For most freelancers, achieving success in business largely depends on establishing strong, long-lasting relationships with customers. This allows you to really devote yourself to work. But how do you achieve this? Do you have a solution for that?
Maybe you are happy with your existing collaboration with yourcustomers, or maybe you are wondering how to build them? At the very beginning you should know why these relationships are so important.
As a freelancer, you should know perfectly well that income instability is the biggest problem you have to face. The work of a freelancer has a lot of advantages. It is associated with independence and freedom, but unlike the employment contract, there is definitely no stability here. So it is worth building a strong, lasting relationship with the best customers to ensure a steady income. You will then feel safe, knowing that every month you can count on a stable pay-out.
Having regular customers certainly means building trust with them and the potential companies, with which you can establish cooperation in the future. Any employer probably prefers a freelancer who has been working with the same brands for years from a person who has a number of one-time contracts to his account. Building a long-term relationship means you are a trustworthy partner, worth working with.
Working with the same clients is also a great way to increase the overall number of orders. Customers who trust and value working with you are likely to recommend your services to other business owners. Moreover, many entrepreneurs are afraid of starting cooperation with completely unknown freelancers.
The key to success is diligent work. In fact, you never know if a contract would continue in the future, or whether it would be a one-off project. So you have to commit yourself to each task. Perhaps the customer will see the pros of long-term cooperation with you and will continue it.
If your work is diligent, you will show your customers that you are a trustworthy associate. Show that you are executing orders on time according to the agreed schedule and requirements. Then, the customer will return to you in the future and will not look for another freelancer.
Of course, you probably have no doubt that doing your job properly and building relationships with customers are closely related. So you have to be precise, reliable and trustworthy in your work.
You can build trust in many ways. Respond quickly to emails, be professional, and use the right tools for copywriters. A great example is “Klamp”, a system that mediates the contact between the freelancer and his clients. As a result, the client can monitor the execution ofa given order or project, as well as formulate additional tasks. This will naturally build up the trust of your customers.
Certainly, an effective way to build lasting, strong relationships with customersis to determine what they can expect from you in a closer unspecified future. Most companies decide to work with a freelancer because they do not have the knowledge in a particular field and do not know how to do the job. You should therefore be able to provide your expertise on specific aspects of your business that arise outside your actual project.
If you are tasked with doing a company's website because you are a developer, you should explain what are the advantages of expanding the website and offer services in this regard as well. You need to know to what extent you can be helpful.
It turns out that it does not have to be difficult to build and maintain a lasting relationship with customers. Over time, this will turn out to be natural and you will provide yourself with many regular customers. You will not have to spend so much time searching for new contacts.
The most important aspect in this case is definitely communication. Regularity in this area is the best way to build trust between the two sides. It is important to the extent that without trust there will never be a successful cooperation.