8 Tips for Building and Maintaining Client Relationships to Get More Jobs
Becoming a successful freelancer depends not only on the skills you offer but also on how you present yourself to your clients and make a strong bond with your clients.
Why strong client relationship is important?
Building and maintaining strong client relationships is more important for your freelance career because freelancers who develop a strong relationship with their clients are most likely to receive multiple jobs from the same clients. Previous working relationships and referrals are still the top way freelancers find jobs in today’s marketplace.
Don't need to rely on gaining new clients to get more projects, your existing clients will easily re-engage with you for their future projects, once they believing in you and know that you are dependable and can successfully perform the tasks required for a project. So, build a strong relationship with your clients, earn their trust, and re-engaging with them to save time and money.
How to build and maintain client relationship
Here are 8 tips that will help you build strong relationships with hiring managers and get more jobs.
Get to know your client first
The first step in establishing any long-lasting client relationship is to learn about your client first, try to find out how your client works and their business models, practices, and goals. Because every client has different needs, and goals so it’s important to take the time to get to know them before start working on your first project.
When you make contact with a client, do your research on the following points:
- Why they are hiring you?
- What are their business goals?
- What’s their preferred work style?
- Which market is your client trying to compete in?
- What do they do and how do they do it?
- Seek out their frustration and limitation.
Do all the research possible on your client and their business, getting to know them and their working style organically. The more you know about your client the more you can tailor your service to their needs.
Additionally, make the effort to know your client on a personal level, and find out information that has nothing to do with work, such as their interests are. Or, send information to them that is related to their interests.
Be honest
Honesty is an important part of building a long-lasting relationship with your hiring manager.
Being honest with your clients is important to gain their loyalty, earn their trust. By showing your honesty, you will get positive experiences and have more close contact with clients. If you mislead your clients, you will begin to lose your credibility and clients' trust. It is next to impossible to retain a client who doesn’t trust you.
Whenever you engage with a new client, always try to establish a level of trust from the first conversation, and give a higher level of attention and support.
If you don’t have expertise in doing a particular task, you should say so. But go one step ahead and say that you would be more than willing to learn and do your best. If you show your willingness to learn new things based on the business requirement will ultimately make you more valuable assets for the organization.
Respect Client’s Time
Time is precious…
If your clients have needs, wants, or questions they deserve to be responded to promptly. And your client's time is valuable, as is your own, set clear, consistent timelines for meetings, deliverables, and other project elements. Communicate if timelines will change.
Every client wants to know what’s going on, but they don’t have time to constantly track you down to understand what’s happening. You are responsible to tell your client as much as you can as regularly as you can and update them about what’s going on.
Communicate, communicate, communicate…
Be a good stellar communicator is important for standard jobs, but it becomes even more important for remote workers. Effective communication makes a huge difference with not just you and your work, however, you look.
“Communication can be so important and sweet that you have to be super-friendly.”
As a remote worker, strong communication is essential if you want to build a long-lasting and prosperous relationship with clients. Clients feel comfortable if you establish a more open or consistent line of communication with your clients, and provide multiple ways to get in touch with you. In short, improving your communication through availability can go a long way toward improving your relationships with your clients.
Remember that always listen and talk about them and their needs, not yours. This action tells your client that you value them and their opinions, and needs. It helps the client to understand that you are the one who keeps him/her happy and satisfied.
Set and manage realistic expectations
Being clear about your expectation and limitation from the start is the best way to develop respectful, healthy, long-lasting relationships.
Always follow what you say you are going to do, and deliver what you promise. If you say you deliver the work in 5 hours, that’s the reference point client will measure you against. If you don’t provide a reference point by setting client expectations then the client will search out their reference point, and evaluation becomes difficult to provide service within client expectations.
If you exceed your client's expectation for service, timeline, and delivery then provide realistic timeframes and work to deliver the project as quickly as possible. Because, manage client expectations are a well-known psychological tool that helps your clients to calculate the quality of your service, and they will see your service is reliable, capable, and organized for their business or not.
Some expectations you need to agree on before start working together including rates and pricing, project timelines, milestones, and limitations.
Embrace your role as the expert
As an independent professional, you have to show yourself to be exceptionally qualified and self-assured in your domain. Provide a clear and consistent answer to your client’s query.
As an expert, apply your expertise in each task for your clients will help instill a sense of trust and respect. If you can deliver a project early is a great way to achieve a client’s trust.
You will gain more trust just use your knowledge and apply your expertise to a wider range of problems and give them extra good service and go above and beyond their expectation. Sometimes you have to show your expertness outside of the scope of work. This effort will be rewarded not only client impressed but you may also open the door for new and different opportunities to work together.
Admit your mistakes and showing a solution
In a professional workplace, when you do something wrong you have to front up, acknowledge your mistakes without excessive guilt. If you admit your mistake and take steps to correct it clients will start believing in you because of your honesty and you save from losing your reputation.
Everyone makes mistakes, but if you hiding your mistakes and arguing with or blaming others will only make thing worst. Hiding a mistake may seem more comfortable than accept, but within yourself, you feel uncomfortable.
“If you admit your mistake with confidence, you can earn the client’s respect.”
Admitting your mistake is never easy. It needs considerable power and encouragement. If you avoid making a lame excuse and own your mistakes. This shows your clients that you’re open, accountable, and trustworthy. And it will help to build the foundation for a long-lasting client relationship.
Use project management tools to deliver quality work
Professionally deliver a project is a key to making a positive impression on clients. Project management tools help you to deliver your work professionally from start to end, such as project reports, client reports, contracts, and professional invoices.
Toogit project management tool is perfect for freelancers, it helps freelancers to increase the level of professionalism and their business skills as well as provide transparency and easy project tracking.
Now that you know how to build and maintain client relationships, go one step ahead and find your dream projects on Toogit, and give a kick-start to your freelance career.
Last Modified: Oct 12, 2021