How to make profitable design development sites (part 2)

In the previous article, we looked at the problems of everyday life. Today let's consider the solution of one of them.

Today's topic is "Meeting"

Ideal meeting: the one that did not take place

No, no, of course, I do not dissuade you from direct meetings. But, understand, their number should be equal to three. Presentation, signing of documents (of course depends on the contract, but ...), receiving a letter of recommendation (of course, if you are not developing a CRM, an intranet ... where, of course, you need implementation, training, etc.). The point is that when you come to a meeting, then 70-80% of the time is spent on discussion of everything except the project itself. Meetings at the initial stages are especially useless, when you need 7-15 minutes of a decision maker. The meeting is delayed by the same hour, one and a half, or worse, three, four. Sometimes owners or managers, unable to take responsibility or trust developers, are invited, it seems, at the end of the meeting, employees. “Tanya, let Fedor sysadmin and Tanya from the sales department come to us.” What do you think, they do not know. And it all starts over.

Less meetings, less communication, the least of which may be irrelevant. In fact, this elapsed time is not needed either by you or the person making the decision. Consider another option. A busy person, whose everything is arranged by the minute, or the manager is in the process of preparing a large advertising company or opening a new branch. He can not give you much time. As one art director told me about his manager: “... he didn’t even listen to you ... he was waiting for the amount and time, and design is my problem.”
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The meeting, for two parties, is the appointed time, preparation, excitement, waiting time and travel time. Add to this 70-80% about anything at all. As a result, there were also meetings for the final approval of all the layouts, after which there was a feeling that we would start all over again.

Clear rules of the game

For successful work, you, like your client, need clear rules of the game. Of course, both parties will try to break them. Your task: to follow the rules as much as possible, stand your ground. Once you spend 15 minutes explaining the rules, you will save tens of hours of your time and client time during the work.

Time

Successful people count time in hours, sometimes in minutes. And they will be very grateful if you help save their time. There is a solution: a minimum of meetings. All that you can, discuss remotely. The phone partially solves this problem. But not until the end. Remember one more rule: fix everything.

So what to do?

Imagine that you have signed the contract. Your next task: start designing the layout. Where do you start? Determine the rules of the game. Conduct all communication remotely (in more detail I will tell in the next article). Use modern technology. Customers will appreciate it, and some even after you apply them in their enterprise. Because you are an IT carrier for them, you are a guide to new opportunities for them. Use them yourself and show them to others. Need Google.doc, google.tables, google.presentation; use online discussion tools: skype, vider, iMessenger; Try on-line services that allow the client to play according to your rules.

In more detail, how and what to use, I will tell you in the next article. And also I will reveal the next topic described in the previous article.

Previous parts: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4 , Part 5 .

ps (_! _) stop using only free services or say that they are not needed. Our studio spends about $ 150 per month only on small services. While most of them we buy immediately for a year, and we get good savings. This amount justifies itself, allowing us to hand over projects faster, and at the same time manage to devote time to all customers.