In the today’s world of thousands of freelancers, finding a freelance job is a daunting challenge. It turns harder to make a prospect choose you over a lot of freelancers out there. However, a positive impression is more likely to make a client hire you instead of other freelancers.
A good impression is the first thing you need to make before you start any negotiation with a potential client. Not only can it increase the likelihood of landing contracts and closing deals but it can also help you build reputation without having to deliver any work.
In this article, I’ve compiled 5 Freelancing Tips to knock the socks off a client before you get hired.
1. Make a Good First Impression with Your Online Portfolio
Your portfolio is the place where a client expects to see your skills showcased. If you are designer for instance, then what you display on your online portfolio should be a reflection of the skills and the quality of work that you are capable of providing.
If your portfolio doesn’t contain the masterpiece of your work, clients will be having pretty good reasons to choose others over you.
Your portfolio itself and the work you put on it play an important role on impressing prospects and converting leads into high-paying gigs.
2. Respond Fast to E-mails
If you are able to make a good first impression with your online portfolio and the work you display on it, you’ll surely get contacted for further negotiations via e-mail or through your contact form.
The time you take to respond to the e-mail after an initial contact can be critical to land projects. If you take so long to respond to it, you will be losing out many opportunities. Just because clients don’t like waiting, it tires them out. The time they wait for your response they could be searching for another freelancer elsewhere.
Responding fast to e-mails impresses them and gives a good indication of the kind of freelancer you are. Moreover, the communication process goes smoothly. And, that surely increases the likelihood of getting hired.
3. Use an Appropriate Communication Tone
Communication plays an important role on landing deals and contracts with clients. The most common problem that freelancers face is not their skills and abilities of delivering high quality work, is the way they communicate with clients.
A freelancer with excellent communication skills is more likely to impress clients and build a strong relation with them. By good communication skills, I mean knowing how to express with clarity, politeness and by using the right tone.
The appropriate tone to use depends on the tone that a client uses in the message of the initial contact. By detecting the tone of message, you will be able to choose the one that matches with the client’s personality when contacting back. Therefore, a freelancer should possess excellent communication skills for a positive impression and further work.
4. Offer Expert Advices and Give Suggestions
There are certain clients who are deflated about hiring a freelancer and aren’t sure about what’s needed to get their businesses off the ground. Others simply have no idea of how your services can benefit their businesses. That’s when the role of a consultant comes into play.
During the negotiation process you can present your own ideas, and give advices to the prospect based on your experience as long as they don’t nullify what the client needs.
By implementing this approach you generate a good impression easily. To turn this approach more effective, you can show to the prospect projects that you’ve worked on. And, explain how they generated a positive impact to another client’s business. The prospect will then have an idea of how his business can be benefited from your work.
Besides helping you to get the freelance project, this approach can be useful for positioning yourself as an expert freelancer who really knows his stuff.
5. Follow-Up
There are cases when after submitting a quote or even a proposal to a client; you simply don’t receive any response. There are many reasons that can lead to that, such as, bad proposal, exorbitant quotes, low quality online portfolio, etc., and so your mind goes into overdrive wondering why you don’t get any response. The worst case scenario is when you think that the client has already hired a freelancer and so you move on.
This is one of the most common mistakes freelancers make. Assuming that a client has already hired a freelancer and consequently move on is a misstep.
Therefore, you should be certain if he/she has come to a decision by sending a follow-up e-mail. In the e-mail you should express your interest on the project and ask if the client has hired another freelancer.
By sending a follow-up e-mail you not only get to know about the client’s decision but you also increase your value in the client’s mind and generate a great impression.
Final Thoughts
By making a good impression with a prospect you will be more likely to land a project and you’ll surely be a few steps ahead of your competitors.
The moment a client decides whether to hire you or not may sometimes be instantaneous and thus the impression you make can be critical to secure that work.
[Image via dhendrix73 via Compfight cc]
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