Routine is the enemy of productivity.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I first got a job, it’s this.

Routine is the road rutted so deep that you don’t even need to steer your way down it. Routine puts us to sleep at the wheel, and spells death to dynamism. Routine kills creativity in all its forms.

The shortest route

The human mind is pretty good at learning. And once we learn something, we naturally look for ways to cut corners, to make our lives easier and the task ever simpler.

Prima facie, this fact suggests that routine is great for productivity—after all, once we learn a routine, we can make it simpler, and more efficient, and that means greater productivity, right?

Well, not always. Firstly, the shortcuts we make—the “efficiencies” we create—are often subconscious, or driven by a desire to simplify and speed up, rather than produce the best possible outcome. And for freelancers, there’s no point producing poor work.

Secondly, in our work, routines commonly relate less to processes that we need to complete to produce work than they do to the times and places at which we do certain things. Routine often relates more to the scheduling of our time than anything else. And that kind of routine’s the worst of all.

Let’s say you have a regular Wednesday morning work-in-progress meeting with a client. You decide to block out Tuesdays, between 3pm and 4pm, to prepare the weekly agenda and project update documentation. Every week.

As the weeks pass, this hour of quiet time may well become a welcome punctuation that signals the end of the first hectic days of your week. Soon, you start each prep session by going out and grabbing a coffee, which takes 15 minutes or so out of your scheduled hour.

The first couple of meetings go well, so your brain automatically begins to focus on the parts of the process that get the most attention from the client, and cuts from the workload those things that aren’t discussed at such length. Your agendas get shorter, as do your status reports. You’re also getting to know the client, so you spend less time and energy coming up with or discussing proposals for different aspects of the work with them—maybe you start inferring and assuming instead.

You can see where this scenario is heading. Perhaps you know from bitter first-hand experience. Routines encourage us to operate on autopilot, and for freelancers, that’s the last thing we want to be guided by.

But the impact of this routine doesn’t stop with the WIP meeting and your preparation. It also affects that last hour (or two) of your Tuesday afternoon. You finish the preparation at 4pm each week … and then what? Perhaps you decide that you’ll use the remaining time to do small bits and pieces, since you’re unlikely to ever start a new or large task that late in the day. So maybe over time that last hour on a Tuesday becomes, basically, wasted time—you muck around on Twitter, send some emails, and organize your social life.

Suddenly, that one-hour of prep has become a half hour that cuts two precious hours out of every week. Multiply that by any other routine tasks you need to do, and you could be creating some major inefficiencies for yourself.

The scenic route

If routine encourages us to take the shortest route, perhaps our goal should be to take the scenic route. Scenic routes have more inspiring views, more challenging driving, and usually make for a more enjoyable journey.

Many freelancers pride themselves on the fact that their working lives involve minimal routine. But often clients encourage us to adopt a routine because it makes it easier for them to manage their time, or coordinate multiple stakeholders or inputs at their end.

Life can also encourage routine—maybe you have a regular fitness training session, business mentoring meeting, or interest group catchup that you need to schedule into your week.

If you need to stick to a routine for some reason, there things you can do to help make sure the time you spend is productive and actually fulfilling.

Change the location

Changing the location in which you complete the routine work can help you to stay fresh and focused—even (and especially) if you always complete that work at the same time each day or week.

Think about a few potential locations where you could do this task—the cafe, the library, your back patio, your office, a shared workspace, and so on—and choose a different one at random every time you’re getting ready to do that routine work. What seems like a small, “cosmetic” change can go a long way to keeping you alert and on-task.

Change the time

Similarly, changing the time at which you do routine work can present different challenges each time you complete that task, keeping us on our toes.

Perhaps you need to do an hour’s meeting prep on Thursday each week. Don’t set it as an repeating appointment in your schedule: mix up the scheduling of that hour each week. Get up early this week and do it in the calm of morning, before you start work proper. Net week? Drop it in between those two Skype calls you have scheduled. The week after? Who knows?

Changing the schedule like this means you’ll always approach the routine work from a different perspective, and tackle it in a slightly different frame of mind. And that means you’ll have more opportunities to think creatively about what you’re doing.

Break up the task

Sometimes, routine work takes up large chunks of the day or week. In those cases, it can be a good idea to break up that work and tackle different combinations of tasks at different times, and from different locations, each week.

The other benefit of breaking the tasks up is that this puts boundaries around them: you’re automatically limiting the amount of time you can give them. This can help you to generate and maintain motivation for those tasks even when they’re relatively unchanging compared to your other work.

Set goals

It’s all too easy to take a routine task, at a routine time, and say to yourself “I’ve got two hours to get this done.”

Let’s face it: getting something done is really the bare minimum level of performance. If you’re trying to grow your freelance reputation and business, and actually enjoy what you do at the same time, you might want to go beyond just crossing the routine task off the list as “done.”

As you begin, have a think about what you want to achieve with the work. Set a goal—something that’s either related to the quality of the routine work you’ll do, its value to the client, or its value to you and your business, and complete the task in a way that meets the goal.

In our example of the weekly WIP meeting, perhaps this week you’ll try presenting the task progress reports graphically, rather than in text format, because you’ve realised that your client’s a visual person and you think a graphical representation will be more interesting and look more professional.

Stay conscious

It sounds elementary, but as I said at the outset, routine can put us to sleep at the wheel. Often, staying conscious of what you’re doing, how much time you’re taking to do it, and how well you’re doing it, is the biggest challenge of all.

Remember: our brains are made to learn, and then build into our subconscious any aspects of the work that we can. With routine work, it can he hard to avoid operating on autopilot.

Taking a moment every so often to review the routine work you do, and assess how it’s tracking, can be a good way to stay conscious of your progress and performance on those tasks. Discussing it with a colleague or friend-freelancer can help to give you a fresh perspective on the work, and where you can take it. Asking the client for feedback can also help you to see the work, and how you can improve your contributions, in an objective light. Try researching and trying different techniques or approaches for completing the task, too.

Are you asleep at the wheel of the routine work you do? Share your advice for getting out of the rut in the comments.

Image by stock.xchng user fangol.

In my recent article, 5 Reasons Prospects Don’t Like Your Website, I mentioned how important client testimonials can be. Well, one of the comments really drew my eye.

See, one of our readers, George from Darklit Web Design and SEO, has a great testimonials page – we’re not talking those old boring text testimonials either. We’re talking video testimonials. George explains how easy and cost-effective this can be in his comment, where he states “Windows movie maker, a digital camera, and a little planning is all it takes.”

George’s comment reminds me of a client of mine, who runs an employment agency for travellers visiting Western Australia. For many travellers, they haven’t ever been to that part of the world, let alone worked on a large remote farm, or worked as a laborer in a vineyard, so this client needs testimonials that not only give great reviews of their service, but also of the casual employment they’ve gained.

What this client does is travels to their workplace, and films them telling the camera why their business and the job they’ve landed, is great. This not only reaffirms why travellers should use this client, but also gives them a valuable insight into the work that can’t be done in text form. Simple yet very effective!

Thanks for sharing your idea, George. I appreciate it.

The next time you ask a client to provide a testimonial, consider asking if you could record it on video instead – the difference can be very effective.

There was a time in early 2009 when I succumbed to the economic fear and uncertainty that had gripped the nation. Unemployment was more than eight percent and climbing towards the 10.1 percent we experienced in the 1981-82 recession. And a recent survey had revealed that 50 percent of Americans were worried about losing their job. Yet, even if it did reach 10 percent, nearly 90 percent of us would still have a job. So why were half us (including me) worrying that we wouldn’t?

The reason, of course, is that we’re all afraid of winding up amongst the 10 percent instead of the 90 percent. How does that saying go? It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours. For the freelancer, “losing your job” can mean losing a big client because they’ve cut expenses or gone out of business. I know people that this has happened to.

Today, over 13 million Americans remain out of work and global unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, so the job landscape is still rather bleak. The good news is, opportunities in our industry, both full-time employment and freelance, are on the rise. Here’s the outlook.

Programming & Application Development

Driven by the explosive growth of mobile, 61 percent of executives surveyed plan to hire web and application developers over the next 12 months. That’s up from 44 percent from last year. Companies are having a hard time finding people with skills in mobile technologies to build new apps that meet the needs of mobile users. Also, new regulations and requirements are creating a high demand for healthcare IT professionals.

Web 2.0

Demand for IT skills centered around social media are predicted to increase in 2012. Those with expertise in HTML, XML, CSS, Flash, JavaScript, AJAX, PHP, and .Net stand to benefit from the Web 2.0 hiring push.

Graphic Design & Multimedia

While there are companies that hire in-house designers, we’re seeing a shift to more and more freelance positions. As I’ve said many times before, freelancers need to be skilled business people, networkers, and know how to (gasp) sell their services. Multimedia artists have opportunities that didn’t exist two years ago—like designing interactive magazines for the iPad. Unlike the pure graphic designer, however, multimedia artists need to know more than just Photoshop. Expertise in HTML, CSS, JQuery, and other programming languages is essential.

Web Writing

Just because newspapers are going under doesn’t mean people have stopped reading. Those who can write for both people and search engines are becoming more and more in demand.

Computer Science

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer science is one of the fastest growing occupations, with 24 percent growth projected between 2008 and 2018. That’s much faster than average for all occupations.

Increased Demand Means Increased Competition

With promising outlook and mean annual income of over $100,000, university students are returning to computer-related studies in droves. Stanford University reports that enrollment in the first quarter of the 2010-2011 school year was already up 120 percent from 2009. This reverses a decline in U.S. computer program enrollment that followed the dot-com crash and fears over corporate outsourcing overseas that had driven students into other degrees programs.

So the future looks bright, you may have to wear shades, especially for all you left-brainers out there. But right-brain people skills are as important as ever in order to compete and succeed.

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Recently we wanted to trial two messages for lead collection. We built a landing page template, and then created two headlines and copy variations. One was using a very active tone, and one less so.
We ran a straw poll within our team, and we were fairly certain which one would work better – but how do we test this? That’s where split testing comes in! Using Google’s free Website Optimizer tool, and a humble budget to be spent on Google AdWords, we did just that.

Rather than publish a page and make a few tweaks every few months, split testing can achieve greater results in shorter time, and it doesn’t need to cost a lot. The way Google Optimizer works, is that it will allow you to send traffic to both pages, and set a goal for conversion. We had a simple contact form on these landing pages, so determined we wanted that form to be completed as our goal.

Then, using Google AdWords, we ran two Ad Groups, each pointing to one of the two landing pages. Then, we bumped up a budget so we could get at least a few dozen visitors to each page over two weeks.

The result? We found one page (the very direct, active voice one) had nearly 50% more form completions than the other. The cost ended up being under US$100 and a few hours of our time.

Now, we can roll that page on our main website, knowing with confidence we’ve chosen the right one. If we really wanted to (and I’m positive we will soon) we could then make further subtle changes, and run a second split testing campaign.

Give it a go by testing two variations of contact forms, or two variations of your homepage – you’ll be surprised how quick you’ll get some real results!

Do you have clients on retainer? If so, you’re probably familiar with the concept of retainer-client burnout.

Retainer arrangements can seem like the ultimate freelance goal—after all, who doesn’t want a reliable, bread-and-butter income to support their freelancing? Yet retainers can wear pretty thin over time.

Let’s face it: bread and butter isn’t the most exciting meal. Many of us freelance because we like variety. Balancing our need for regular, reliable income against the potential for boredom can be difficult. But the last thing you want is to underservice or lose interest in your retainer clients—they’re more likely to be the ones you want to look after best of all.

How can you ensure you don’t get bored by retainer work, and keep your quality levels high, over the months and years?

Change the schedule

When you first begin a retainer, you may decide to schedule the work for the same time slot each week or month. It makes sense: this way, you can ensure you’ll always complete the work required.

That’s all good … until the retainer starts to feel a bit humdrum or boring. At those times, simply changing your schedule can have a surprising impact on your motivation for the work.

Don’t just look at moving the retainer time to a different day of the week—consider breaking the work itself up differently too. By chunking tasks differently—potentially into smaller, more specific blocks—you can find you have greater focus and can produce work of even higher quality for those regular clients.

Streamline and improve service

Once you have a retainer up and running smoothly, you may find it a good testing ground in which to try streamlining your work processes to make them more efficient.

The more efficiently you can complete the retainer work, the more profitable it’ll be for you. And if you find you have extra time in the retainer, that might give you the opportunity to expand the nature of your retainer work with that client.

But that’s not all! You can also use retainer relationships to do non-intrusive, ongoing, qualitative market research. Work closely and regularly with a retainer client, and you’ll likely build significant rapport.

That strong, ongoing relationship will support your evolving understanding of the retainer client’s business, needs, expectations, and industry as a whole. And that can give you deep insights into offerings you can provide to other businesses operating in the same space.

Experiment

One thing I’ve found retainers to be great for is experimentation. Over time, you’ll likely find that you get into a groove with the routine of your retainer work, and it begins to take less time as you naturally streamline the way you work.

Why not use that extra time to try new things? This isn’t about treating retainer clients as guinea pigs; it’s about offering them added value and innovation ahead of your other clients, all within their regular retainer fee.

Similarly, your growing knowledge of your retainer client’s business and needs can help you perceive other opportunities for your services to add value to their work. These may not be opportunities that increase your retainer income, but they may keep you interested and motivated as the months pass.

Manage your rate

Money’s another, pretty compelling motivator. Yet retainer arrangements usually involve a volume discount on our standard hourly rates. While that makes sense, it can make it hard to get motivated to do retainer work when we have (or want to chase!) a nice lucrative project at the same time.

To that end, it’s probably wise to keep track of your retainer rates—don’t set them and forget them! Each time you raise your hourly rate, review your retainers as well, and make sure you tweak them accordingly.

Finally, if you find you’re losing interest in a retainer, rates can be a good first place to start diagnosing the problem: do you think the work is worth your time? If not, you may need to up your retainer rate.

Keep in close contact

For some of us, project work tends to involve more intense client contact than does retainer work. But if you like that contact, you’ll want to make sure you keep it up with retainer clients, too. Otherwise, months down the track on a retainer, you might find yourself feeling like a machine, cranking out the same old widget each week—a widget that the client has come to take entirely for granted.

A better option is to keep in close contact with your retainer clients. While it’s true that they and you both want the arrangement to be hassle-free, it’s an error to equate contact with hassle. Keeping in touch is essential for effective collaboration, and your ability to provide the best possible value for the retainer fee.

Continuously build a relationship with your retainer client—not just their business!—and you’ll likely find retainer work far more satisfying than if you work as autonomously as possible.

These are just a few ideas, but I’d love to hear how you avoid retainer burnout in your work. Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user saavem.

Everyone knows good design when they see it.

Unfortunately, everyone has a different opinion about what “good design” actually is. This is a problem if you’re creating products, software, graphics or other media for a client. Your design may need to be agreed by multiple people all with their own notions and prejudices about how the product should look, feel and work. If you’re banging your head against the wall in frustration, here are five tips which could help…

1. Outline Your Process

Walk your client through your design process. In the web sphere, this could be:

1. collate the requirements and objectives
2. devise concepts, walkthroughs, story boards and wireframes
3. produce a final mock-up or prototype for approval

A little tweaking at all stages should be expected, but avoid falling into iterative traps; i.e. the client demands 27 different concepts, scavenges their favorite parts of each and creates a Frankenstein design which has little hope of satisfying the original requirements.

2. Avoid Design-by-Committee

Ideally, your final design should be signed off by one person — two at most.

Unfortunately, many organizations have a culture where employees are afraid to make mistakes; it’s safer to sit on the fence than take responsibility for a decision. You may encounter situations where a decision is reached by compromise: half liked the blue design, half liked the red, so they settled on purple (which no one liked).

The problem is exacerbated by design meetings. Meetings can be dominated by one or two people who force their opinion on others or use the forum as a battleground for political posturing. The design suffers and the opinions of quieter members are never heard.

3. Approach Decision Makers Individually

If the final sign-off absolutely must be agreed by multiple people, approach them individually. You can explain why the design satisfies the original objectives on a one-to-one basis and collect feedback. It gives everyone a voice, prevents internal politics and documents the responses. It’s also makes it harder to raise objections at a later stage.

Obviously, this can take more time than a single meeting but it’s less likely lead to design compromises. Rather than performing your presentation multiple times, you could consider creating a video or slideshow. That should reduce the effort required and it’s impossible for viewers to interrupt!

4. Ask Direct Questions

“What do you think of the design?” is the worst question you can ask (especially by email). It turns an objective critique into a subjective discussion. People will resort to their gut instinct or first impression; you’ll rarely get anything more informative than “I liked it” or — worse — “I didn’t like it”.

Ask direct questions such as:

1. Does the design satisfy requirement X?
2. Does the design meet the defined business objectives?
3. Does the design implement all features outlined in the wireframes?

This makes it easier to identify and document specific issues. Avoid obliging decision makers with open-ended discussions: if they can’t pinpoint a problem accurately and concisely, that problem doesn’t exist.

5. Use the Wisdom of Crowds

If the client steadfastly refuses to appoint a single decision maker, you could consider taking the process to the other extreme. Ask everyone’s opinion: all company employees, their customers, website visitors, passers by, social media users, etc.

A decision can be made by poll statistics; it’s difficult for an individual to complain if 94% of respondents stated the design satisfied all objectives.

Please share your sign-off scare stories. Was approval expected from 93 people? Did a client dither for months? Did a lovely original concept turn into a monster? Was a design rejected because Amy in Accounts didn’t like a shade of green which reminded her of broccoli?

Comments welcome…

An SEO client of yours is approached by another web company with a unique marketing solution which you cannot provide. When your client asks your opinion, you …

1. Take an unbiased look and give the client your honest advice
2. Tell your client this would “conflict” with the work you’re doing for fear that, if your client begins working with another web firm, you might wind up losing their business

In my last article, Transactional vs. Consultative Selling: Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference, I compared the transactional sale with the consultative one:

Transactional Sale

A simple, short-term sale in which the customer already knows what he needs. Little or no product knowledge is required on the sales side. Buying criteria is usually based on “how much?” or “how fast can I get it?”

Consultative Sale

A complex, long-term sale involving the collaboration of both buyer and seller. The sales person must first understand the customer’s needs before offering a solution.

It becomes a problem when a prospect attempts to engage our services using the transactional approach. Yet, we can do our clients an equal dis-service when we assume the transactional approach, but disguise it as consultative.

Harvard Business School professor, Ranjay Gulati, explores the fallacy that media companies are “consultative and customer focused.” According to the article on BIA/Kelsey’s Local Media Watch blog, salespeople are saying “I’ll talk about your needs so long as it leads to you only buying my portfolio of solutions …” but that they are “communicating with customers through a product lens (with a pre-determined end in mind).” That’s a problem.

Consultative or collaborative selling is about transparency and building solutions that fit the customer’s needs and not necessarily the media company’s balance sheet. If a salesperson is aiming to sell a specific product set, and is willing to un-sell other potential solutions, then this version of consultative selling is merely disguised as the same transactional selling of old … (Italics Mine)

Are you willing to walk away rather than propose a solution that won’t truly meet the prospect’s needs? Or will you “un-sell” another potential solution by providing disinformation to convince the prospect that your offering is superior to another type of advertising or marketing medium?

Incidentally, the scenario I shared at the beginning of this article actually happened to one of our sales reps, and his client’s SEO “consultant” chose Option B. Shame on you, whoever you are.

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Unlike many “natural-born salespeople”, I never had the childhood epiphany of, after selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door, gloriously realizing that I loved to sell things. I never imagined myself in a position that would require selling, much less that I’d be blogging about it and teaching others how to do it.

I learned to sell out of necessity; because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do what I truly loved—developing websites and helping clients market. Oh, and I wouldn’t make any money … did I mention that?

In the beginning, I felt a certain disdain for the word, because it didn’t seem to fit what I did when I met with clients. Yet, when things didn’t go as planned, I sensed that the missing ingredient had something to do with “selling”—or my lack of skill at it. Perhaps “selling your services” feels more comfortable, but make no mistake, it’s still “selling.”

Sales people are not needed to quote prices. They are the bridge between the selling price and the perception of value provided to earn the sale. – Jeffrey Gitomer

Perhaps it will help to define exactly what type of selling our industry requires, because there are two different types: transactional and consultative.

A Transactional sale is a simple, short-term sale in which the customer already knows what he needs, so little to no product knowledge is required on the sales side. Typically, these are product rather than service-based. Buying criteria usually hinges on price or ease of acquisition. Consultative selling is a more complex, long-term process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, in which the latter must first develop an understanding of the customer’s business, industry, and needs, and then craft a solution to help the customer achieve their objectives. This is usually service or solution-based. The difference between the two can be easily understood from best-selling author Roy H. Williams’ comparison of the transactional vs. relational shopper:

The Transactional Shopper

1. Transactional shoppers are focused only on today’s transaction and give little thought to the possibility of future purchases.
2. Their only fear is of paying more than they had to pay. Transactional shoppers are looking for price and value.
3. They enjoy the process of comparing and negotiating and will likely shop at several stores before making their decision to purchase.
4. Transactional shoppers do their own research so they won’t need the help of an expert. Consumer Reports are published primarily for the transactional shopper.
5. Because they enjoy the process, transactional shoppers don’t consider their time spent shopping to be part of the purchase price.
6. Anxious to share the “good deal” they’ve found, transactional shoppers are excellent sources of word-of-mouth advertising.

The Relational Shopper

1. Relational shoppers consider today’s transaction to be one in a long series of many future purchases. They are looking less for a product than for a store in which to buy it.
2. Their only fear is of making a poor choice. Relational shoppers will purchase as soon as they have confidence. Will your store and your staff give them this confidence they seek?
3. They don’t enjoy the process of shopping and negotiating.
4. Relational shoppers are looking principally for an expert they can trust.
5. They consider their time to be part of the purchase price.
6. Confident that they have found “the right place to buy,” relational shoppers are very likely to become repeat customers.

The article goes on to say that, because some shoppers will be in transactional mode and others in relational mode, your success or failure hinges on knowing which and adjusting your selling style accordingly. In context, the article is talking to merchants and store owners, so his advice makes perfect sense. Some sales (like buying a cell phone) are not so black-and-white and end up being a mix of both transactional and consultative, depending on the buyer. Yet, in a purely consultative industry like ours, problems occurs when buyers attempt to engage our services using the transactional approach. These are people who won’t answer your questions, demand yousubmit a bid or want to know “how much?” without providing any information in return. Your success, however, lies in how you deal with them, and not—I repeat, not—in adjusting your selling style to match their buying mode.

Unless you enjoy being dictated to by demanding clients for whom “getting the lowest price” is the primary reason they buy.

The trick is to get your prospects to change their buying mode, rather than adjusting your selling style. Can a transactional buyer be converted into a relational one mid-sales stream? In my opinion, yes, but not all of the time. Knowing how to “flip the switch” is one sales skill I learned to master. But knowing how to deal with those who can’t (or won’t) be converted is another one entirely.

Continuing to deal with a prospect struck in transactional mode generally doesn’t turn out well, at least in my experience. What about you? Have you learned how to get transactional clients into a relational/consultative mode? Or do you default to switching your style to match theirs, then wonder why you lose the sale or end up cutting your price? Post your comments below.

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We’ve talked about nightmare projects and client red flags, but with today’s topic I’d like to turn the focus on us for a moment. Do you have demanding clients? Do you have clients that don’t pay on time? How about the client that emails, only to call five minutes later to make sure you received it, or the client that drops in to your office unannounced and wants to look over your shoulder while you make one last change to their website?

You’re probably thinking “but he said we were going to talk about us.”

I am.

It’s not your client’s fault they’re too demanding – it’s your fault for setting unrealistic expectations.

What expectations are you setting with clients?

From the moment you first respond to a potential client you are setting expectations for how to communicate, how project flow works, and what they should expect from you. They are also setting expectations for what you can expect from them. It’s best to set the right expectations from the beginning – let’s look at a few ways:

Single Point of Contact

One of the most frustrating issues for an account manager is a client that goes directly to other employees asking for changes or new work to be done. It circumvents the production schedule, rarely gets billed to the correct project (or even client), and causes confusion about priorities. The client should have a single point of contact – their account manager – and you should have a single point of contact with the client.

You also need to discuss how communication will be handled: email, phone, Basecamp? What is a reaonable response time? If you don’t set the expectation up front, they might expect a response to an email within an hour, when you might strive to respond within 1-2 business days.

Payment Terms

Lots of business owners hate talking about money, but it is a necessary evil. You’ve got to discuss and agree to the payment terms up front. Are the terms net 30, net 15, or immediately upon receipt? What happens if the client doesn’t pay on time? Are there penalties such as late fees or interest? Is there a possibility that their site could be taken down?

And on specific projects, if you require payment in phases is the payment due before work will begin on the next phase? What if a client fails to meet a deadline on a deliverable, is the payment still due?

It’s a lot to think about, but if you don’t think about it and discuss it with your client up front they’ll come to their own conclusions which may be very different.

Turnaround Time

Turnaround times are an area where clients often get the wrong expectations. It’s rarely discussed or put into writing, and we almost always try really hard to impress a client up front. So when you first begin working with a client, you bend over backwards to make them happy. You work nights, weekends, answer emails in five minutes, and do whatever it takes to turn the project around and make the client happy.

But as time goes on, you go back to a regular production mode, and the client still expects super-web-guy (or girl).

What is the typical turnaround time? Do you promise to start on new work immediately, within one or two business days, or does every project need to be fit into a production schedule? Even if you plan on dropping everything to work on a project for a new client, you need to discuss their overall expectations. If not, you’ll have clients calling at 4pm on Friday afternoon expecting you to drop everything to make five hours worth of changes.

Get a Contract

Whether you work hourly or per project, a contract is a necessity. The contract shouldn’t just outline the technical details of the project or your hourly rate, it should include information about anything that can affect the project or your relationship. All of the topics above should be in your client agreement and per-project contracts.

How do you unset unrealistic expectations?

Unless you’re just getting started and don’t have a single client, chances are you’ve already set some bad expectations. How do you reverse course without just ditching your clients and finding new ones?

My first suggestion is to slow down. Don’t answer emails immediately. Don’t always answer the phone. Always respond, and always return calls … but when you do, also try to set the expectation of proper communication in the form of an email signature or voicemail message. Something like “I check email and voicemail at 10 am and 3pm daily, and will get back to you witin one day.”

To start setting payment-related expectations, send a letter or email detailing changes to your process before they go into effect. If you plan to start charging a late fee or interest on past-due invoices, don’t wait until someone is past due to let them know.

No matter what the issue is with your client, a phone call or an in-person meeting can most likely straighten it out. If they aren’t paying on time, aren’t contacting the correct person, or seem to expect a level of service you don’t feel you can provide, just call them. Sit down and discuss it with them.

How do you go about setting expectations?

How do you communicate to clients what they can expect from you?

Let us know in the comments below!

We recently overhauled our proposal, and what we ended up with was pretty amazing. We started with a document that was all about us, from the design to the language in the proposal. When you picked it up, you knew who it was from immediately. But as we were working on a proposal for a very large project recently, we thought the proposal shouldn’t be as much about us as it is about the client.

So we started redesigning our proposals based on the client or project. We have always broken out our proposals into sections, and we decided to use large, full-color photographs to separate each section. We sprinkle additional color photoraphs throughout the proposal. The graphics relate to the client – not us. If the client is a real estate company, think homes and agents. If they are a restaurant, think gorgeous photos of food. You also should use their logo – it should be as big or bigger than your own.

We seriously reworded our proposal too. Instead of being bland copy about our agency that we simply copied and pasted into each new proposal, we tailored the copy to this specific project. We wrote about how our previous experience prepared us to do a great job on this project. We went into details about specific questions in their RFP by describing recent project we’d worked on.

We also went further than the RFP required. As we were researching the client and project, we had a lot of ideas that went above and beyond what they asked for, and we really wanted to make sure we included those in the proposal somehow. While we stuck to the required proposal structure in their RFP, we included additional suggestions in the sidebars and interstitial pages.

When was the last time you looked at your proposals? Is it time to give it a refresher?

If you’ve ever experienced the hassle of late payment, you’ll understand how much it costs. Your cashflow’s affected but you’ll also lose hours chasing clients and it’ll sour your relationship. It doesn’t need to be that way.

1. Use a Contract

If you do nothing else: write a legally binding contract for you and the client to sign. Yes it’s boring, but create a reusable template which is easy to modify. Keep it concise but include:

• An outline of the project, the prices and delivery dates
• The client’s payment schedule. Highlight fees and interest charges for late payment.
• The ownership of all code, media, etc. Ownership should only be transferred following the final payment.
• Review and approval terms (see below). Add a clause about “unreasonable rejections” to ensure clients cannot continually change scope or add features.
• What happens in the event of a dispute.
• How long the contract terms remain valid prior to signing. 28 days is normally enough — it’ll focus the client’s mind and prevent them from delaying the project.

For smaller projects I normally use a short 2/3-page contract which provides links to web pages containing detailed information. It’s less daunting to read but the small print is still available.

While verbal agreements are legally binding, it’s far more difficult to prove what was agreed. Put everything in writing.

2. Demand a Deposit

Always demand an up-front deposit. 50% is realistic for most projects — if not 100% for smaller tasks. For larger projects, consider breaking it into smaller sub-tasks or outline regular payment schedules.

If you’re doing consultancy work which is paid per hour, I’d recommend frequent billing — perhaps every one or two weeks. If in doubt, run a credit check on the company and search the web for negative comments (you may not leave them, but others will).

If the client is concerned, offer money-back guarantees if they’re not completely satisfied with the final delivery. This won’t be a problem if the brief is good and your skills are up-to-scratch. Alternatively, consider using an escrow service.

Alarm bells should start ringing if the client starts to quibble about tight budgets. If they’re moaning now, think how bad they’ll be when the payment’s due. It’s not your problem. Never negotiate on price — remove features or extend the schedule if they want a reduction.

Finally, never work for share options or a slice of profits unless you’re a company director with absolute faith in the product. For every Facebook billionaire, there are thousands of developers who never saw a penny.

3. Contact the Right People

Find out who invoices should be addressed to. Ideally, speak to the person responsible for payments before you start working for the company. They may require information before they can add you to their accounting system.

At the very least, it’ll give you a valuable contact within the company’s finance department should anything go wrong.

4. Use a “Work Acceptance” Document

A Work Acceptance document is delivered with the completed project and must be mentioned in your contract. The client should be given a reasonable amount of time to evaluate, verify and accept your work by signing.

Offer a sweetener for those who sign on time, such as a 30-day warranty period where further issues are rectified at no extra cost. If the client fails to sign or report issues before the deadline, the project will be deemed complete; no warranty will be available and updates will incur further charges.

5. Withhold Launch Until the Final Payment

Unlike other industries, it’s relatively easy for web developers to withhold software or media until the final payment. Just remember that it’s not always practical — a client cannot evaluate a website unless they can see and use it. However, you should be able to withhold something; whether it’s transfer to their domain, ownership rights, email accounts, FTP access or image files.

Finally, did I mention you should have a contract which outlines all these policies? Spend a day or two writing one. It’s worth it.

Do you have any tips for ensuring payment?

See also: 5 Tips for Dealing With Clients Who Won’t Pay.

If you’re a freelancer who’s not great at talking yourself up, you’re not alone. Plenty of us struggle with in-person self-promotion—which is bad news, given that so much business promotion relies on networking.

But if talking about yourself makes you nervous or uneasy, you’re probably missing opportunities to tell clients and prospects about the ways in which you can help them. That’s a pretty big limitation for your business.

There’s one simple way to get around those nerves: switch the focus of those conversations from you, to what you do.

Talk about your favorite project

When you’re with friends or family, and you’re talking about your work, I bet you tell them about cool projects you’ve been working on. Perhaps, if you’re really into the job, you keep talking long after your friends’ eyes have glazed over (I know I do).

Great-aunt Gladys might be bored to tears by it, but that’s exactly the kind of conversation your prospects want to have—and the kind of passion and enthusiasm they want to see.

If you find it difficult to talk about yourself, talking about your favorite project can be a natural way to highlight relevant details of your service offering, allude to your work processes and practices, and show how much you love your work.

Talk about your favorite client

Talking to would-be clients about your current clients can seem like a minefield, but it’s not. Avoid divulging names, or any confidential information, and you can talk all you like about why you enjoy working with this client, and how you’ve been able to help them over the months or years of your association.

This conversation illuminates your passion for great service in a perfectly natural, effortless way. It can help clients get an almost intuitive sense of the way you like to work, and what you enjoy about the people you work with. And ideally, they’ll get the idea that you’re genuine, caring and fun to work with in the process.

Talk about what’s coming up

What do you have to look forward to? Perhaps it’s an engrossing project in an area you haven’t had a chance to work in before. Maybe you’re preparing to go to a conference or industry event. Perhaps you’re attending—or giving!—some professional training.

Talking about what’s coming up for you professionally can give prospects a real insight into what makes an expert like you tick. It can highlight broader professional interests, talents, and passions that may be relevant to them in ways you hadn’t anticipated. But at the very least, it helps your prospects get a picture of you as a professional who loves what they do. Who doesn’t want to work with someone like that?

Talk about what excited you most about your work last year—or last month

Where the previous three topics of conversation have focused on practicalities, you can treat this one as more of a strategic conversation piece. Here, you’re really talking about where your work, business, or field is heading.

Perhaps you spent last year developing a strong offering in a new service area, or establishing yourself in a new market. Maybe you can talk about how you successfully streamlined some aspect of your offering so you could achieve the same results for clients consistently and affordably, providing greater value to them.

This kind of conversation may be less common and more philosophical than the ones above, but it can reveal a lot about how you operate your business, and what you value as a business person. If those values align with the values of the prospect’s business, you may find it easier to establish a lasting rapport with them.

Talk about what you’ve been researching and playing with

Most successful freelancers are keen experimenters. Okay, so a rambling exposition of the finer points of technical minutiae of your work is not what you’re aiming for here. But talking broadly about the research and experimentation you’ve been doing can help prospects get an idea of what interests you, and where you see the future of your business or discipline lying.

Talking about your own experimentation indicates a real, deep-seated motivation—something every client wants to see in a freelancer. For clients working in traditional roles who see work as a 9-to-5 proposition, and have no interest in it outside of hours, hearing about how you spent your Saturday playing around with a new technology or technique can be refreshing and inspiring, if not downright astonishing. And that’s exactly the kind of impact you’re after.

These are the main ways I learned to “promote” my freelance work when I was talking with clients. The more I practiced talking about these things, the more natural it became. Now I can effortlessly talk about these topics with clients—and I can see the benefits to my business.

How do you go about talking yourself up to clients or prospects? We’d love to hear your advice and tips in the comments.

Image courtesy stock.xchng user katagaci.

In my last article, I talked about five reasons why you lose a sale. Each of those can be avoided by asking a few simple questions. But these last three are a bit more complex. For starters, what do you do if the prospect refuses to answer your questions?

The prospect won’t answer your questions

A prospect might not want to answer your questions because …

1. He’s not far enough along in the buying cycle to be a serious prospect. People who are in the “Interest” or “Desire” stage may never become buyers. At this point, they are still researching.
2. He’s using you just to get a competitive bid. Because he’s not seriously considering you, he won’t want to divulge anything about his buying motives, or lack thereof.
3. He’s purely a price-driven buyer whose only criterion is the cost. Since he values the lowest price more than a consultative relationship with a qualified expert, he’ll view your questions as a waste of his time, none of your business, or both.

For Prospect 1, you need to switch from sales mode to marketing mode. At this point, you’re better off becoming a valuable resource to help him make a buying decision. This is not someone you want to write a proposal for; rather, dip-market to him over the next few weeks or months by sending him your newsletter, a link to your blog, etc.

Prospects 2 and 3 are the ones who will want to ask the questions, not answer them. And you can count on their questions being mostly about price. There are a couple of ways to handle this. The first is to quote a ballpark:

“The starting cost for a basic site is around $x,xxx. Is that within your price range?”

Or, you could use the “how much does a car cost?” approach:

“That question is a lot like asking ‘How much does a car cost?’ The answer depends on what type of car you want and what you want it to do—which means I need to spend a little time asking you some questions. Are you willing to do that?”

The prospect doesn’t have any questions or concerns

So you’ve reached the end of your meeting, and you’ve covered everything that needs to be discussed. I’ve found that there are generally three reasons a prospect won’t have any questions.

1. He didn’t understand what you were talking about and has no clue what to ask
2. He is not serious about the project or not seriously considering hiring you
3. He’s ready to buy

If you simply default to offering up a proposal, you’ll never know which of the three you have. The solution is to recap the conversation, get his agreement that you’ve covered everything, and ask if he’s ready to move forward. Remember, you don’t have to write a proposal to close the deal.

The prospect doesn’t perceive you as an equal

It’s important to establish a peer-to-peer relationship with your prospect; otherwise your credibility is at risk. One way to knock yourself down a notch is to tell your prospect, “Thanks for meeting with me.” At first glance, this might seem like the polite thing to say. But the unspoken implication is that he’s somehow “doing you a favor.” Once you’ve laid that foundation, a peer-to-peer relationship is unlikely.

The relationships you build with your clients ought to be based on mutual commitments, and that starts with the very first meeting. You showered, dressed up, fought traffic, paid for parking, and took five flights of stairs to commit the next hour or so to giving your prospect ideas on how he can improve his business. It’s not unreasonable to expect that he reciprocate by disclosing his buying intentions, timetable, and other information so you can determine how much time to invest pursuing him as a lead. To do so, not only must you ask questions, you must ask the right questions.

Image credit

We all have employees part ways with our businesses one time or another.

If you are smart, you take them out for a private lunch in their last week, and undertake an informal ‘exit interview’. Question them on why they are leaving, what would have made them stay, what they liked least about their role, and what they liked the most. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, and find it invaluable: people who are leaving have no reasons not to be honest, and they give great feedback.

So why aren’t many of us even smarter and doing the same with clients when they leave us?

Hopefully, your client retention rate is high, and you don’t lose many clients in an average year. However, most businesses have that gradual churn, which I believe is healthy–if you kept 100% of your clients, how would your business evolve?

I recently found out an old client of ours had engaged another agency. I was burning to know why. So I picked up the phone and called. I arranged to meet my contact for a coffee and chat, and what an invaluable half hour that was! I found out that we were doing a fantastic job–awesome to hear! Why they were leaving turns out that their new marketing manager had a prior relationship with another firm.

We should have known they had a new marketing manager, and we should have been out to meet with her. We didn’t know, so we didn’t act, so we lost their work.

It’s actually probably a good thing in the longer term–however it’s always a bit humbling when a client leaves.

The trick is to ask them to meet with you and find out why–it cost me half an hour and two coffees–a very small investment for such valuable learning.

Next time you find out a client is leaving, find out why–it’ll quite possibly be for a different reason than you might imagine.