As a freelancer, you’ll likely have a good idea of what green flags you look for when prospecting for clients, such as ones who pay their invoices on time, respect your boundaries and are easy to deal with, but what are clients looking for when they hire freelancers?
Most clients have an idea of the outcome they are looking for from hiring you, but what do they expect from your processes? What expectations do they have when it comes to your ways of working, communication or project management skills?
While each freelance business does vary and operate differently, here are 3 things you can do to help you stand out as the obvious choice when clients make hiring decisions.
1. Make contacting you easy
Being able to easily contact you from the get-go is essential if you want to increase your chances of winning business and make a good first impression.
It should be clear from all your marketing materials how potential clients can contact you to get a quote, hop on a call, or whatever is your first point of contact protocol. You may have a pre-call questionnaire that potential clients need to complete to qualify, or you may want to have a quick discovery call first. But whatever your method of contact, it needs to be clear. Otherwise, for example, email messages could go to your spam folder or be lost in social media direct messages, especially if you don’t log into specific social media accounts regularly.
Naturally, your content marketing material will include a call to action (CTA) that explains how best to contact you. Once potential clients have contacted you, be clear as to exactly when you will meet or be in a position to respond, especially if they have asked for a quote.
They’ll likely be reviewing other freelancers, so make sure your process is as smooth and frictionless as possible. Making contact with you easy will help guide the rest of the client onboarding process and make a good first impression.
2. Make sending accurate and timely information easy
In addition to maintaining timely communication, such as project updates, and meeting deadlines throughout a client project, ensuring you send the correct information is equally important.
This is especially the case when sending invoices, so you get paid the right amount and on time for all work completed. That’s where Invoice Ninja’s tasks and projects functionality comes into its own. It allows you to create projects and tasks and track billable work time.
The task time-tracking feature lets you accurately record every second spent on each client’s task. When you’re done, simply click to send your timed work directly to an invoice, no manual data entry needed. Your client receives accurate and timely information, and you get paid! Furthermore, you can easily categorize and search tasks and projects, assign tasks to different account users, integrate your Google/Microsoft calendar, and much more.
A Kanban board gives you a visual overview of every project. Columns and cards can be fully customized to suit your exact workflow so you can plan, update, and analyze information all in one view.
Everything you need to keep projects on track, accurately record billable hours, and send correct, timely, professionally branded invoices.
3. Make paying you easy
In addition to being easy to deal with, upholding professional standards, fostering a healthy client/freelancer relationship, and delivering top-quality work on time, you can also make it easy for clients to pay you.
Invoice Ninja integrates with a wide range of popular online payment providers, and you can even get paid in Bitcoin. This gives you more choice in how you are paid and offers clients more options and convenience. Integrating your Invoice Ninja account with an online payment provider means clients can pay you with one click without leaving their client-side portal.
We also support a wide range of languages and currencies, which can be set per individual client, making Invoice Ninja a global invoicing solution.
Check out the payment gateway options here. All gateways support online payments. Many also support token billing for recurring and auto-billing invoices, making the whole process even more seamless. Try Invoice Ninja for free here.
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