photo credit: Extra Ketchup

Until just recently, I had gotten into the bad habit of using my inbox as the storage location for customer change requests. Until I completed all the items mentioned in an email from a client, I just left it in my inbox. (It’s especially tempting when the email has an attachment that’s relevant to the change.)

Every time management guru I’ve ever heard of agrees this is bad. I ended up spending a ton of time rereading all of those emails throughout the day, even when I’m not ready to sit down and work on them.

A far better approach is to use a change request log. It makes it very easy to keep a lot of information organized. I also love being able to look at a complete list in one place of all the things that need to be done to get a site finished.

Tracking Client Change Requests

photo credit: Extra Ketchup

My emphasis has shifted to more of a product-based business model since July of 2006, but there is still some very good points in this post. The idea of growing large customers is really based on the model of being a service-oriented web developer.

The advantage is that you get to develop relationships with your customers who are going to come to you with new projects they need done. You spend less time selling yourself to new customers and more time developing.

Growing Little Customers Into Big Customers

photo credit: fill3r

With most of my clients, I develop their site on my web server. We’ll go back and forth through all the iterations of changes there. When it’s complete, then I move it over to their production server. 95% of the time, this works fine. I recently came across a situation, though, where a client had their website hosted with a company that did not support MySQL (my database of choice). Since I had built a CMS for them, this was a problem.

Everything was eventually worked out, but it did require some emails and phone calls back and forth to get to a resolution. The process of moving the finished site from the development server to the production server normally takes just a few hours, but in this case it took more than a week.

In hindsight, I could have easily gotten the ball rolling on verifying that MySQL would be available at the beginning of the development process. Then these issues could have been taken care of at the same time the programming and design was happening. It just didn’t occur to me because how often do you run into a situation where a web host doesn’t have MySQL already implemented? For two years it had never been an issue, but in the past few weeks it has come up three times. Most large hosting companies provide packages with MySQL, but some of the local hosting providers here in Indianapolis don’t.

The solution to avoid this in the future is to make sure that I include in my original quote that the site will need to run on a server that has PHP and MySQL. I did this when I first started my business, but kind of got out of the habit because it just didn’t seem to be necessary. If I start applying that practice again consistently with every customer, that will get the conversation about hosting requirements started. My customers (and I) won’t have any unpleasant surprises when it comes time to go live with the site.

photo credit: tonystl

In the past year and a half, I’ve done a fair amount of web work for a local marketing company, Silver Square. For a variety of reasons (foremost the quality of the people there) the organization is growing at a healthly clip. So much so that they are looking to bring someone internal onboard to work on their web stuff. What does this mean for me? And in a more general sense, what does it mean for any freelancer who finds one of their biggest clients looking to bring the work that you do in house.

What Just Happened?

Your first step should be to put yourself in their shoes and try to figure out why they are looking to make a change. Depending on what you charge, maybe hiring someone is less expensive. Maybe they don’t want to (or can’t afford to) wait in line behind your other clients. Maybe there’s a personality conflict. You and I both know how awesome you are, but there’s always going to be someone out there who’s blind to your greatness.

In the case of Silver Square, I think they have grown to the point where there is just that much work that needs to be done. It’s going to take a full-time person to get it all done. And while I give them a pretty substantial discount because of the steady stream of work they send my way, I’m still not the cheapest web developer in town.

What Will Happen?

The story can go two ways. One option is that you end your working relationship with your big client. There may be bits and pieces of work in the immediate future, but it will probably dry up as the new hire becomes acclimated to the new position. This means a loss of income to you, the freelancer, but you could look at is as more time to spend with your other clients.

If you have a good relationship with your big client, they may see you as a possibility to fill the new internal position. On the positive side, you probably have a relatively good idea what the company culture is like. You’re probably intimately familiar with some of the sites you will be working on. More so than other new jobs, you have a pretty good idea what to expect. You’ll be able to hit the ground running, and get comfortable in your new job in short order.

The downside is that you will most likely be giving up freelancing and all your other clients and projects. Some people may not consider that a downside. I’m sure some freelancers are doing it strictly as a means of looking for a better deal. This situation could be your exit strategy from the headaches of running your own business.

What’s Happening Right Now?

In my case, I’m dipping my toe in the water. I’m spending a few days this month on site at the Silver Square office. While I’ve worked with them for a long time, that was always from my home or my office. This experiment gives me a chance to see what it would feel like to become an official employee. If you think this seems like a very pleasant chance, evaluating a job opportunity before I would have to sever all ties to my current revenue stream… well,I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s only possible because I have established a good relationship with Silver Square.

When your top client is ready for a full-time employee to replace your freelancing work, will you be in the running?

You have a lot of information locked up in your skull. Think about it. How often do you come across a web site and think to yourself the person in charge of this could make it 500% better if they just made a few simple changes? That’s unique information that you have and they don’t. It’s valuable. You should give it to them for free.

“What?!” you may be thinking. “I’m trying to make money here. If it’s valuable, I want to charge something for it.” Oh, I see. You got into the freelance web development business because you are a four star salesperson that could sell investment tips to Donald Trump. You feel entirely at home convincing a total stranger to hand you half of his or her annual marketing budget. Interesting.

I, for one, am not particularly gifted at sales. I can’t sweep into the room in a flourish of handshakes and toothy grins, regaling my potential customer with epic tales of my design and programming feats. I sort of walk in, ask questions about their business, and answer questions they have about mine. Any sales coach worth their salt would classify me as a hopeless underachiever when it comes time to make a pitch.

So I need all the help I can get. In the unlikely even that I could convince someone to pay me for a few tips on improving their site, what would that be worth? A hundred bucks? Two hundred, maybe? (By the way if you can convince someone to pay higher than that for just sitting down and talking to them about their site for an hour, you are a fantastic salesman who has no business reading this post. Please contact me about a guest author piece.)

Let’s examine what happens if I just give that information away. I tell them a few things to improve their site. In some cases my words will fall on deaf ears, but in some cases they will listen. If they implement the changes, they will see positive results. That makes me look really smart. The next time they need to make changes to their web site, they are going to come to me.

Think about that for a second. I’m not cold calling. I’m not asking them for business with my hat in my hand. They are coming to me because they view me as a knowledgeable expert. Do you think my ego gets a kick out of that? It’s not always a quick strategy, but it does make your sales process easier and, dare I say, enjoyable.

Now I’m not saying you should start emailing total strangers with a laundry list of things that are wrong with their web site. You won’t make any friends, and you’ll probably make a few enemies. This is really only something you can do when you already have a dialogue with someone. But it’s a very good way to turn casual acquaintances into future customers who will also tell their friends about how smart and pleasant to work with you are.

Don’t hoard your wisdom. It will do a lot more for you when you give it to others freely. (Hint: this also applies outside the world of business.)

When I was first starting this company, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I had the technical chops to build web sites, but I didn’t know much about running a business. Sales? Budgeting? I was just proud that I had completed the paperwork so that the state of Indiana recognized me as a business.

Since I wasn’t sure how to proceed, I wanted to know what my competition was doing. I checked out the web sites of some of the other web development companies in Indianapolis. They all had huge portfolios. I figured they all must have been in business for 20 years with at least that many employees. I felt tiny. If I wanted to compete with these guys and gals, I was going to need to puff my chest out and convince potential customers that I was just as big.

Nowhere was my insecurity more obvious than the copy that I wrote on my web site:

• We have extensive experience with…
• Contact us for an estimate…
• Our team is dedicated…

I was just one guy with a computer working out of a spare bedroom of my house. I assumed no one would want to do business with that guy, though.

Fast-forward a year and a half. My business has grown to the point where it isn’t just me anymore. I actually have an employee now. I can honestly use “we”, “us”, and “our team” in my marketing copy these days. Interestingly enough, though, I now focus on how small I am when I talk to potential customers. I use the words “I” and “me” when describing what my business has to offer.

My customers aren’t dealing with a giant organization that has complex processes and bureaucratic hoops to jump through. (Isn’t that what I was trying to get away from when I struck out on my own?) I am agile. I am flexible. I am easy to work with. I am accessible. Do business with me.

One of the most difficult and valuable things to create on a web site is original content that is regularly updated. You can design a stylized layout that will draw visitors in, but if there isn’t relevant content that is regularly updated, visitors aren’t going to stay long. Yet most business owners did not start their business with the intent of becoming web authors. So most are resistant to the idea of committing to the ongoing task of creating content for the site. After all, how are they supposed to find time for that in the midst of running a business?

For the few clients you work with who do decide they are willing to write regularly, you can help them get the most out of that effort. The word blog gets thrown around a lot today, but what is it really? It’s a just a series of dated articles. Those can be announcements, product updates, specials, or just about anything. It’s just words and sometimes pictures.

What’s a newsletter? It’s also words and pictures with a date attached. They just get emailed instead of sitting on a web page. If you’ve got a client that is willing to do either a newsletter or a blog, you can get more out of that original content by doing both. The hard part is already done. The client created the information. (Or paid someone else to write it.) Providing another channel to disseminate that information is going to help them get the most benefit for the time invested.

It’s probably not the best idea to duplicate the content exactly. Maybe the newsletter just has a few lines and a link to the best blog posts that have been written recently. The point is to help your clients get original content out to their customers via as many channels as you can.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed I was running low on business cards. When I first started my business, I threw together a simple card design and went with the cheapest printer I could find on the Internet. (VistaPrint is what I found, if you’re curious.) My business has grown quite a bit since I started out of the gates. I felt like now was the time to consider a higher quality printing job.

I ended up working with a local company. (Rowland Printing, again for the curious.) The experience was totally different. With VistaPrint I had to do most of the legwork. I followed their instructions on formatting my design to meet their specifications. I spent far too long doing minor tweaks that probably would have taken a professional a few minutes. With Rowland on the other hand, I sent them a file that had my design. They sent me back a file that had been formatted appropriately and asked if that’s what I meant.

The whole experience was delightful for me as the customer. Now VistaPrint offers a very good service at what seems to me to be a good price, but I’ll be working with my local company in the future. I’m willing to pay more money because it required so little effort on my part to get the result that I wanted. If you wish you were making more money, a good question to ask yourself might be, “How easy am I to work with?”

If you stay in business for very long, there’s going to come a time when you outgrow some of your previous customers. As your business develops, you will begin to notice that certain types of work and certain clients are more profitable, rewarding, or in some other way more desirable. When your days begin filling up with more of these ideal projects, you’ll reach a point where you have to let some old customers go.

Disagree? Maybe your plan is to hire another employee whenever you come up against the edge of your work capacity. I can’t say that approach wouldn’t be successful. I do imagine it could be very difficult. When you hire your first employee, you don’t double your work capacity. A lot of time is now spent communicating. Before you just had to have you and your customer on the same page. Now you’ve added a third person that needs to understand and agree with how the project is handled.

Everyone probably has a different threshold of what point they will feel the need to turn old customers away. Let’s assume, though, that everyone can agree that such a point exists. So how do you do it?

Some of my clients have already been through this. Their last web developer outgrew them before they came to me. In some cases it was a very frustrating and discouraging process for them. My customers are the lifeblood of my business, and I am very grateful that they allow me to create web sites every day and make a living. So I want to do right by them.

I think an important courtesy is to give them advanced warning (if you can). Nobody likes to be blind-sided. If you can tell your customers that your business is going to be transitioning over the coming months into larger projects, they have time to plan. In fact you may even be able to convert some of those relationships into ones that works better for you. Maybe instead of calling you every few weeks with a handful of minor changes, you can ask your customers to combine all of their requests into a major revision every 6 months. This won’t work for all of your customers, but some of them may embrace the idea.

For those customers that simply can’t line up with the direction you’re moving, the best thing you can do is suggest a replacement. I don’t mean picking the name of a web developer out of the phone book. Find a developer that you have had a conversation with and trust to take over these relationships. You’re far more qualified than most of your customers to determine if another developer has the chops to pick up where you left off. One of their biggest fears when you leave is that they won’t be able to find someone to fill your shoes, so help them. They will love you for it and remember you when they have larger web projects down the road.

What is an e-card, though? It’s just an email – or usually an email with a link to a web page. Why not create a new page on your web site that is a custom holiday card for your clients? It doesn’t take much programming for each of your clients to see a personalized message. This works for Christmas, birthdays, or any other day that’s worth celebrating. Since it is “home made” it has some of the charm and thought that a generic e-card lacks.

1. You save on postage and printing costs
2. You bring customers back to your web site to see what’s new.
3. You provide a sample of a project that customers could use on their own sites.