Freelances: 3 tips to optimize your customer relationship

Customer relationship is a key part of a freelance business to convert new prospects while retaining current customers. Here are 3 tips to apply daily to differentiate you from the competition.

Give your time to know your prospects

Our first advice is to spend time understanding the needs of your prospects. For that, spend time with them, listen to them. The sense of listening you can demonstrate is the best way to initiate personalized coaching. When the first contact is made, your displayed goal should not be to sell immediately, but rather to initiate a relationship of trust. As you trade, you become the expert that the client will immediately think to entrust you with his project.

Customer relationship management is not limited to reminders campaigns. If you want to initiate a lasting relationship with your prospects and hope to convert them, your sales talents are not the most important. It is more sensible-at least at first-to rely on benevolence, advice and closeness.

Never leave a contact without new

In 99% of cases, if a prospective client does not appeal to you but to another Freelancer, it is that he has forgotten you, it is as simple as that. Especially if his first solicitation dates from several weeks ago (or worse, several months…), you can not blame him for going to the simplest. He surely has “short-listed” candidates who spontaneously come to mind.

Our second advice, to fight against oblivion: you have to remember regularly to its good memory. A phone call, an email (for example a newsletter) or a personalized SMS are the best marketing tools to give your news in the form of reminder bites. If you think it’s useless, look around, starting with your Inbox: how many e-mails do you receive from companies whose only goal is that you don’t forget them?

To adopt this type of approach, you can use CRM tools (in English: customer relationship management) that offer you the possibility to list all your contacts and to follow the solicitations whatever their nature (calls telephone, e-mail, appointments, etc.). For example, you can begin to familiarize yourself with the tool available on the RCMP site.

Never work for free!

Finally, we will never say enough: it does not mean that you have to work for free! It’s even the other way around. Do not make the mistake of proposing a free test, regardless of the task to be performed. Take the height and position yourself to advise, in order to prepare the ground for a more important sale of service.

What makes your strength as a freelancer is the personalized link you can tie up with your clientele. Compared to “standardized” offers, you have the opportunity to adapt to the needs and to propose this little more, this little attention, which can make the difference.

The time you devote to making customer relationships can really make a difference in the long term and help you sustain your business.