Mistakes to Avoid with Your First Client
Even the most experienced freelancer, with 5+ years in the industry, makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from these mistakes, and set expectations for yourself as a freelance/small business.
Teamup Team
We’ll help you with that right now, by pointing out a few mistakes some freelance businesses still make, for you to avoid:
- Not considering multiple factors when pricing projects; like the quality of your work, the type of client, the scope and deadline…etc.
- Not asking where the work will be seen; so you can work on the appropriate medium.
- Not factoring in the client’s existing resources; no need to start from scratch if you have a good foundation to build on.
- Not having in-person meetings; communicating digitally is easy, but there’s value in meeting face-to-face to build trust and collaboration.
- Not having an exit strategy; the project isn’t finished until it can live without you, so plan for a proper handover talk after work is done.
- Showing in-progress work; freelancers understand the process and can imagine the end result, but clients need to see mockups.
- Forgetting you were hired for a reason; your expertise in the field is why the client wants to work with you. If you feel strongly about something, speak up.
- Ignoring the working style that makes you most productive; whether you like to work in the comfort of your home, or in a busy cafe, make sure you have a plan of where you will work.
- Not doing the boring bits of work; if you’re just starting out in your business, know that there will be some manual hard work that is not very exciting.
- Disorganization; the only way to complete the project is to plan ahead, take the lead, do that work and communicate with your client as you go. Stick to a method.
- Not testing; even if you’re using hiring another expert to help, never trust how something will look/work until you’ve tried it out yourself.
- Going beyond the initial scope for free; you might need to go above-and-beyond to give excellent customer service, don’t do it for free.
- Not asking for recognition; don’t be shy in crediting yourself in a way that feels right and fair to you.
- Being possessive of the project; appreciate the work that you’ve done, but understand that it will live in an imperfect world and let go.
