

Tricks That Make You More Attractive to Clients - rick888
http://freelancefolder.com/5-tricks-that-make-you-more-attractive-to-clients/

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icey
Hmmm. The number 1 thing that worked for me (I refuse to call it a trick) was
being attentive to what the client actually _needed_.

A lot of consultants want to walk in the door and propose all sorts of fancy /
flashy solutions. Many times, that's not really needed.

Almost all of my clients (it's been a few years since I've consulted) told me
that the reason they always called me back was because they knew I took the
time to first understand the problem that they needed to have fixed and that
my only interest was to find the right solution for _them_.

Sometimes that meant I had to spend weeks working in Access or VB, but that's
what the right solution was for them.

It's easy to get a big head when you're consulting; you know everything that
there is to know and people pay you serious money just to hear your advice. I
have seen a lot of consultants who insist on only using bleeding edge
everything for every solution they write; some of them even do it with great
success.

I guarantee you that none of them have the same kind of word-of-mouth
marketing you get by proving to your client that you care about their
problems, and that you're going to find the solution that fits them the best.
I closed up shop 3 years ago, and I still get referrals from my old clients on
a weekly basis to this day.

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bendtheblock
Good advice. If you don't mind me asking, why did you decide to stop?

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icey
My favorite client was losing their only full time developer and made me an
offer that was basically impossible to refuse to come work for them full time.

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bjplink
I live and die by #1. I have a last in, first out policy when it comes to
requests via email. If you want something done, and you email me about it, it
gets top priority over whatever else I'm doing. One of the biggest comments I
hear from people who are referred to me (which is the only way I've taken on
work in the last 3 years) is the speed of my support.

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thomaspaine
Like he says though, you have to be careful with this. I once had a client who
would constantly email me with support questions, many of which I answered
multiple times but I guess it was easier for him to just email me instead of
searching his email logs. I would always answer back right away, which would
mean he would write me back with another question, and the cycle would repeat
itself indefinitely. It basically became instant messaging with a 20 minute
delay, and totally killed my productivity while making me hate this person.

Also, I try to be as honest with my billing as possible, which means that if
each support question takes 5 minutes out of my day, I might only bill this
person for 30 minutes, even though the true cost to me is much greater because
of my lost productivity.

My solution was to ask him to either send me support questions in batch unless
they were real emergencies, or pay me to set up a bug/feature tracker.

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bjplink
When this happens to me, and it has several times, I just get real honest with
the person and ask them to try and be a little more organized with their
questions. Most people become real apologetic when they feel like they're
abusing you... especially when you've built up a track record with them.

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quizbiz
Can anyone say a little more about how to "actively attract and screen for
good clients"?

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rama_vadakattu
One more important thing is to

1)share your experiences of your work via blog

This helps you in increasing the trust with your potential clients and to find
new clients by means of inbound marketing see below link:

[http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/10807/Startups-How-
To-B...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/10807/Startups-How-To-Build-A-
Barrier-To-Entry-With-Inbound-Marketing.aspx)

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edw519
Nice writeup, but how did the word "tips", mentioned 4 times in the article,
become "Tricks" in the title? They're not the same thing. "Tricks" implies
something devious, underhanded, or hidden, and there's nothing like that in
this article. No one likes to be tricked and these days, no one _can_ be
tricked for long.

Customers want you to be open, honest, and trustworthy partners and all of the
"tips" in this article are great for doing just that.

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pbhjpbhj
I'm guessing it was just their marketing - tips suggest something you'll need
to work at, tricks suggests it's magic in some way, that you'll get a
surprising return on your [time] investment.

