This is the sixth part of this series which goes on discussing the Sins that many freelancers commit which often jeopardizes their freelance business. This part will deal with the importance diversification of your work.

There are some accounting and other kind of stuffs are always related to each of the clients that you will ever deal. You have to perform these tasks each time for each and every client, regardless of the project size. So, when there is a lot of customer, you tend to be in an uneasy position with all these tasks that don’t incite you at all. Therefore, when a big client signs up for your project, you tend to work only for him, ignoring other projects or you stop taking other projects. You fully concentrate of the few big clients. However, this can lead to some dreadful scenarios. Here we will discuss the repercussion of what can happen if thing run wild.

The biggest danger of this approach is that, in any case a big client decides to stop you, that is, he decides to go for other freelancers or he is not interested anymore to carry out the project. Then you will be in blue water as you have already declined other clients. Thus you will face trouble having enough work. So, what is the best way out of this situation? The answer is it Diversify your work by following the below mentioned practices:

Continue Sales & Marketing

Do not become over consumed with the work for big clients, also keep note about the marketing of your brand. Later on if you go too much into shell, then you may fall behind in this competitive business. Thus in any case, you have to keep you marketing and sales functionality on proper track and speed.

Outsourcing

If the client is really big, and able to pay a lot, then you can hire some contract to do some part of the project, instead of dropping other clients off. But make sure that the quality of the work that the subcontractors do is top-notch.

Be Professional

Even if you have decided to drop off the other clients, do not simply leave out any running projects. This actually will create a huge negative impression. Finish whatever projects you have in hand, and then approach the big gig. Also inform the other clients in a professional manner that at that time you will not be available for any other projects.

With this we end our sixth part of the series. In the last part of the series we will discuss about the danger of sacrificing integrity. Just Sign up with our Auto-Feed Manager to deliver the next part to your Inbox automatically.

Marketing is one of the key aspects in freelance business. You really have to spend some good amount of time on thinking and planning about how to market your work and skill set. However, many freelancers actually spend their valuable amount of time on marketing in a view to get new clients, and completely overlooking the existing client base.

This article will shed lights on 3 Steps that will lead you to get more work from your existing client base instead of looking for new clients all the time:

Ask for 10/15 minutes of Consultation

The general trend is, most of the time freelancers get clients though referrals. It is the clients who contact the freelancers with a specific job in mind and hands that off to the freelancer. Once the freelancers finish the project, it is handed over to the client and in most cases we will never hear anything from that client until he is faced with a similar kind of projects to be done.

To prevent this from happening, instead just letting the client go, try to discuss about his business and functional mechanism of his business. Just ask politely for 10/15 minutes. Most of them will be more than happy to have a discussion. The main objective is to find out where, and what kind of bottleneck that the client is having and trying to solve them. This can lead to a long term satisfactory relation being develop and you may end up having a continuous steam of work.

Prepare a Questionnaire for The Client

It is the best advice to have an open-ended question for the client during the 10/15 minutes discussion. Questions such as “Is there any service that they used to offer but not offering now because of staff shortage”, can really open up opportunities for you.

Submitting a Proposal

Once you have finished the discussions and though about it, you will be able to figure out which way you can help them, if any. Then it is time to prepare a proposal where you specifically ask for the work. You put forward your idea and method in a simple plain word so that it sounds both lucrative and beneficial to the client; and it really soars up you chances of finally getting the work.

Thus, if we can concentrate a bit on our existing client base, then with a little plan and patience, great benefit can be derived. Take these advice seriously and gain your client base.

This post is summarized from How to Get More Work from Existing Clients?. Photo by NWSD.