Creating Client-Centric Project Plans

I went through 50+ briefs from brands like Apple, P&G, and Nike and created a template I now use with my clients. Here’s how it works: THE PROCESS • Schedule a 30-minute briefing call with the client. • Go question by question together. Record the call and take notes. • Ask for all the extra files and links that you need.  • Fill in the missing pieces and get to work. 1️⃣ BACKGROUND • Product: What’s the product and its value proposition? • Pain: What pain point does it solve? • Promise: How will it improve your users’ lives? • Proof: (e.g., results, experience, awards, testimonials, press.) • Purchasing: How and where do people buy the product? ＊＊ 2️⃣ CHALLENGE What's the main problem we're tackling? 💡 Follow this structure: [Business problem] because [customer behavior/belief]. (e.g., Our Gym’s revenue is down because people prefer to work out at home.) ＊＊ 3️⃣ GOALS •Main campaign/project goal: (e.g., get 100 new users) • Desired Action: What do we want people to do as a result of the advertising? • KPIs: How will we measure this? For example: Leads, Clicks, Conversion rate, ROI, Traffic, etc. I. {KPI} II.{KPI} III. {KPI} • Desired Beliefs: What do we want them to think/feel about the brand? I. {KPI} II. {KPI} III. {KPI} ＊＊ 4️⃣ AUDIENCE Who is our ideal customer? • Demographics: (Job, age, sex, income) • Behavior and feelings: (Consumption patterns, attitudes, habits, hobbies, hopes, fears, frustrations, responsibilities, daily schedule) • Where do they hang out? (Influencers to follow, communities, blogs, podcasts) • Stage of Awareness: I. Unaware II. Problem Aware III. Solution Aware IV. Product Aware V. Most Aware ＊＊ 5️⃣ COMPETITION AND MARKET • Alternatives: What will the prospect buy, do, or think if they don’t choose you? • Competition's advantage: What is making the competition successful? • Position: What is the brand’s position in the marketplace? (e.g., underdog, premium, etc.) • Trends: What trends or events make the product relevant right now? • Unique attributes: What features/capabilities do we have that alternatives do not? • Enemy: What or who are you against? ＊＊ 6️⃣ PREVIOUS MARKETING • What's been working so far: • What hasn’t been working: ＊＊ 7️⃣ PRACTICAL • Project Timeline: • Available resources: (e.g., In-house designers, stock photos, and software subscriptions.) • Legal considerations: • Production budget: • Things that must be included: (Taglines, slogans, images, etc.) • Media preferences: Where will they run the ads? ＊＊ 8️⃣ Additional Material Ask for some (or all) of the following materials: • Tone of Voice guidelines • Visual guidelines (fonts, colors, logo) • Links to previous campaigns • An intro to your Head of Sales or a BDR • Pitch decks • Interviews and customer surveys • Testimonials and reviews • PR articles and podcast episodes • User tests • Demo recordings • Relevant articles and publications ＊＊ And that's it! I hope you find it helpful :)

When I landed my first client, I didn’t celebrate. I panicked... “Where do I start?” “What if I mess up?” “What if they regret hiring me?” If you’re a beginner, you’ve probably felt this too. And that’s okay. After working with multiple clients, I built a simple, repeatable process that keeps things professional and stress-free. Here’s the blueprint I wish I had when I started: 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟭: 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗲𝘀 Ask questions like: → What do they need exactly? → How often? → Who’s the target audience? → What’s their tone or brand personality? Never assume & always ask. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟮: 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 Even a basic Google Doc works. Include: → A quick questionnaire (goals, tone, references) → Access to past content → Brand voice notes It shows you're organized even if you’re new. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟯: 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 & 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 → Read their past posts → Note phrases and storytelling style → Study similar creators → See what their audience responds to You’ll learn how to write as them, not just for them. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟰: 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 → Write 1 post from the brief → Ask for honest feedback → Edit and improve Build trust before taking on more. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟱: 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄 Example setup: • Monday: Share content plan • Tue–Thu: Write drafts • Friday: Deliver & get feedback • Weekend: Learn & improve Structure creates clarity. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝟲: 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼 → Send regular updates → Ask when unsure → Own your mistakes Your mindset matters as much as your writing. Don’t obsess over pricing at first. Focus on delivering value and learning fast. Still got doubts? I'm just a DM away:)

Friday honesty: Customer-centricity is a lot harder to maintain than it seems. Even for those of us in Customer Success. The tendency is always to drift toward making our processes and focus company-centric rather than customer-centric. Don't believe me? Just look at one example of this: Customer Journeys. Many teams say that they have a defined Customer Journey. But rather than actually being oriented around the customer, for many the journey map is a list of activities from the company's perspective that are built around milestones the company cares about (contract signature, go-live, renewal, etc). I know about this, because I've been guilty of it in the past myself. I confuse my activity list with a customer journey and wonder why customers aren't as successful as they'd like. While important, that isn't a customer journey. It's an activity list. It's a rut none of us mean to fall into, but it's the natural drift because we live and breathe our own organization. So what do you do about it? How can you adopt a more customer-centric mindset in this area? TRY THIS APPROACH INSTEAD: 1. List out the stages your customers' business goes through at each phase of their experience with your product. Use these to categorize journey stage, rather than your contract lifecycle. 2. For each stage, list out what their experiences, expectations, and activities should be to get the results they want. Don't focus on listing what YOU do, but rather focus on listing what a customer does at each phase of their business with your product. List out the challenges they'd face, the business benefits they'd experience, the change management they'd have to go through, the usage they'd expect. Think bigger than your product here. 3. Then map what support a customer would need to actually accomplish these desired outcomes at each stage of the journey. Think education, change management enablement, training, etc. 4. Based on all of the above, you're finally ready to start identifying what your teams do to support the customer. ____________________________________________ Following a process like this helps build customer-centricity in 3 ways: 1. It causes customers to be the center of how you decide which activities are most important to focus on. 2. It empowers your team to become prescriptive about what customers should be doing for THEIR success. 3. It exposes what you don't know about your customers' business. And if you don't know something, just ask them. Don't make assumptions when you can instead talk to your customers directly. Avoid the company-centric drift, fight to maintain true customer-centricity however you can. This isn't just a nice to have in 2024. It's a business imperative that's important for any business to survive in this climate. But I want to hear from you! How do you guard your org from drifting to company-centricity? #SaaS #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #CustomerCentric

Freelancers, stop screwing up your project proposals. Let me share a common scenario that hits close to home: You nail the discovery call. The client lights up discussing their $15k project, their highest-budget initiative this quarter. Your proposal hits their inbox. It's packed with 3-4 pages about your credentials and only 1-2 pages addressing their specific challenges. Radio silence. Sound familiar? Here's the hidden psychology at play: Your client left that call excited but plagued by two critical questions: "Did they really understand my business?" "Will I need to micromanage this?" Then they open your proposal and see it's 80% about you. Their doubts multiply. They ghost you. Most freelancers operate under a flawed assumption: Proposals need to prove their worth. This mindset is precisely what costs them clients. The moment you send a proposal focused on yourself and your awards, you're signaling: "I need you more than you need me." The solution is counterintuitive but powerful: Build your proposal like a mirror. Reflect their exact challenges back to them. Show you understand their business better than they do. Remove every "I" and "we" statement. Replace with "you" and "your business." When clients see their own words reflected back with solutions, it confirms their decision-making. They don't need another freelancer bragging about past glories. They need someone who can see their future clearly and lead them there. Break the pattern. Your next proposal should be 100% about them. Zero about you. PS: I've created a free proposal + invoice template for you that implements exactly this approach and helped me close projects over $20k+. Grab them here: https://lnkd.in/g6MqDkJS

Let’s just start and see where it goes. It sounds agile. It feels lean. But for SMBs, it’s often the reason projects stall When you're working with limited time and team capacity, direction matters more than speed. That’s why I borrow a principle from Amazon’s playbook: Working backwards. At Amazon, before any team writes a line of code, they write a press release. Not for marketing. For focus It forces one hard question upfront: If this succeeds, what will the customer actually experience? Now imagine what that unlocks for your business: → No more “building for the sake of building” → Clear decisions anchored to outcomes → Alignment without 50 meetings How do we adapt it for smaller teams: ✔️We skip the fluff, no decks, no endless planning ✔️We write a simple customer story that defines success clearly ✔️We avoid corporate jargon, just real language and real outcomes ✔️We reverse-engineer from the goal to decide what’s actually needed ✔️We align fast, so small teams don’t waste time chasing the wrong thing Example:Project: Improve client handoff process →Instead of “Improve client handoff,” We write: “Clients say the new handoff is so smooth, they felt taken care of from day one. Suddenly, everyone knows what we’re aiming for. And what not to waste time on. Because when you're small, clarity isn’t a luxury. It's your strategy. 👉 Want to test this with your next project? DM me, I’ll show you how we do it 

A successful project starts waaaaay before the actual project starts. Before I even put finger to keyboard, I need to know: a) the client's expectations b) what I'm actually going to be doing c) we're on the same page To do that, I ask a series of questions to get to the "why" (heads-up: that's the most important thing. WHY is the client doing this project?). Here are some of those questions: 👉 "What are your primary goals for this project?" Purpose: To understand the client's objectives and make sure my work and skills align with their needs. 👉 "Who is your target audience?" Purpose: To tailor my content to the appropriate demographic. 👉 "What are the key deliverables and deadlines for this project?" Purpose: To clarify expectations and make sure I can meet the project’s requirements and timeline. 👉 "Can you provide examples of content or style you like or dislike?" Purpose: To get a clear understanding of the client’s preferences and expectations. 👉 "Are there any specific guidelines or branding requirements I need to follow?" Purpose: To make sure my work meets the client’s brand standards and guidelines. 👉 "What is the approval process for drafts and final content?" Purpose: To understand how feedback and revisions will be handled and who will provide final approval. 👉"What are the potential challenges or obstacles you foresee with this project?" Purpose: To identify any potential issues early on and plan for them effectively. Am I missing any here?