Sep 30 2011

Posted in Freelance, How To's

Humble Freelancer, Assertive Businessperson A How To

By Tevi Hirschhorn

If youre a freelance designer, or you work for another company, you got there notbecause you love business, but because youre a designer at heart. The business sideof things came as a necessary evil, but you really love nothing more than to doodle allday, mess around in photoshop, or bang out semantic code. There are a lot of traits ofbeing a good designer which are counter-intuitive to being a good business person.But if you learn to embrace both sides of the coin, your business will prosper, andyoull get to do more design.

Its great to create beautiful works of art for Arts sake, but the reality is, you can onlyafford do so if youre getting paid. Yes, being a great designer means you need to behumble, accept criticism, have an open mind, listen to other points of view, be idealis-tic and possess all sorts of wonderful character traits of the enlightened and creativeindividual. But to afford to do so, you need learn how to run your business.

Be Assertive

Like many freelancers find out the hard way, there will come a day or a client thatwill act as a tremendous lesson and taught you to be assertive. Now remember, as-sertive doesnt mean yelling and stamping your feet; it just means sticking up foryourself and not letting yourself get bulldozed. Being assertive sooner in the processwill help you avoid being angry later! An unfortunate truth we find, is that someclients will take advantage of you if you give them the opening. Make sure you dontlet them!

Dont Set a Price Until Everything is Scoped Out

That means, not just features and functionality, but timeline, urgency, number ofrevisions, how many other people will be involved the whole works. Everyonesexpectations, both yours and the clients needs to be on the table, and part of thediscussion. Without knowing these vital specifics about the project, we are sure tomisquote the job and probably end up costing ourselves before we can call the projectclosed.

Dont Be Afraid to Ask For a Deposit

This might be obvious to some of you, but many of us have had clients balk at this.Many of those new to the field are not comfortable with doing this. And as manyclients are also not too keen on handing over money for work that has not been done,or even in their minds, begun, we need to approach this situation both delicately andconfidently. The more hesitant we are, the more our discomfort comes across, themore likely the client is to pick up on this and allow their resistance through.

We need to simply let them know that we are completely committed to their project,and as we will be investing a large amount of time in it, we need to be assured thatthey are committed as well. The deposit not only shows they are fully on board, butyou can assure them that it will guarantee priority and timeliness of the project onyour part. It can be an uncomfortable subject to broach, but if you do not, then youmight end up doing a lot of work and not getting compensated at all for your time.

Let Them Know Youre the Expert

Sometimes, no matter how you run your business, you can still run into the occasion-al person who wants to lean over your shoulder and tell you how many pixels tomove something over. The trick is try and not take on the projects for those kinds ofpeople. However, you need to let your clients know youre the expert at yourbusiness, and respect that theyre the expert of theirs.

We dont often dispute the word of our doctor, we accept their expertise. We need our clientsto believe in us this way too. Image by Clarita

Whenever a client makes a specific request for something you know is a bad idea, tryturning it around and asking them what it is thats bothering them. Exactly what arethey trying to solve? This allows you to first try and get to the root of the problem sothat you can come up with a more appropriate way to solve it; rather than just imple-menting the bad idea.

Even then, that sometimes doesnt work, and they insist on the bad idea. This is whenyou want to assure them that you know what they are trying to achieve and you gen-tly push for them to allow for your expertise and knowledge to give them the bestwebsite possible. Strongly discourage going down this path, informing them why theidea could actually work against their goals. Let them know that you will do it if theyinsist, because you want them to be happy in the end. At which point you will wantyour objections to this course noted in the paperwork, pointing out that this is whatthey requested.

That sometimes works. Writing it down makes it into a dramatic moment where theyrealize you dont want to be responsible for doing what they are asking, and theywill then think twice.

Frame Client Input

You can almost never escape needing client approval on a design piece, but there is away to elicit feedback properly without leaving yourself open to accepting inane orsubjective input. When you approach your clients for feedback, rather than leaving

the door wide open, you want to frame the questions in ways that the client will ef-fectively be choosing between options that you are already on board with.

If you have a question about the navigation, take them some variations on the idea tochoose from. Instead of simply asking, what are your thoughts on the navigation?This prevents them from asking for something that is simply unachievable. This canalso save time if they are not very clear on what they want. And sometimes they willknow what they are looking for out of certain elements until they see it.

Always use a contract!

Having a contract doesnt mean you dont trust the client. A contract is for protectingyou and the client, and makes sure everybody is clear on exactly what is being deliv-ered and when. Its not an issue of honesty, but of making sure everybody is on thesame page. Never start work before a contract is signed.

Because nothing is written in stone, so to speak, until the contract is signed. Image by MaryR. Voght

And we have to remember that if we receive a contract, we need to check it overcarefully. If there are any parts that are unclear or make you uncomfortable, do not beafraid to voice those concerns or ask for clarification. Most of the time, we will findthe client receptive to these requests, we need only ask.

Often times, a contract will be written by lawyers who are only looking out for theirclient, and they write for an apocalypse. You need to look out for yourself and makesure you are comfortable with the agreement, too.

Dont Do Work For Hire

unless youre actually being employed full-time! Work-for-hire is a term used incopyright law which grants full ownership and copyrights of your work to the per-son hiring you. By default, all freelancing and contract work is not work for hire.However, it can be written in to a contract (and even then, you still might have a casefor arguing it, should you choose!). Technically, something is deemed work for hire ifyou created it while at a job which demands you be there full-time. Working fromhome, on a small project is not.

You might think, Whats the big deal? Well, if your client wants to retain full own-ership and copyrights of the work, they need to pay a premium! Think of the differ-ence of royalty-free stock photography versus rights-managed or full ownership.Owning the full-rights costs a lot of money. Also, most of us will want to include thepiece in our portfolios, so taking that away comes with a price, too.

Never Do Spec Work

Working on speculation (Do a home page design for me, and if we like it, well payyou.) is a terrible idea. Other people have said it better, so we will not go into a lot ofdetail here. If you would like a full rundown on the numerous reasons that spec workis bad for you and the industry overall, then go to No!Spec and read why its so bad.

Dont Give Up Passwords or Files Until Youre Paid

Lets look at it this way. The client has seen the flattened artwork and knows howthings look and that youve spent the time on their project. At this point, it makes nosense for them to worry about you not delivering on the final product. You just wantto be paid. If you turn over the files before you get paid, the client has nothing moreto gain by paying you. Youre just hoping that they end up being honest

It is usually in your best interest to keep yourself password protected. Image by Szilard Mi-haly

Make sure the client knows this up-front. Its unfair to make it a surprise if they havea tight schedule to keep. The least amount of surprises in the end tends to work out ineveryones favor. So include this in the contract, and be sure to highlight this pointonce or twice when initial talks are beginning. The internet is full of freelance storieswhere the designer failed to put their foot down about this, and they ended up wait-ing months to get paidif they were paid at all.

Note: There might be some who would argue you shouldnt give up layered PSDs tothe client. Thats a separate discussion. For web design, when youre working withother developers, you kind of have to.

Write Down Your Policies

It may seem trivial, but for some reason, if you say, Its my policy and you haveshown this to them in the beginning, people will argue with you less. If its a policy,people just accept it. Not entirely sure why this works, but it has often come in handyand proven itself as a worthwhile course of action for freelancers.

In Conclusion

Being assertive is not being mean. Its having rules and standards and ways of doingbusiness, and then sticking to them. Its drawing clear lines and boundaries and mak-ing sure everybody is on the same page. Its making sure you dont get bulliedaround by a bad client. Ultimately, clients will respect your ability to manage yourbusiness and theyll come back for more.

What are your thoughts on ways to effectively assert yourself with clients? Leave usyour two cents and personal experiences in the comment section below.

About the Author

Tevi Hirschhorn is a veteran web designer with more than 10 years of pro-fessional experience. He is Art Director at liQuidprint, and operates hisfreelance web design and consulting business on the side asHeadlinerCreative, in Chicago

Homepage

Comments and Discussions