I’ve been thinking long and hard lately about this. I believe it’s something which a lot of freelancers don’t really regard as an important aspect, or they completely forget about it altogether. So I decided to produce an article about it, highlighting the current trends, work processes, and ways in which you can improve your appearance to clients and make them feel more comfortable that they hired you for that big project.

How to define and understand your current work process
You’re just about to put mouse to canvas and you realise that you’re just jumping right into the project. First thing’s first. Stop! Sit back and think “Is this project ready to start yet? Have I asked all the right questions and planned contingencies ahead of time? What if I left something out?”

The chances are that if any of your answers to these questions are “maybe” or “I’m not sure”, then the evidence is there that you’re not completely ready to start work.

Here are some easy steps to help you define your work process and further understand the fundamentals behind it:

Quote like a pro
The first thing to do is quote your potential client. Make no mistake, I will never refer to somebody as a client until that deposit is paid and a brief is sent. Before you structure your quote you need to have an idea of what the project entails, whether you will need to bring somebody onboard to help you with the project, and also how long it will take. It never fails to have a basic pricing guide in front of you at all times just as a guide to base your custom quote from.

The first thing is first, you need to have some sort of quotation document template that you can customise and use for each potential client.

Second of all, do you have some basic information from the potential client in order to make your quote as accurate as possible? If not, feel free to download the document in the “Brief Check-up” section of this article. Request your potential client fill the document in correctly and send it back to you. Something like this will not only render a professional appearance for you, but it will also help you to quote more fairly and more accurately. You see, it’s just a win/win situation!

However you structure your quote in terms of value is completely up to you, as everybody works differently. However if you follow these steps as guidelines, you’ll never fail in feeling great and helping your potential client understand your quote better.

Break your project down into 3 sections: Planning, Implementation, Testing.

It may seem a bit obvious, but by doing this you can quote separately for each section. It gives the potential client more freedom as well as yourself. Purely because after each section is completed, you get paid! Magic! If the potential client comes into any difficulties, the project can cease after a section without any loss of income to you, or loss of expenditure to the potential client. This is also a contingency.

As always, include a total price for the work, and include some terms and conditions. I won’t be providing you with a terms and conditions document, as every designer or freelancer works differently and has so many different terms and conditions to their service/services.

A Brief Check-up
Do you request a work brief from your clients before you start work? If not I would recommend this, as a briefing document is a great way to collect all of the clients requirements, expectations and requests and consolidate them into one place (I also recommend keeping a backup). I have taken the time to create a more basic version of a custom document I use for free download and use with your client projects:

Click Here – Briefing Word Document (.doc)




Manage Your Projects
Are you the kind of freelancer to keep a notepad next to you to jot down tasks? Maybe you just use your noggin to remember things. I like to take the organised approach and use a project management tool to make my life as a freelancer much easier, both for me and for my clients.

I use an excellent tool developed by those cheeky chaps over at 37signals called BasecampHQ. There is a free version of this application which allows the management of a single project, however to upgrade the pricing is very reasonable. For those of you who want to find out more, visit the link below:

Click Here - Visit BaseCampHQ

Ideally, I use BasecampHQ to keep logs of my clients projects, to manage tasks and keep track of milestones such as starting a project, completing a project, I use it to upload preview of concepts and revisions, and most of all I use it to keep in constant regular communication with my clients, of course in addition to IM, Email and Telephone and in some cases meetings.

As a freelancer growing by the day I strongly recommend this tool. Yes it costs, but it’s a cost you’ll soon notice the benefit of incurring.

Communication is Key!

While some work may take a while, and some other work may not take so long. Keeping in contact with your client (and even potential client) is key to managing any situation properly and keeping them satisfied with your service. Think about it, it’s common sense; nobody likes to think that their money has been spent and they have no evidence of anything to come of it.

The next questions you should ask yourself are “How do I communicate? Is it effective? How can I improve my level of communication?” Good questions beg good answers:

Email is an excellent way of communication. You can be semi-personal and insert some of your extended interest in the clients well being. Instant Messaging is a quick way to discuss the project and communicate, however by far the worst type. I highly recommend an environment where conversation can be logged and issues can be raised and addressed properly, and archived for later reference. Last but not least, the best type of communication is telephone or personal meetings (more local based client types). Over the phone communication is semi-physical and you and your client can both emote to show enthusiasm or lack of.

Improving your level of communication
Absolutely…NO…JARGON. Clients hate it, I hate it, You will soon grow to hate it. Without patronising your client you need to find a way to describe certain technicalities in an easy to understand language, in a friendly way. Nobody likes a smartass, and nobody likes using dictionary.com. User friendliness comes in familiarity and easy of use and ease of understanding.

Use similes to verbally outline a concept, use existing examples or even create an example. Make sure that the client fully understands you, and that you fully understand your client.

A Final Thought
As the first part of a 3 part article I have tried to outline some basics that freelancers could bear in mind for the future. The basics, if you haven’t noticed already, are key factors in making the whole process easier for you, and for your clients. Having everything in place, having a formal system of project intake and management, and having everything laid out in an easy to understand way makes life so much easier, on both parties.

In Part 2 we will cover Quotation, Contracts & Legalities and we can’t forget, Milestones & Time Management.


Thank you for reading.

Article Written by Anthony Bullock of Microvisuals.com You can visit my blog at Moobrack.com.