Dootch » client focused

Freelance Philosophy Friday 4: Treat your clients like they are your boss

Luke — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:26:01 +0000

It’s great as a freelancer to not have a boss. Bosses can be bastards.

But in reality, instead of having one boss, we have lots of bosses… our clients.

I don’t mean they’re our bosses in the way that we have to do everything they say, but I mean it from the point of view that “It’s all about the clients”.

Our single goal is to give value to the client. We have to continually do what’s in the best interest of the client, convert their ideas into reality, keep them updated on what we’re doing, and be able to tell them when they’re wrong.

Making repeat sales by identifying opportunities

Luke — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:36:07 +0000

A large part of effective freelancing is effective selling. While we might think we are designers or writers, we are actually salespeople.

Here’s an example of a repeat sale opportunity that could easily go begging.

A year or two ago I made a simple website for a small magazine. It’s just a basic website with a little bit of information and a place where issues can be uploaded every couple of months.

Since then, the company has grown and the magazine readership has grown.

Now there is a real opportunity to grow the website as well. We can grab some of the content from the mag and put it in a blog, create a community around the blog, expand readership even further, and ultimately, sell some advertising on the website.

That’s the thing about repeat sales, sometimes they come to you, but more often, you have to identify the opportunity, and recommend it to the client. Most of the time, the client won’t be aware the opportunity even exists.

So how to approach a client with a new idea? Well I like to do it the way I do everything – ask a bunch of questions. For the client, the only thing that matters to them about anything I do is that it has to make them more money.

So some questions in this scenario would be something like “So if you had 5000 page views per month, would you be able to sell some advertising space on there, and if so, how much for? So if you had 20000 page views per month, would you be able to sell some advertising space on there, and if so, how much for?”.

That gives us an idea of the return for the client.

Then all that is left to be done is to figure out if we can achieve those objectives at a cost that will return a positive ROI for the client. If that’s the case, it’s time to suggest the solution, make up a proposal or whatever, and let the client decide if they want to make the investment.

How do you go about making repeat sales? Do you think you could be more effective in this area?

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You aren’t designing for yourself

Luke — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:22:45 +0000

One thing I find a lot of freelance designers, especially young designers, have trouble with, is the concept of designing for clients.

I recently had contracted a designer to design a website for a client. The designer didn’t like the look of the clients logo, so he made some changes to make it fit with the design he had in mind.

I must say, I happened to like this designers version of the logo better. So, being a fool, I presented the design to the client.

It doesn’t matter how much “better” the design looked for it, there’s no way you can get away with stuff like that. The client loved the design but wants his logo in it. Of course. You could see that coming from a mile away.

As freelancers, we aren’t designing to make things look good. We are designing to achieve the client’s business objectives. We are designing for the client’s customers.

It is our job to work within those constraints to come up with something that achieves those objectives the best.

Branding is one of those client objectives, and we can’t let our opinions on things we can’t change hold us back. Instead, we should see it as an opportunity to try new styles, and to make things work in ways we haven’t thought of before. Stay open minded to possibilities.

When a client is paying us, ultimately, we have to listen to them. On the way, we can do our best to help them with recommendations from our experience. But if push comes to shove, we have to realise that we aren’t designing for ourselves.

How about you? How do you deal with client objections that kill your ideas?