February 26, 2018 — My presentation will be ultra-visual, and I will be exploring actionable changes that attendees will be able to make immediately to improve their client relationships as well as their launch/site management workflows. Finally, I will address the financial benefits of offering a better user experience – in other words, how much more money freelancers and agencies can make by providing a solid user experience for their clients.

February 20, 2018 — Maybe it’s about a project that’s gone off track or a website workflow that’s confusing. Or maybe they’re not sharing their thoughts on ways their business could grow its sales or improve operations.

By demonstrating your ability to be truly authentic at each step in the process, you can aim toward creating projects that are more collaborative and ultimately more successful.

Learn why it’s critical to:

– Restate, in your own words, your perception of the project.
– Boldly ask, “So, what do you want from me?”
– Authentically and directly tell the client what you want from them.
– Test for client commitment and control.

December 19, 2017 — The talk is focused on how to nurture client relationship, go over hurdles, missed deadlines and misunderstandings, and how to protect yourself while not appearing protective.

Idea of the talk is to go through an experience with one client, where we went from a simple website migration (due to the previous developer missing in action), that we nurtured and turned into one of our best relationship.

Also, I want to focus on another thing that most developers misunderstand – that you are not actually charging for your time, and actually, you are getting paid for delivering value to the customer and his business, and why that is different.

December 12, 2017 — In my experience, answering these questions are building blocks for a successful client relationship- whether a small theme project or one with a huge scope.

Because at the end of the day, we are humans dealing with other humans.

Presentation Slides »

December 1, 2017 — Learn how to use your website to attract and capture prospective new clients.
Karen uses a fun analogy to show you how to bait, hook, and land new leads using your WordPress website.
No prior fishing knowledge required!
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November 13, 2017 — Agile development principles tend to be associated with ongoing, iterative projects that evolve over time. But to a client looking for a team to ‘just build a website’, this approach can sound uncertain and expensive. An agency often needs to balance practical business development strategies with more progressive approaches to project and team management. We’ll explore how an agency can adopt agile principles even when a fully iterative process isn’t an option, benefits of these approaches, and how to shepherd client relationships toward a more adaptive mindset.

November 11, 2017 — Building a partnership takes an investment of time and energy for both the client & delivery agency. Earlier this year, Sage embarked on an ambitious programme to rebuild its entire online presence. Part of the plan was for a global WordPress multi-site.

This will be a discussion, co-presented by Sage (the client) and Pragmatic (the agency), which will provide a 360 view of a large WordPress project, covering both the technical and non-technical aspects. We’ll talk about the steps you can take when facing a hugely challenging project – facing up to tight timelines and translating multiple desires into a deliverable programme of work. We’ll look at how you can maximise your efficiency during production, leveraging the core functionality that WordPress provides and building on top of it, and how planning the architecture with an eye on the future can be the key to building partnerships. We’ll hear about the project from the client’s perspective as Sage will talk about their experiences – and from an agency perspective, delivering the work.

There were plenty of challenges along the journey on both sites – creating a custom WP API in a matter of days, training internal staff on new tools and migrating thousands of posts. But most of all, we’ll look at how we focused on building a partnership – creating trust and efficiency which benefited both sides.

October 3, 2017 — When a web project is going great, client relations is a breeze. But what do you do when its not? Misunderstandings, under-bidding, over-asking, delays, and more can stall that project and sour a relationship. But with a bit of preparation, and pro-active management, you can give your project the best chance at success and turn upset clients into your biggest evangelists.

Presentation Slides »

August 31, 2017 — Topics will cover:
• Defining a story (The Story Spine)
• Translating dreams into goals and actionable steps
• Using the larger story as your roadmap
• Driving your process with ‘why’

August 31, 2017 — How we handle bad decisions examples include: violations of regulations, bad industry practice, and how to get the client to take your side or at least protect yourself at worst.