be "sold."

I don't mean to imply that some people aren't meant to be entrepreneurs. What I am saying is that there's a certain way of thinking that comes naturally to some and allows them to excel at it faster. But the good news is that this is something that can be learned.

I'm reminded of the very stark difference in marketing I see between Apple and any other PC maker. Apple sells you the ability to listen to your music anywhere, use the web easily, get photos from here to there fast, share your life with your family, and on and on. Then whenever I see any kind of PC marketing it's all "processor speed this, screen size that, Gigs of RAM" and features that don't mean much to anyone. Consumers end up doing what a lot of these website clients do when choosing a product. They seek out the thing they were told is good. So you'll see middle aged men in Best Buy saying "I want a Toshiba laptop because I heard it has X gigs of RAM and blah blah" when really there's not much separating that Toshiba from the other cheap plastic laptops next to it. In contrast I've also seen middle aged women walk into a Best Buy and say "I want the Mac that lets me video chat with my son in college". The PCs in the store let you do that too but they forgot to mention it in the marketing because they were so busy droning on about hardware specs.

*In fairness, I've seen the marketing of PCs improve a lot in recent years and it has started to get away from this sort of thing but not enough yet.

That Mac comes with Facetime and iTunes. If the PC laptop comes packaged with software, it's generally not the PC manufacturer's own, and they can't guarantee your laptop will be compatible with another.

Your point, however, stands. Most consumers really don't care/know much about what the specs mean, and this is very bad marketing to that demographic.

Too bad in retail, the salesman is pretty much gone after the sale. Then you're stuck because the benefit of the technology doesn't actually work in practice because people have specific needs AND some processes are better than others.

So I'm not a huge buyer into the benefits sell. I think it causes people to get lazy about what they need to know about their product and I think it also puts them into assumption mode about their customer, that they don't think deeply, and that they are oblivious to any useful technical details. And those of us customers who have gotten burned before rarely forget it.

With that said, I think leading with the benefits is great, the trouble is, when everyone leads with the same general benefit "it will make x easier" it becomes time to again leverage something to set yourself apart.

Famous example: 'we want GPS'. Turns out the need is for navigation by the blind inside buildings (=> poor signal, if any, and a need for one meter or so resolution) or for finding entrances to buildings (that data did not exist 10 years ago and probably doesn't even today. Say, you get out of a bus at a large hospital. Where is its entrance door? Can you even tell what side of the road it is on?)

Sometimes technologies get attributed magical qualities that you cannot get out of people's heads.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/floorplans/

Sometimes I wish I had more freedom of choice with technology.

WordPress has become popular enough that many smaller businesses who need a (new) website and do a few minutes of research often come across it. Most of what they read tells them that it's the best platform for their website. They don't really know why, or what WordPress does, but they get it in their heads that they want a WordPress website. Not that there's anything wrong with that in and of itself.

The same thing used to happen with Flash. Clients would come to me insistent on having a Flash website, or at the very least, a Flash intro page. This one there does come with an inherent problem. Thankfully, this one has gone to the wayside.

From my personal experience, small businesses really want to just be able to infrequently add or update content. Most of the time, WordPress seems like a huge hammer for small nails.

Can anyone recommend a light-weight system that allows the "regular folks" add or update content without the extras (such as changing "themes", etc)?

If you want something lighter yet, I highly recommend http://getkirby.com/ (no affiliation, just a fan). It's very lightweight, runs on a variation of MarkDown, highly flexible, and unlike most of the "static site generators" out there it has a minimal panel for adding and editing content. The $39 per site license is well worth it.

How is the programming model out of date? I am looking at getting into it via the new v6.0. It has ASP.NET MVC support but the CMS itself is still WebForms.

static html is the way to go these days.

I position any project as a way to increase business through design, SEO/SEM, conversion rate optimization, but I find frequently that WordPress is a selling point.

Disclaimer after reading this article: It's more about not mentioning your technology and listening to the customer, rather than WordPress specifically.

At first I thought this article was going to discuss more about the issue of everyday people knowing WordPress themes are extremely cheap (and sometimes free), so it kills the value of your web services (even though you may be building a custom theme). I know in my experience, as WordPress has became more popular, the average WordPress project has drastically gotten cheaper because clients aren't willing to pay more than X because they know they can find someone in high school or college to just build out a purchasable theme or something to that degree.

I have now found that it's much more valuable, like the article talks about, to offer more than just a simple "hey, we can skin your website and install cool plugins to accomplish all of your needs". To go on and discuss further about the client needs/wants, and provide value/knowledge, rather than just a theme.

But basically, here's the trick to close more deals and make more money: Become an investment, not an expense.

Spending money on technology (Rails, Wordpress) is an expense that implicitly doesn't correlate with any business "win". For most businesses, that win is making more money. However, when you get past the reason someone approaches you ("I need a website") to the core pain they're experiencing ("I need more customers!!!"), you can tailor everything — your proposal, meetings, execution, handoff — toward that end.

Instead of, "I will build your restaurant a website in Wordpress" — which doesn't answer the questions, "Will I make more money than I'm spending on this guy if I do this?"

Try, "I will tailor your website to get you more walk-in customers.", which conveys that you're going to be focused on getting them more business.

I've talked about this in length in my books, but I've also covered this on my podcast, most notably with the recent episode (#8): http://brennandunn.com/category/podcast/

I used to laugh, but we both agreed that he was right. If you're selling anything, remember it's what the customer cares about that matters, not what you care about.

I guess it's probably because they know that once the project is done they can hire one of the thousands of $8/hour teenage "Wordpress/Joomla experts" for maintenance.

Saying that though, in those kinds of situations I do usually try and have a conversation with them about why they want to make those calls - they're paying me (or wishing to) for my professional expertise, and part of that is about educating people around surface choices which seem like a bargain but come with potential hidden costs and disasters. Some can't be helped of course :)

"We're planning on using <CMS/Framework" to implement your solution. The reason for this is that <CMS/Framework> allows us to make a running start in development. For example, you do not want to be paying us to write code to manage logging in to your website. That's been done a million times and we don't want you investing into the reinvention of the wheel. Using <CMS/Framework> give us things like managing users and logins. It allows the money that you're investing to be spent on those things that makes your solution unique, those important little details that have brought us to the point where we're talking about building custom software."

"Why are you are charging us so much for Wordpress/Magento/Etc ? I thought it was free?"

The fact that the initial barrier of entry of skills required to install and run a basic Wordpress install is so low make people think that all the other work required to get a website running, which has pretty much nothing to do with Wordpress or any particular technology as the article imply, is just as simple.

Yes, there are a class of customer that will get annoyed because you identified they have a lot of nails to hammer, they don't like cheap hammers, they don't like to replace them every year, and they don't like how some hammers leave a nasty mark (cheap paint, etc.). So the sales person tries to sell 5 nail guns, with 3 year 24hr replacement warranty, and foreseeing your objections, offers a "train the safety officer" course.

"Dude, we just need some high quality hammers that will last 5 years".

Like "solution", "capability" keeps the focus off "how does it work" and on "what problem are you solving".

Vocabulary and habits of thought that remind us of the big picture can be helpful.

People go to the hardware store looking for HOLES, NOT DRILL-BITS.

Don't sell drill-bits. Sell holes.

I now feel bad for all the times I was annoyed by retail sales people asking me questions about what I was doing. I thought they were being nosy. Sounds like they were actually well trained and trying to help me solve my problem.

And you do it holeheartedly, giving the customer the hole nine-yards.

It's a holesome experience, the fruit of a holistic approach.

Perhaps we've been lucky with our clients but nobody has said that Wordpress is free, ergo I should be charged way less. We do not charge anything for the CMS itself - we charge for the implementation.

Also agree that talking to clients and puzzling out what he really needs is extremely important. Often, what a client says can be way different than what he means - and that can bite you hard. I've learnt to constantly ask for clarification if the client is being vague.

About SEO - Damn if I hate all the SEO "gurus" cropping up trying to peddle snake oil or some dodgy techniques that should, in theory, shoot them up the rankings, but in reality, does absolutely nothing.

It's good and proven business advice.

There is something to be said for the "Deck Builder" analogy. The Deck Builder doesn't ask you how you'd like your nails hammered in, or what type of treatment on the wood you'd like to use. He uses his expertise to make decisions based on the environment around him, including size and scope of the project. He takes care of that for you. That's part of why you're hiring him/her.

Also, there have been many times where I have sold X and then realized, after deeper analysis, that Y was a better choice. Now I have to back peddle and re-convince the client why that change is occurring, since I made such a point to mention X before.

Customers, and end users especially, rarely care what you code in, or what you're using. This does not automatically mean closed or proprietary solutions, only a reflection of whether you've built enough trust with them.

Customers are hiring you to be the guide through the decisions that they need to find and make to ensure they have the ability to communicate how they wish to on their website moving forward. Spending time trying to compare megabytes and Wordpress' doesn't communicate solution for them so quite often they will go for the sizzle rather than the steak.

However, if I simply ask "why", I find out that (90% of the time), they just want the logo to be more prominent. As a graphic designer, I know a number of tricks to make elements more visible aside from making them bigger. At this point I can offer a variety of solutions that increase visibility while maintaining the balance of the original design.

On another note, I think a lot of tech community is predisposed to using one set of solutions (django, ror, heroku, drupal, wordpress, redis...) and end up sort of shoehorning our preference to solve a particular problem and then selling that particular solution. I'm glad the author was able to distance himself from that.

Put solutions first and then when you discuss technology always take into consideration your client's level of expertise. If the client is non-technical keep technical discussions as high level as possible. Highlight ease of use and how non-technical the product is. If the client is a technical non-developer / power user highlight technical features they'll use. Developer level clients can usually figure out the tech themselves but talk some shop to build rapport.

THIS is the difference between a good employee and a bad one. This is why i tell all my admins to CALL THE REQUESTER if they have ANY questions. Don't waste time emailing back and forth, and don't waste time implementing a "solution" that might meet the letter of the law but have the requester coming right back for help tomorrow.

I started out in PHP years ago and WP put me out of business for custom PHP work -- thankfully ;-)

These days if the client wants some dirt cheap WP bling, I say ok...and then do the shop cart, custom etc. in Scala on the backend -- both client and coder are happy, nice mix.

Can do all what? What WordPress can do out of the box is far less than what it can't do, which is every custom website functionality one can imagine; thus the custom backend.

I agree, trying to stretch WordPress, Drupal, etc. beyond core functionality is asking for pain, not to mention dog slow performance.

This is the inverse of the classic copywriting strategy of asking,"Therefore What?" after every marketing statement to identify the underlying benefits. i.e. we sell drills. therefore what? you can use it to make holes. etc... (my take on the saying, "you sell the hole, not the drill."

Just question everything they say and you'll stumble upon what really drives their decision.

Great Post.

Enterprise Content Management System: $250,000....

Same basic CRUD application about 80% of the time :)

I'm in the middle of some business analysis training at the moment and this has been one of the main takeaways for me. One of the techniques the training suggests to help get to the real requirements is to ask the question why several times over. Interesting that Brent arrived at the same solution.

Do not sell website, sell online business solution.

Important though to find out why they are asking for something in particular as the first step. Could be because a) someone else is bidding using that (giving you an opportunity to suggest something else) or b) they read about it somewhere and think "that's the right thing to do" or any number of other reasons like c) a trusted person advised them to use that for some reason.

By asking "why" you will be able to use the reasons in your pitch to them for what you can do or even suggest another technology (which of course depends on the reason they give you obviously if they trust their "brother in law" you don't want to go against his advice etc.)