Freelance Philosophy Friday #2: Make it easy to work with you

16. Jan, 2010 1 Comment

Freelance Philosophy Friday: Every Friday, I take a piece from my philosophy and explore it a little further

The easier we are to work with as freelancers, the more successful we will be. Let me explain:

If we’re easy to work with, our clients get happy
Because we’re so easy to work with, we’ll get repeat work when it arises
We’ll get opportunities to help the client in other ways
We might be called upon for advice when certain decisions are made
We get better testimonials, and referrals
Our outsourcing relationships work smoother

Here are some ideas that make us freelancers easier to work with.

Give answers NOT questions

A while ago, I was doing some coding for a client, and a situation arose where there were about three different ways to accomplish a goal. I could explain the options to the client, and ask which he would prefer. Or I could explain the options, make a decision myself, and run it by the client to make sure it doesn’t have implications that I’m not aware of.

The second method is inherently more valuable. Most times, clients not only don’t understand the range of issues involved with a decision, but also, decisions are work. They take time, they take effort, they sometimes take research.

Being easy to work with is all about reducing the amount of work for the client.

When you’ve got a question, make a decision, and give an answer.

Don’t create problems out of laziness

I’m sure you’ve had those scenarios where you can do a quick fix that is going to cause problems down the line, or you can take a bit of time and do it the right way.

Always do it the right way. You don’t know what situation might come up.

I made a fairly big error once while changing over the domain delegation details for a client. I notified my main contact of the change, but didn’t do any more in depth checks. I didn’t check with the IT department that everything was ok, and being very stupid, I didn’t check the current DNS records. So I changed the domain to point to the new server, and all of a sudden, email was down. How could I be so dumb right? (In my defence, it was part of a large rollout of sites where all of the other sites involved had their email managed on a different domain, and the email was used in a part of the organisation I wasn’t aware of)

It got worse, the IT department didn’t know what was going on and made some changes to their mail server. Not only did this affect the organisation I was working on at the time, but also about 30 other organisations that all operated on the same infrastructure.

So what’s my point? Errors can compound, situations can change where a small mistake can be magnified, or an action you make, however innocent, can result in adverse affects. Be aware of the results of your actions, both now and in the future, and do the right thing!

Don’t waste the clients time

Taking the time to ask questions is important at the beginning of a relationship, because it shows the client you know what you’re on about, you get an understanding of the requirements, and it forms trust. Those are the reasons to ask questions.

But for repeat work, you’ve got already built trust, so you only need to get an understanding of the requirements. If you’ve worked with the client before, chances are, you know the requirements better than them!

So don’t waste time talking about work, and just do it.

If the client can spend 10 minutes telling you a problem, and it comes back to them the next day fixed. That is awesome for them. If it takes them an hour to explain everything to you, that’s a pain in the butt, and they’re not going to be as quick to give you more work, especially smaller, “quick fix” jobs.

Be candid

Tell people as it is. Be straight-forward about problems, and how you are dealing with them.

Candor makes people happy because it makes listening so much easier. Not only that, it saves time (as above).

Be professional

Keep your promises, be on time, be neat, etc. This stuff goes without saying.

Be flexible

The other day, I got a request from a client via an SMS on my mobile. Surprising? Kinda, but is fine with me.

Be flexible with how clients can deal with you. If a client likes the phone, use the phone. If it’s email, use email. etc.

Don’t ask everyone to send you everything in email because it’s easier for you. Asking everyone to email you is symptomatic of poor client management or project management systems/software. (However handy, email is not a good task management system). Instead, use something like Basecamp or Freelance Total.