When I started out freelancing, the thought of having clients was quite scary … though the thought of having no clients at all was even scarier! Something about the word clients implied that they’d be demanding, ultra-professional, and intimidating.

Of course, it was nothing like I’d feared: my clients have all been very human, warm and friendly! However, I have found that there are seven easy ways to really impress clients, and to guarantee that they’ll want to work with you or refer you in the future:

1. Dress Professionally

I’m most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt – but when meeting clients, I make the effort to smarten up. Business people can sometimes have slightly negative stereotypes of “freelancers”, and looking like a professional is a great way to make a great first impression and dispel their fears.

Think about it this way: if you had the choice between an assistant who turned up wearing cut-off jeans, scuffed sneakers and a slogan t-shirt and an assistant who wore smart trousers, a nice shirt, and clean shoes – who would you be more inclined to hire?

2. Anticipate Questions

Once you’ve been freelancing for a month or two, you’ll find that clients will keep coming up with the same questions. These will vary depending on your industry. When I started out making websites for very small businesses, I had some clients who struggled with emails, and knew they needed a website but didn’t understand much about the process. They wanted to know things like:

• Why do I need to pay for hosting when I already have a computer?
• What’s a domain name?
• Can you put the link to our website at the top of Google?

…and so on. My clients weren’t stupid – they were successful small business owners – but they had little experience of the web. Get a feel for how much your clients typically know, and try to anticipate the questions that they might have. This will help reassure them that you have their interests in mind, and that you’re not trying to sneak in extra charges. (My clients often didn’t understand the need to pay for a domain name and hosting, for instance.)

You might consider creating an FAQ page for your website, or a document to give to new clients, which answers common questions. If you’re just starting out, this can help add credibility by indicating to your clients that you have a lot of knowledge of your area.

3. Communicate regularly

Most clients will like to be updated on a regular interval about how things are going. Just sending an email once a week to reassure them that the project is on track is enough to make sure that they feel taken care of.

Don’t send them huge amounts of detail – just keep it brief and succinct. This indicates that you value their time, and it also reduces the chances of them getting confused about any of the details and emailing you back with questions!

If you have a client who bombards you with emails, try leaving a time delay before replying. Unless it really is urgent, don’t answer till the next day: this reduces the chances of ending up in a game of email ping-pong, and it’ll encourage your client to save up all their questions for one email.

4. Over-deliver

Something that will really impress your clients is to over-deliver on what you’ve promised. They’ll be all too used to delays, excuses and problems. Give them a great experience by hitting milestones early, or by throwing in a small extra.

Clients will often be pleased if you take the initiative: perhaps mentioning something that they could update on their website, or explaining that you could help with one of their other projects, and I’ve often had clients complain about previous freelancers or employees, saying that they “never made any suggestions.” You do have to be a little careful with this – the last thing you want to do is accidentally end up slating the wonky-looking logo that the boss designed himself – but thoughtful feedback from an outside perspective are often much appreciated.

5. Go the extra mile

Following on from over-delivering is going above and beyond the call of duty. You might not want to do this with every single client – but on long-standing clients, or ones who you know will be good for plenty of repeat business, it’s a great way to win their loyalty.

For example, I’ve sometimes received emails from clients at 9pm with a small request, and have carried it out there and then. It only takes me thirty minutes or so, but it leaves the client feeling grateful! I do have core hours, and I could charge overtime, but I find that a strong client relationship and repeat business is worth far more.

6. Send a “thank you” or small gift

This is common advice – but how often do we take it? Spending a few minutes and a few dollars choosing a nice card or gift for your client is a huge step towards creating a lasting impression. Try to make the gift something thoughtful; perhaps something that relates to one of their hobbies or interests, or that will conjure up a smile.

Many freelancers like to send out holiday cards to clients, and this is another nice way to stay in touch. You may find that your card lands on the desk at just the right time, when your client is thinking about a project that they could use some help with. If your name’s in their mind, chances are it’ll be you that they call.

7. Offer a discount

If you’ve had a good working relationship with a client, let them know that you’d be interested in continuing to work with them – and offer them a discount. You might like to simply have a standard discount for ongoing work, or you might prefer to frame this as a special offer just for them (“It’s been so great working with you…” etc).

A discount makes people feel special, and it makes them feel that they’re getting a bargain. It’s also a great technique to use if you want to up-sell: telling clients that, for example, you can write a press release as well as their website copy.

How do you make sure that your clients are so impressed that they want to recommend you to all their friends? Do the above tips work for you, or do you have some of your own to add?

The Client’s Psychology

Clients are people, and we as a people are very prejudgemental in our everyday lives, whether that be subconsciously prejudging the mindset of a person from their outward appearance, or prejudging the quality of a piece of clothing from its price tag. There are a lot of external factors that have no real effect on the issues that matter to us, but are considered subconsciously by the mind without us even knowing it. As a freelancer, you could use this to your advantage (in a non-malicious kind of way!)

Usually when a person asseses the price for a service when attempting to put a value on it, they will attempt to associate it with the “quality” of the work/product/service in their eyes. For example, if they feel that the end product(s) from your portfolio are better than the competitions’, then they are more willing to pay a premium for the service in mind. If however, they feel the end product is not of a high enough quality they will be less willing to pay a premium for it. This however, also works in reverse when it comes to the prejudgemental nature of us human beings.

Subconsciously, if we see a product or service with a high price tag, or “better” outward appearance (in terms of branding), we usually think it is because that product is of a very high “quality” (and I’m deliberately using speech marks here). This is rather deliberately triggered in our heads with all the subliminal marketing campaigns that go on in society on a daily basis. Therefore, it may well be a good idea to price yourself higher, in order to portray yourself in a better light. Pricing has a lot to do with establishing a quality brand.

So putting this all into the perspective of a freelancer, you could well be charging higher than the competition, establishing yourself as “quality” and therefore reap the benefits in terms of being able to charge more for your work.

If we further explore this mindset, you do come to realize though that your pricing also should rely heavily upon whom the client is – and not for discriminatory purposes. If you’re pitching to a business owner, then they’re inevitably going to be price-savvy and be looking for the best deal possible for work of a good standard (and that’s not to say the tactic won’t work at all); however, target the common individual and you could leverage this psychology and charge more for your work in order to increase your income and establish yourself as a quality brand.

You could also take the opposite direction, charge less, and in turn by my predictions attract a lot more business clients rather than what I’ve referred to as the “common individual”.

The Economics of Pricing

The economics of pricing is very important in the freelance-industry. Immediately, I hear you crying “but I didn’t pay attention in Economics classes!” – well, maybe you should have.

It’s a very basic concept which shows that there is a inversely linear relationship between price and amounts sold or in this case, number of pitches accepted. This means that as price increases, the number of pitches your clients are likely to accept are lower and vice versa. Simple – but again in such an industry this can be manipulated using the techniques described previously. It’s just something to generally think about when pricing as a general rule with a “bog-standard” product/service when quality of work is not taken into consideration.

I would put up a nice little graph to illustrate this point, but what the heck, it’s not hard to understand.

Hourly Rates

What I’ve covered so far has mainly affected the actual price you want to charge for your freelance services, but, how will you structure these charges? Well, hourly rates are a very good way to go about it. Why? Simply because it gives you a solid price structuring that you can always rely on instead of having to come up with a price per project. Again though, this has its disadvantages. In order to obtain a higher income, the only ways to do this would be to increase your hourly rate (which is a difficult step which could have great negative/positive effects) or work for longer periods of time. To me, this really goes against the “freedom” principles of freelancing if you were to take the latter step, as one core advantage of freelancing is being able to earn a good income with less hours of work in comparison to the typical 9 to 5 jobs.

Per Project-based Pricing

A lot of people think that per project-based pricing is something that is decided from midair. No. It is also based on hourly rates, but loosely. A good way of pricing per project is to first estimate how long a project is going to take if worked on at a decent speed (in hours – making sure the estimate is conservative) and multiply that by how much you wish to earn from doing the project per hour. You’d then add on certain premiums such as costs, and other extras.

What’s the difference?

So what’s the difference between per project-based pricing and hourly rates you ask – well, the answer to that is effort. When conducting the hourly rates method, you’ll be paid directly dependent on how long you took to complete the project. On the other hand though, per project is based on a conservative estimate on how long the project would take, and therefore allowing you to reward working more efficiently.

Just take a look at this example:

- John works on a fixed amount per hour.
- Linda works on a per-project basis.

John conducts his work at the rate of $40/hour. The project takes him 10 hours to complete, and therefore he sends an invoice of $400 to the client.

Linda estimates that the project will take 14 hours to complete (remember, it’s a conservative estimate). She wants about $40/hour whilst working on the project. She decides to multiply $40 x 14 = $560, and therefore prices the project at that amount. She then invoices the client at that price. Linda decided to work very efficiently and focus on the project and therefore gets it done within 10 hours.

If we do the maths, effectively Linda was paid $56/hour for the services she rendered, whilst John was only paid $400.

There are obviously a lot of factors which affect each situation that have not been considered in this case, but you get the general jist of things.

Conclusion

So, how do you think pricing should be decided upon? Do you have a particular formula in mind? Let us know your thoughts on the topic via the comments section below.

Also, please subscribe to our RSS feed for more great content.