How do you look from the client’s side of the screen?

What is it like to work with you on a project?

Marketing people call that the customer experience.  It’s the term for what it feels like to shop at a particular shoe store. How delightful it is to play with your new iPad. That feeling you have after the last scene of the movie.  How irritating it is to use your software.

I’m coming to think, as a freelancer, the client experience you deliver is pretty much everything. Your dazzling creativity may or may not be the deciding factor.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

I know, I know, that sounds like a lot of huggy-kissy psycho-foof. “Kum-ba-ya” customer relations. But ask anyone, I am not known for endlessly pondering my feelings, or anyone else’s.  I’m very guy-like that way.

I would much prefer to think that my ingenious copy, my insightful solution to the problem is what matters most. But after re-examining my countless screw-ups, lost clients, missed opportunities and blown projects, I have to come to realize that the client experience is pretty much all there is.

Clients will work with you, or not, based on how you make them feel.

Man, if I could rewind a huge segment of my freelancing adventures, that is one thing I would erase and do over.

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Dumb simple.  Deceptively dumb simple. And not at all easy to do.  But that’s about all there is to client handling. There is no number two.

There are a thousand permutations and variations and nuances to it. But the rule is simple:

Make it so they always feel better after talking to you.

Do that, and you will win 6.2 times as many clients as any other freelancer.

I first heard this idea years back, from a guy who was five-star master at this.

He ran a small ad agency here in Jersey.  A good client of mine.  One afternoon, we’re in his office chatting.  He was interrupted by client calls four or five times. Once, a big client called to bitch about a blown deadline.  Another called about a toothache of a rush project.  Another griped about her boss.  One even called to fire him, sort of.

But each time, by the end of the call, everything was cheerful, settled, assuaged. Sometimes it was a matter of being contrite. Sometimes just listening. Sometimes he confidently steered a client to a logical fix. Sometimes he simply commiserated. “Geez, I don’t know how you do it.”

It was difficult work. It took time and patience. But they always hung up laughing.

And, he made a lot more money than I did.  So I took notice.

“Aways leave them happier than you found them,” he said.  “Then they keep calling.”

(I realized, months later, that he had done the exact same thing to me. There were times, in the odd afternoon, I’d call him just because, well, it would be an uplifting five minutes or so.  Or, when he called me, and I’d see his name come up on the caller ID, I knew it would mean something good. Maybe som new work.  A rave review from a client.  Something good.  I always picked up.)

I cringe when I wonder what my clients thought when they saw my name come up on the caller ID.  “Oh crap, more bitching about the changes. Pestering me again for background material? Another delay?  More arguing about strategy?”

Another lesson.  Years back, my wife was told she needed some scary surgery. Our health insurer required us to see a bunch of other specialists, whom we visited one after the other.

Each time, we left the office confused, or dismayed, or feeling like clueless dumbasses.  Or, we’d drive home feeling like we had just heard the standard approved patient speech for diagnosis code 234.1.  We felt worse after every visit.

That is, until we saw Elliot Stein.

He didn’t spend any more time with us than the other guys. And he gave us essentially the same advice. (“Yeah, you need the surgery, and yes, it’s scary, and yes, you’ll feel like hell for a while after.)

But for the first time, we left his office feeling better. “Yes, we’re doing the right thing.  Hundreds of people have been through this. Let’s do it.”  We were committed, confident. A great weight had been lifted.

What did Elliot do differently? We felt like he gave a damn. The meeting was about us. Not about his credentials or the outcome statistics or that plastic model of the heart sh0wing the valves and chambers.  It was all about us and what we were worried about. Here was one guy, one doctor, on our side for once.

My wife still sees Elliot Stein to this day.  Are his credentials and qualifications any better than than other guys’?  I have no idea. All I know is, when she sees him, she always feels better after.  No matter what.

Those other docs?  Don’t even remember their names.  They get none of her business.

I know this sounds like so much airy nonsense. But it’s precisely why I choose Gelormini’s auto repair over the four other guys I could call. Why a hard-assed project manager calls one programmer versus another. (“That other coder makes me nervous.”)

So try this for one month.  The next thirty days.

(Okay, I know you won’t do this. Nobody does that 30-day trial stuff, including me.  It’s just for emphasis.)

What if, what if you worked it so every client, every prospect, every referral, every person who contacted you felt better after talking to you?  For real.

What if they felt more confident?  More convinced they had found the right guy.  Satisfied that they were doing the right thing?  Glad to find they could do this for less than they had planned?  What if they saw that there were at least nine ways to fix this, and all would be well?

Or what if, simply, you made them feel you were really glad they called?

What if they were excited to see your name come up in the email.  Or in the caller ID?

How much better would you be doing?

If you’re going to actively look for clients (as opposed to lie in wait for them), who should you be pursuing?

What kinds of clients are worth hunting?

1.  Rich ones

This may sound blindingly obvious, but it only pays to chase clients with money. And by money, I mean spendable cash that is in the checking account right now.

I wasted way too much time pursuing little businesses and start-ups thinking they were easy pickings for a newbie freelancer. No. They may be a source of work, but a lousy source of income.

Same with cash-starved producers and agencies who finance their projects on the backs of freelancers. (“Soon as we get paid, we’ll pay you.”)  No.

You want to work with thriving businesses, busy firms, or individuals with fat wallets.

2. Heavy users

The economics of freelancing overwhelmingly favors repeat assignments, long-term relationships. You want clients who use a lot of what you do. (Sometimes cynically called “chronic clients” or “repeat offenders.”)

So spend your energy wooing clients who need boatloads of content, plenty of web design, photos, illustrations, copy, programming, whatever. Maybe they are design firms or agencies or web developers. (See Rule 1, however.) Or companies and businesses who do a lot of marketing, development or creation themselves.  Sell them once, get work for years.

Nothing wrong with one-shot clients — if they walk in the door or come to you by referral. But if you need to hunt down and sell a new client for every assignment, you will exhaust yourself. (And you will spend 83% of your time seducing instead of working.)  Better to focus on the frequent flyers.

If you sell something clients use only once — such as an identity — it’s more efficient to chase branding firms, marketing groups, consultants and others who can serve as your scouts and procurers.

3. Kindred souls

I’m embarrassed to admit that I got this part wrong for years. And so did many of the freelancers I know.

Look for clients who think like you. People with tastes, attitudes, outlooks, and philosophies that jibe with yours. They will be more profitable and easier on the psyche.

You write edgy, irreverent, ballsy copy? Chase firms who already have edgy and irreverent websites. You sell design? Court those companies with a design sense that makes you drool with envy.

You build tight and minimalist interfaces? Chase developers who already ship that way. You’re into human, emotionally-resonant marketing?  Call on companies who act that way right now.

Me? I often did the opposite. Like a dope, I sought out clients whose marketing copy was riddled with corporatespeak or incoherent technobabble, reasoning, like a dope, that they were aching for my brand of silken prose.

They weren’t.

I discovered that clients who used stiff, corporate copy (a) actually liked it that way (b) couldn’t care less or (c) hated my silken prose.

It was far more productive to go after companies whose copy I liked. We saw eye to eye.

My proofreading friend Miriam found tons more work by chasing firms with pristine and error-free websites. They were the ones who loved proofreaders enough to pay them handsomely. (Not the lummoxes with typos in their brochures.)

There’s no money in trying to convert the philistines.

Sometimes the assignment isn’t what we think it is.

In fact it’s often something else entirely.

For me, things tend to go a lot smoother when I remember that. I get more work, more referrals, too.

Story

A while ago, a producer hired me to write scripts for a series of videos for a tech firm. We had a long conference call with his client and her team, talking about their objectives, the nature of their technology, the content we have to cover, timelines, milestones. The usual.

After the call, the producer asked for my take on the situation.

I immediately launched into a four-minute speech on my concepts for the videos, the structure, the tone of the narration, how it would be tricky to make their technology simple enough — and on and on. (Mentally calculating my fee all the while.)

The producer listened patiently, without comment.

When I was finished, he told me about the client, Elaine, who he had known for a few years.

Eighteen months before, she had been downsized out of a big corporation and spent seven months looking for work, demoralized and scared to hell. She eventually landed the job at this smaller tech company, a huge culture shift for her.

The video series was her first major project in the new gig, initiated by her.  She was still feeling her way around the company’s techno-geek mindset and hierarchy.

The producer didn’t say a word about budget, or creative, or shoot-days or casting.

He was telling me, sort of sideways, that our mission, what we were getting paid for, was to deliver storyboards and a script (and later a video) that Elaine could present to her bosses and score a huge hit.

She needed to wow some people in a big way.

That’s what Elaine was hoping for. That was ‘the objective.’  That was the ‘creative problem.’

He was right.  It wasn’t about my personal artistic vision or any pie-eyed illusions about going viral with these things.

It was about giving Elaine something that would get a rise out of six guys in a conference room two weeks from Tuesday.

That was the deal, right there.

And that’s the image I held in my head while working up the treatments and scripts. I pictured Elaine pitching our (her) video concepts, and the nerdy bosses nodding.

I found the rudder, the North Star for the project. It simplified everything, made everyone happy. Made good money, good videos, too.

Elaine is a true fan to this day.

Out here, at ground level, sometimes ‘solving the problem’ means making a client look like a genius.  Or not making them look bad.

Sometimes the ‘creative challenge’ is to give them a way to score huge points somewhere.

The more I’m conscious of that, the better I do.

First, let me go on record:  I actually like most of my clients.

It is always more profitable to treat your clients with utmost respect, to be on their side, to sweat out the best way to deliver what they want (even when it’s not what they say they want.)

But if you have been freelancing for more than six days, you already know that we are out-gunned by clients most of the time. So it never hurts to find an edge, however slight, wherever we can.

The first of The Freelancery’s field-tested tactics:

(Please use sparingly. And don’t let these get around. We’ll post more in the days ahead.)

We eat, sleep, and breathe your stuff

You are working with a new client. Or you’re in the running for a new assignment, perhaps against some irritating competitor whom you know you can out-do, even with your right hand in a cast. You need to endear yourself to the client.

So you create an email, saying (I’m making this up) “I keep thinking about the layout for the internal pages. It might make sense to. . .” and so on.

Then you send the email at nine minutes after midnight. Or have it auto-sent at 5:13 am.

On Sunday afternoon, when you’re at the zoo or at a cafe, you call the client’s number from your cell phone and leave a voice mail (allowing background sounds to come through, for added effect.)  “Hi, it’s Sunday, around 2:30 or so.  Sorry to bother you, but I’ve been going over and over what you said about the right tone and feel, and something occurred to me . . . “

Are you hurting?

Client is late with a payment. (Who isn’t?) So you send an email. Or get him on the phone.

There is no anger in your voice, only heartfelt care and concern: “You had agreed that the final $x000 would be sent when the content was completed, and knowing you, I didn’t doubt it for a second. But I haven’t seen the payment yet. Gee, I’m hoping you’re not in any financial trouble or anything.”

Unless they’re pure crooks, the ego of the average entrepreneur will force them to send the damn check, rather than admit they’re in a pinch.

If they do admit to troubles, there was a slim chance of seeing a check anyway. “How about we set up a payment plan to help you out then?”

Flail yourself

Something goes wrong on a project. Maybe you’re late. The client says the color is wrong. Or the CMS breaks, or the boss was repulsed by the copy. Or maybe the client utterly screwed up and is covering her ass. You are catching a face full of rage.

The normal, instinctive responses:  push the blame on someone else, deny everything, point out the client’s error, or just quit answering the phone.

All worthy tactics, usually, but there’s a better way.

Beat yourself up without mercy. And make it personal.

“You are so right.  I’m deeply embarrassed by this.  I don’t blame you one bit for being upset. If I were you, I’d be enraged, too. I feel awful that I let you down and put you in such a bad spot here. All through no fault of your own. That is wrong.

“I would understand if you need to put someone else on the project — but I would like a chance to put it right as quickly as possible.  Here’s what I suggest . . . .”

This dissipates all that bile very quickly. There is no fun in screaming at someone who is lying there paws-up agreeing with you.

Yes, you will need the right touch. Go for professional embarrassment, but avoid any wuss-like whimpering about your utter worthlessness. (I’ve found my own middle ground, only since I’ve had to invoke this some 34 times. You’ll need to feel your own way here.)

Oh, and you get bonus points, redeemable later, if you get a winking acknowledgement for taking one in the nuts to cover a client’s goof.

An interview with a younger Steve Jobs, about working with legendary Paul Rand on designing an identity (called a ‘logo’ back then) for NeXT Computer.

Spoiler:  The sticky-note quote:  “I will solve your problem the best way I know how.  And you will pay me.  You don’t have to use it, but you will pay me.”

I’m a bit embarrassed to relate this.  And I do not advocate treating clients this way.  It is childish and unprofessional.  (But it felt good.)  In general I adore my clients.

I offer this only because the statute of limitations has expired.   Here’s the story.

I was writing a white paper for a corporate VP.  A one-time project.

She was driving me bats by larding up the text with all sorts of pompous and flatulent companyspeak.

When I wrote the word ‘use’ and she would change it to ‘utilize’.  She’d cross out the word ‘after’ and insert ‘subsequent to’.  Most of her comments were so tangled I couldn’t decipher them at all.  She spoke in buzzwords. It was a bad fit from the start, and I should have realized it.

By the fourth round of revisions, the piece was a mess and we were both frustrated.  She called my writing ‘too simplistic and downmarket.’  She wanted ‘a reset.’

Ordinarily, in unflappable pro mode, I would have simply shut up, written what she wanted and left town with the cash.

Instead, I threw a tantrum.

“So I’m too simplistic, eh?”

At a quarter to midnight, in a fit of pique, I rewrote the entire piece.

I set the thing ablaze with blather and bombast. I stuffed it chockablock with cliches and random combinations of every pre-fab nonsense phrase I had ever heard.

I packed in twenty-nine words where only nine were needed, and rendered every third paragraph as a one sixty-foot sentence.  I played mix and match with the techno-jargon: I wrote next-edge and cutting-generation. I concocted ugly terms like ‘scalable unassailability.’

It was a tour de force of impenetrable corporatespeak, so laughable it could have been a Monty Python bit.

At that point, of course, I should have put the thing away, let the steam subside, and taken up the job again the next day, calmly, and without ego.

But that’s not what I did.

I was still smarting and figured I was as good as fired anyway.  Like a dope, I wanted the satisfaction of a parting shot.

So at 1:30 am, with evil glee, I emailed this snide parody to the client.

I was invoking the freelancer’s option to bail, that freedom (which must be used sparingly) to disengage from any client, project, or situation that is intolerable, unprofitable, irritating as hell, or harmful to the soul.  It is the ultimate stress-relief valve, unavailable to salaried folk.

And I hit ‘Send’ and slept contented, glad to be free of this root canal of a paper.

Next morning, there’s an email from her. 

She says:  “Yes!  Great reboot and retake. This is definitely on point now. I’ve attached some minor changes . . . And thanks for midnight oiling this.”

Sometimes you can act like an ass and still come out okay.

—–

A designer friend reminds me of his similar antics with a client who always wanted his logo bigger.

“Whenever we showed layouts with the logo at the proper size, the client would insist on enlarging it until it bulged like a tumor at the bottom of the page.  We hated that.”

“The next time around, we decided go in with grotesquely huge logos.  We figured he’d gasp at these cantaloupe-sized monstrosities and tell us to pare them back and back.  And we’d end up at a reasonable size for once.

“Nope. The client loved the overbloated logos. Called us geniuses.  Asked us to build a campaign based on an ultra-magnified, hyper-sized logos that barely fit on the page.”

“Around the idea of ‘Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”

I’m beginning to suspect that it’s smart, at least sometimes, to turn down and beg off assignments from time to time (even if you really want them.)

It seems to be, paradoxically, good for business.

And no, this is not about hauteur. This is not about being a diva or a prima donna.  It’s about some reverse zen contrarian anti-matter dynamic that I can’t figure out.

Latest example.

A client — a bootstrap start-up — comes to me with a project.  They want me to write their web site. They seem like bright and eager guys.  I like them instantly, but the subject is well outside my skill zone. And the project is a logistical hairball.  No way I can hit a home run with this thing. Worst of all, the budget is below slave wages. A non-starter.

So I politely decline, and point them to another writer.

But, of course, they’re having none of that.

They call back. ‘No, we want you.’  They raise the fee, extend the deadline, sweeten the pot. The more I decline, the harder they push.  They are trying to sell me on the project. And oddly, the more they sell, the less I want it. (Did too many other writers turn them down?  Am I the last sucker on the list?Are they crooks? What’s the catch here?)

Meanwhile, of course, I’m courting the hell out of another client.

This one with budget spilling over the dikes.  The company is huge.  With them, one pipsqueak document would cover two mortgage payments. Talk about heavy users.  They have sixteen hundred pounds, at least nine page-miles of content on their web site.

And all of it is unintelligible crap. The sort of crap that makes a writer just itch to get at it.

I could re-write it all to brilliance with one hand on my Mac and the other juggling a Corona and my FIOS remote.  This is what I am born to do.  I lie awake re-writing their intros in my head.

I’ve even sent them samples of my miraculous makeovers and transformations. Half the bandwidth, double the impact, six times the clarity.  It’s as good as has been done in their industry.  (Even if I do say so myself.)

“Very interesting,” is all they say.  “We’ll let you know.”

But they ain’t calling.

The harder I sell, the less they want me.

This is a lesson I have to re-learn every once in a while:

If you’re working at the lower limit of your fee range, and the client is at the upper limits of their budget range, step away.  Better yet, run.

When it’s small potatoes for you, but a major deal for them, it will go south fast. You will lose money. They will be pissed off.  It will be a 360-degree stinker.

The dynamic is easy to understand. If you’re working for bare bones fee on a relatively small project, your goal is to get it done. Be swift, be efficient, be a pro. Then move on.

But their goal, of course, is to get every nickel’s worth of the astronomical fee they’re paying. They want project briefs, target dates, ironclad agreements. More tweaks, more choices. They will want to re-think and over-discuss everything. They will never be sure if it’s good enough.

You will do twice the work for half the fee. And they will still feel gypped. Bad juju all around.

Best work zone:  Top of your fee scale (where you’re delighted to be working, and eager to bust one over the fence). . . and the mid-range of the client’s usual budget. (Gee, he does really good stuff.  And reasonable, too.)

Think carefully about how you make clients feel.

Do they like to call you?  Do they feel better after talking to you?

This may sound like touchy-feely silliness, but it’s critical to your bottom line.  Because clients will tend to business with you (or not) based on how you make them feel.  It counts as much, or more, than your skill or expertise.  Even if your clients are hard-boiled engineers or no-nonsense numbers guys.

I worked with a guy who was a master at this.  Clients looked forward to calling Brian.  He always sounded delighted to hear from them.  They got his full attention and felt like the center of the universe for that moment.  And it never sounded like glad-handing back-slapping.

If they wanted to bitch about their boss, complain their bum knee, or chat about the game, Brian would let them.  Whatever they needed, he could accommodate.  Or he proposed an alternate that they liked just as much.  He listened way more than he talked.  He always sounded enthusiastic about the project, even if it was really a hairball.

And when the client hung up, she felt good.  Smarter.  Or relieved.  Or confident.  She knew everything would be alright.  She had made the right decision.  She would look good to her boss.  She didn’t feel schmoozed or handled.  She genuinely felt good about the contact.

Brian wasn’t necessarily the best at his particular trade, but he was a five-star pro at making clients like to work with him.  He had a lot of clients.

It’s surprising how often we forget this simple thing.  I have to re-learn his lesson myself a few times a year.   I cringe when I realize how often I grouse in front of clients, whine about impossible deadlines, or somehow make their ideas sound stupid.  Or worse, ramble on about how much I know about everything.  Yipe.

Don’t do that.

Make the client feel better after talking to you.

As a rule, it is more profitable to have a handful of big and busy clients rather than dozens of smaller ones. You can be more productive and efficient doing repeat business with familiar clients.  There is no learning curve and less administrative and marketing overhead.

The more of these big clients in your portfolio, the greater your income.  It works that way for every freelancer I know.

So focus 80% of your looking-for-business efforts on clients that need a lot of what you do.  And when you get to work with one, bend over backwards and jump through hoops to please them.

If you have one such client, that’s good.  Two is better.  Three is about right.  Instead of a fourth, try to find a bunch of infrequent clients, or small clients who might become big.

Because the one rule about big clients is this:  They will go away.  Through no fault of yours, things will change somewhere and the run will be over.  So cultivate them when you can, and always have others in the wings.  Always think about how you’d replace that big client.

Because you will have to.  Guaranteed.