Good Client Management (video)
A conversation with Siege Media CEO, Ross Hudgens
Welcome back to the SEO MBA. A quick email this week as I’m busy in the video studio recording footage for the upcoming course on Effective Client Management. Hopefully the full course is out in the next few weeks!
How often have you rolled your eyes at your client?
Here’s a fun reframe. Next time you feel like your client is asking for something unreasonable, or asking for something that doesn’t make sense, or pushing you in the “wrong” direction - stop and consider for a second that they might be right.
The truth is that your client knows their business better than you do - they have context around the health of the business, strategic priorities and internal politics that you don’t have access to.
Instead of trying to push back on your client - when you get an “unreasonable” request your first job is to understand more clearly where that request came from. Chances are there’s something going on that you’re not aware of. Some missing context that will put things in perspective for you.
First understand, then negotiate and push back.
I talk about this idea, and a bunch of other ideas about client management with Ross Hudgens, CEO of Siege Media and I think it came out great! We talk about a bunch of stuff and really get into the weeds of both my own consulting work and how Siege Media operates.
Some key ideas we talk about:
Why I hate SEO audits - and what to do instead
How to push back on clients, and why clients are right more often than we think
Why Siege Media onboards clients in cohorts
How to upsell clients effectively - by thinking about it as providing a service to the client
Take a watch:
If you’d prefer to listen, podcast links available here.
For those that are interested, here’s my video “studio” (aka small Brooklyn bedroom!):
Thanks to my amazing partner Erin we’ve turned it into something not half bad!
New course coming soon….