Words on a page

Earlier today, I read a pair of interesting blog posts — one at Men with Pens on showing that you care about your customers, and the other at Freelance Folder on taking yourself seriously as a freelancer.

The thrust of both posts was that by taking care of your customers and giving them good service you’re taking care of your business. That may seem obvious, but it often isn’t. Many a good freelancer focuses on the work — doing a good job, on time and within budget. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you’re really serious about retaining clients and getting the all-important referrals, you need to do more. You need to do what the two blog posts that I mention above suggest.

Think about your freelance business in terms of the businesses and vendors with whom you’ve dealt. Which ones left an impression on you, and had you thinking I’ll definitely deal with them again? Not many, I bet.

In my case, I learned a lot about dealing with clients from the company that installed my new furnace last year. My wife and I had a few people come in to give us quotes. They were in and out quickly. The company that clinched the sale went further. The consultant spent about an hour looking at our heating set up, taking measurements of our house, and doing a few other things. All the while, he took the time to educate me about furnaces and heating systems. While most of the other consultants we had in were trying to sell us a bigger furnace than we needed, this man told me straight up that based on the size of our house what we needed was a smaller unit.

The lessons here:

• Take the time up front to go through the project with a prospective client, and educate them on what you do and what they’re getting.
• Tailor your work to the needs of the prospect.
• Be honest about the services that you can and can’t supply to a prospective client.

What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to leave a comment.

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Related posts:

1. What I’ve been up to
2. Writing emails for your business
3. Pricing your corporate writing services

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under advice, business, freelance, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.