5 Tips For Freelancers To Improve Client Relationship

If freelancing were only about the work you specialize in, it would’ve been a walk on the cake for most freelancers and clients. But the truth is, freelancers have to do much more than that. It is less about creating something and more about building a relationship with the team. And the latter is even harder to accomplish. When you are working as a freelancer, you get to network with many industry professionals, you get to seek advice and mentorship from them, and more importantly, you get to partner with many other clients.

Even when so many professionals are involved in the business, working with clients still acts as a patience check for freelancers. How frictionless your work goes is directly proportional to your experiences with the client. It has a huge impact on the workflow, which you realize sooner or later. This realization might even be your reason to read this blog today. Worry not. This blog is meant to help you out in this process of improving your relationship with the client. But before we get into the tips part, let’s first clear how having a solid client relationship helps.

Why Are Strong Relationships With Clients Important?

Building key relationships in whatever industry you're involved with takes time and patience - but will pay huge dividends once you persevere. This is something we've noticed in the heavily competitive home sales industry. Freelancers who invest a good amount of time and effort just to build a relationship with their clients are more likely to work with them again. You can observe this in your real life too. Suppose you want to have a cup of coffee in the morning, there’s a shop near you but you don’t like the manager very much. There’s another shop with good coffee and staff, but you’ll have to walk some extra distance. Which one are you going to prefer? Keeping aside restrictions like urgency, the majority of you will prefer the one with good staff.

The thought process of clients is the same when they work with a freelancer. They are going to work with you again if they like your work and attitude. Moreover, building an honest relationship with clients also acts as an effective way to build referrals too. All of their networks will be available to you.

You should also put the effort into building a loyal community of people from your industry, it is as important as having a strong relationship with your clients. Might Networks used to be a default choice when people searched for effective softwares for communities. Things, however, have changed a lot in the past few years. With competition increasing every day, there are a number of alternatives to Mighty Networks available in the market. These new platforms have overcome the limitations that people were encountering with Mighty Networks.

The amalgam of clients with strong relationships and a loyal community can do wonders for your freelance career.

Some Tips For Freelancers To Improve Client Relationship

Here are 5 tips that can be helpful for you in your freelancing journey. Following these will certainly help you improve your relationship with both existing and upcoming clients.

Know Your Client Completely

To build a happy relationship, not just with clients but with anyone, you must put in consistent efforts. It is best to do all the research about your clients and their businesses in the beginning. But having knowledge about their industry, goals and preferred methods of getting work done is just not enough. You need to know them deeply to make your freelancing journey more enjoyable and stable too.

You can consider using social media to dig deeper into your business. You might also want to know the individuals you are working with, after all, it makes the conversations more comfortable. Going through personal social media comes with risk and responsibility– you must balance the boundaries. It is best to get to know them by having conversations. The whole working experience changes and becomes more likable, once you get to know the person behind the project.

Be Your True Self

Just like you are trying to know the people you’re working with, they might also want to know you. You just have to ensure that they get to know the real you, not a manipulated version of you. You might feel tempted to fit in the mould of your client’s desires, but that won’t be very helpful in the long run. You should be as authentic as you possibly can, so neither the client nor you have to face disappointments in the future.

When you’re being yourself clients can easily resonate with your experiences and stories, which makes it even easier for them to trust you. You don’t have to be a service provider to them, you have to be a person who they can trust for the growth of their brand. Let’s talk more about how important trust is in the next paragraph.

Build Trust

Even before you start working with a new client, they know how you engage and interact in a specific situation. You should work on building a trustful relationship from the beginning and ensure that you maintain the same level of responsiveness in the long run.

Delivering projects on time, doing exceptional work, and communicating effectively are some of the ways to enhance your relationship with clients.

Alternately, you can also make use of any time tracking tools (e.g., RescueTime, TimeCamp, etc.) especially in the case of smaller teams, where each person’s contribution matters much more. However, there are other RescueTime alternatives available in the market too which can automatically track your work and let you categorize it into projects.

Sometimes clients really appreciate it when you try to know them on a more personal level. You should not be afraid to ask them about what’s going on in their life. But if you feel like your client wouldn’t respond well to this, then, of course, it is your call to make and do what you think is best for everyone.

Establish Boundaries

The title of this heading could also be something like– Don’t Be Afraid to Say No. This, by the way, is a piece of general advice for life because there’s no shortage of individuals who just don’t know how to say this two-letter word.

As a freelancer, it is natural to push your boundaries and do the work that you’re not responsible for, or prioritize the work of a specific client. Doing these things for once is, indeed, a great gesture but if you fail to establish boundaries, you’ll find yourself in these situations more often.

If you haven’t yet, you should lay down some ground rules for your existing clients and do the same with ones who are yet to come. When there are boundaries, the expectation tends to stay inside it, which is quite helpful for both you and your clients.

Manage Expectations

The desire to exceed expectations is always there in freelancers, and you should never kill that desire. After all, your client is with you to get their work done, and the better you do it, the more they’ll want to stick to you. The better result you produce for them, the more they’ll be willing to do for you – writing referrals or testimonials.

You should, however, keep in mind that everyone goes through a rough patch. Whether it is being inefficient, sick, or burnout, every freelancer has to go through all this. Have a conversation with your client and they’ll definitely understand. It’s neither fair to you nor their work if you can’t deliver up to their expectations. Communicating ahead of time solves most of the problems.

On A Concluding Note

As you go down this challenging path of freelancing, you’ll better understand how essential it is to have a good relationship with the client. You’ll be better able to put these tips in action, but start trying now. The tips mentioned in this blog will certainly change your whole freelancing experience.

Casey Sullivan
Bookafy — online appointment scheduling for growing businesses.