Scott Oldford Site

Tag: communication

  • Freelance Writers Need Vacations, Too. Here’s How to Take One

    Freelance Writers Need Vacations, Too. Here’s How to Take One

    If you’re following my Tracking Freelance Earnings column, you probably noticed that my January Income Report mentioned I was going on vacation.

    From January 31 through February 8, I was on the JoCo Cruise, a geek-themed cruise featuring performers such as Jonathan Coulton, David Rees, Jean Grae and Hari Kondabolu. I go on this cruise every year as both a vacation and an opportunity for professional development — this year, for example, the cruise included a writing track led by John Scalzi — and consider it one of the best parts of my year.

    Because freelancers don’t get paid vacation days, I put in a lot of late nights completing extra work so I would still meet my monthly income goals.

    In addition to working ahead, how else should freelancers prepare for extended trips? It all comes down to two words: communication and planning.

    Prepare your clients

    As I wrote in a recent Ask A Freelancer column, communicating your vacation schedule and availability to your clients is one of the most important parts of vacation preparation. Although I am technically “my own boss” and don’t have to ask for permission to take time off, freelancers lose clients pretty quickly if we get in the habit of disappearing without any warning!

    I started preparing my clients for my upcoming vacation in mid-January. I gave each of my clients three key details:

    1. The dates I would be gone
    2. My availability while I was away (for this trip, I let them know that I had limited access to the Internet and was not planning to check email; in other situations, I might say “I will be checking email once daily”)
    3. The assignments I would complete before I left

    That third point is particularly important, because it helps manage expectations and provide assurance. Clients want to know that their magazine, blog, website or project is going to run smoothly regardless of whether their freelancer is behind a desk or on a cruise ship watching David Rees sing “Shake It Off.”

    Here’s how I addressed this issue with The Write Life:

    On January 14, I let them know that I planned to draft my January Income Report on January 29 and complete any revisions on January 30. Giving my clients specific dates and action items helps assure them that I have a plan for completing all of my necessary work.

    I turned in my Write Life draft a day early, on January 28, which had been my plan all along. It’s an easy way to exceed expectations and give my editors a buffer in case we needed a longer revision process. (Editor’s note: I love this strategy.)

    On the night before my trip, I set up an out-of-office email stating that I would be on vacation and away from email until Monday, February 9. Don’t forget this step! At least one of your clients is bound to forget that you are on vacation, and the out-of-office email acts as a reminder. Likewise, if anyone contacts you about any new work while you are away, the out-of-office message reassures them that you are not ignoring their email.

    Plan ahead to prevent surprises

    The biggest worry I have, when I go on vacation, is that one of my clients will have an expectation about my availability that I won’t be able to meet.

    When I went on the same cruise a year ago, for example, I was working for a copywriting firm that connected me with various third-party clients. One of those third-party clients, not knowing that I was on vacation, sent me a revision request on a project. The copywriting firm was able to manage that expectation and assure the client that I would complete the revision after I returned.

    This worry about managing expectations is one of the reasons why so many of us check email while we’re on vacation — 44 percent of workers, according to a 2013 American Psychological Association study.

    It’s not necessarily the fear of missing work; it’s the fear that someone is going to be disappointed or frustrated that we aren’t immediately able to help them. Good planning helps mitigate that frustration, and advance communication reassures clients that all of their needs will be taken care of either before or after we get back.

    I have to admit that when our ship docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico — where I had domestic cell service — I turned on my phone and scrolled through my messages. I had prepared well; none of my clients had any immediate requests, and there were no surprises in my inbox.

    Get back to work

    The “back to work” phase of vacation is just as important as the planning phase.

    Before you leave on vacation, figure out what your work schedule is going to look like for the week you get back. Are you going to be starting any new freelance assignments? Do you have deadlines to meet? Pitches to send?

    Making a plan before you leave helps you jump straight back into your workflow without wasting time — or, more importantly, losing track of something important that might have slipped your mind while you were relaxing by the ocean!

    I also put in some extra time on the Monday and Tuesday after I got back to catch up on the emails that needed answering. (Just because there weren’t any immediate requests in my inbox didn’t mean that there weren’t about 30 emails that needed a response.) By Wednesday, I was back to my usual freelance schedule.

    So that’s how I handle a freelancer’s vacation. I’ve already put down a deposit for next year’s JoCo Cruise, which means that next January I’ll be ready to start this process all over again.

    How do you prepare your clients before you go on vacation, and how do you handle the transition back to work? Do you check your email while you’re away?

  • The Key to Keeping Clients Happy, Even When Delivering Bad News

    The Key to Keeping Clients Happy, Even When Delivering Bad News

    “It’s not my job to tell my client he’s making a mistake. My job is writing the content he paid me to write.”

    That’s the prevailing attitude of most freelancers today — and it has to stop.

    You’ll have happier clients, better profits, more respect and ultimately a more successful business if you’re brave enough to be upfront and proactive with your clients… even if you lose them forever.

    Think you have what it takes? Being honest with your clients takes guts and integrity, and not everyone has the confidence to pull it off.

    But if you do, you should. Here’s why:

    What your client doesn’t know

    You know a lot. Your client doesn’t — at least, not about what you do.

    After all, you’re the expert. People hire you because you’re a professional who knows way more than they do. That’s the way it should be.

    But there’s a big difference between being a professional expert and being the one who doesn’t shout a warning when your client’s about to step in a hole.

    Here’s an example, taken straight from my personal life. In the past four months, I hired a contractor to build my custom home. And I’d heard the warnings: everyone says that when you have a house built, you should expect the project to cost more than the initial quote.

    How much more? Well, now. That’s a fun surprise you get to figure out on your own.

    Now, I don’t have a problem with extra costs that the contractor can’t foresee. When we hit some unexpected bedrock during excavation, I paid the dynamiter’s bill with no fuss at all.

    But some extra costs were the sort that the contractor definitely saw coming a mile away — because he’s experienced, and I’m not. Here’s my favorite example:

    We knew we needed a well to provide water to the house. The contractor gave us a quote for digging the well. We agreed to the quote.

    Once the well was dug, we expected we’d have water.

    But then our contractor told us, “Now you’ll need a special pump to help maintain the right water pressure because your house is so far from the well. It’ll cost $300.”

    “Oh, and there’s an extra charge because we had to dig past 300 feet. That’s another $2,500.”

    Didn’t you know about these possibilities beforehand?

    “Well, we didn’t know for sure, but it was pretty likely.”

    So why didn’t you tell me?

    “Well, we could’ve hit water sooner and found it wasn’t really necessary, and we were hoping maybe the pressure would be strong enough on its own… ”

    Frustrating.

    What do you know that your client doesn’t?

    Many people who get in touch with me want great web copy to improve their conversion rates.

    Now, great web copy I can provide. But improved conversion rates? That depends on a huge number of factors that may or may not be related to the great copy.

    Great conversion rates require that you have a certain number of visitors to begin with. That’s not copy, that’s traffic.

    Great conversion rates require that you’re driving the right kind of visitors for the product or services you’re selling to your site. That’s not copy, that’s marketing strategy.

    Great conversion rates require that your website looks credible and trustworthy. That’s not copy, that’s website design.

    And so on.

    I could do what my contractor did: just agree to provide what they’re asking for. I could say, “Sure, we can give you great web copy,” and take their money, even though I know full well that they have a particular intention for that copy.

    I didn’t know that there was an extra step between digging the well and getting the water piped into my house — but my contractor did.

    My client doesn’t know that there are extra steps between slapping up great copy and getting improved conversions — but I do.

    So here’s the big question: do I tell him now, or do I tell him later?

    Always tell him now

    I’ve experimented with both strategies. I’ve been concerned that if I tell the client my great copy won’t magically solve all his problems, he’ll walk away. That’s a legitimate concern. Many do.

    But here’s an even more legitimate concern: the client will hear me agree to solve his problem, and he’ll operate on the assumption that I’m handling the problem he presented to me:

    Not getting enough conversions.

    Since he thinks I agreed to solve that problem, not just provide him with excellent copy, he’s going to be pretty unhappy when it turns out that copy doesn’t automatically result in better conversions.

    It doesn’t matter if I explain to him later that it’s obvious copy alone won’t solve the conversion problem. It doesn’t matter if this is a well-known fact among successful online entrepreneurs.

    My client clearly wouldn’t know, if I didn’t tell him.

    Which would make the resulting misunderstanding my fault, as far as the client’s concerned.

    He’s not likely to be happy about paying me for my services, even though I provided exactly what it said on the contract. He’s not going to recommend me to others. In fact, he may even leave me bad reviews or tell people that I’m a dishonest service provider.

    The almost-certain hit to my business is way worse than the possibility that the client might walk away when he realizes the solution he needs is more than he thought.

    What to do when a client wants magic

    When I have a client who thinks copy or design has magical properties that solve all his marketing woes, I stop and explain what he can and can’t expect from the work he’s asking me to do.

    I can provide you with great copy, I’ll say, but your conversion rate will depend heavily on these other factors, and those are probably bigger priorities than copy right now. You may want to get in touch with a marketing consultant or a traffic strategist.

    If the client doesn’t want to do that, it’s fine. I can still provide the copy.

    But the client won’t be able to say that I promised him conversions. I didn’t. It’s clearly written down in black and white: great copy will solve one of your problems, but not these other ones, and you should look into them.

    I often even make myself as useful as possible: I always try to suggest a few trusted people who might be able to provide the other elements of the required solution.

    Being upfront with a client works

    Let’s pretend my contractor had followed this plan. Let’s pretend that when we discussed the original quote about the well, he mentioned, “Just so you know, since your house is so far from where we’re planning to put the well, you may need to have a special pump to help with pressure.”

    “How much will the pump cost?”

    “$300. And you’ll want to prepare for the possibility that we may not hit water within 300 feet, so there might be extra charges if we have to go deeper.”

    “Yeah, that makes sense. I hope it goes well! How much would it cost if you have to go deeper?”

    “Could be about $2,500 extra.”

    “Ouch! But what can you do, eh? Oh well. Thanks for letting us know; we’ll factor that into our budget just in case.”

    The contractor still gets paid the same amount, whether he tells me now or tells me later.

    The big difference is that I know in advance that I may have to spend this money, and I know why.

    I also know that my contractor knows what he’s doing. I know that he understands my needs and is looking ahead to warn me about pitfalls that might get in the way.

    In short, I know he’s got my back.

    Which makes spending more money feel okay. I don’t feel cheated. I feel like I dodged a bullet. I can plan ahead with confidence. I feel like I successfully avoided hassle and headaches in the future. Good thing he told me about this!

    It makes me feel good about handing over an extra $3,000.

    Communicate as much as you can

    Always assume that your client doesn’t know — even if it’s common knowledge, clearly obvious or plain fact. Take responsibility for your client’s well-being, and be proactive about as much as you can.

    The worst that can happen is that your client says, “Oh, I already knew that, don’t worry.” No harm, no foul. You still look good for having communicated as much as possible ahead of time instead of after the fact.

    And you’ll make your clients feel good about working with you. You’ll make them feel good about the money they’re spending. They’ll see you’re looking out for their best interest. They’ll feel like you’re going to shout “Watch out!” if they’re about to step on a snake.

    Clients who know you’ve got their back are loyal clients. And those are the ones you want to keep.

    Have you ever had to tell a client she was making a mistake? How did you explain the situation?