Jake Poinier's Blog Member of the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors

Don’t Feel Obligated to Give an Off-the-Cuff Estimate – with 1 Exception

You don’t have to be in business very long before you’ll have a conversation like this:

Prospective client: “What do you charge for X?”

You: “Honestly, it depends on how many words/pages X is.”

Prospective client: “Well, we’re not really sure yet. Can you just give me a ballpark number on what you usually charge for X?”

You: “I’d be able to give you a much more accurate estimate with additional information. Do you have time to answer a couple of questions?”

Prospective client: “Well, we’re still really early in the process and trying to figure out our budget. If you can provide me a basic number, I can take that back to the team.”

It’s a bit like an improv comedy skit, but unfortunately, it’s never funny. At the risk of seeming evasive, you really should never feel obligated to give an off-the-cuff estimate over the phone. If you do, there are three primary negative outcomes and a ton of permutations:

  • You tell prospects a number that’s too low—and then they’re shocked when they get the actual, much higher “real” estimate later on, once you’ve calculated the scope of work.
  • You give them a number that’s too low—and they want you to stick to it, as if you signed some sort of magical contractual agreement.
  • You provide a number that would be too high for the actual project parameters—and you scare off them off without a chance to understand their needs and come to mutually agreeable terms.

Sure, you might happen to guess a number that works for the client, gets you the job, and results in a lucrative project. The odds are heavily against this, however, and it’s generally not worth the risk. You have no written documentation, just a verbal offer: the weakest, least persuasive position to be in. An estimate based on fuzzy information can be hazardous to both your business and your sanity. And there’s no way to price the latter.

What’s the Exception to the Rule?

If an existing client—one you have an excellent relationship with and have done multiple jobs for—asks you to give an over-the-phone quickie quote, there’s no reason to be coy. This individual knows you are an honest businessperson, and he or she is just trying to get some information based on limited facts, not trying to trick you into saying something you’ll regret later.

Even so, you’ll still want to provide a conservative range and offer a disclaimer that you’ll need more information to estimate accurately: “Sara, those types of projects generally run from $900 to $1,400, but as you know it’s going to depend on how long the actual document is, how many interviews I need to do and other factors. Sounds like a great opportunity, so please let me know when you have the details and I’ll turn around a more accurate bid the same day.”

This post was adapted from Jake Poinier’s The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid, available on Amazon.

Stick with Your System

About a month ago, I secured a ghostwriting job with one of my favorite all-time clients. Let’s call him Greg. After years of running marketing and ad agencies, Greg made a shift in 2020 into a consulting practice for small and medium businesses. The goal of the book is to help popularize the system he’s created, so that entrepreneurs can either implement it themselves or hire him to manage the process.

At some point during one of our interviews, the conversation turned to pricing. It’s my favorite business topic, and one that I’ve written about extensively, including my own book, The Science, Art and Voodoo of Freelance Pricing and Getting Paid.

My go-to strategy, particularly for complex projects, is to use an estimated range: The lower end is what I’d calculate as a firm project bid, but then I also have a higher end that allows for a process that requires more work than I realized without having to renegotiate. As a side benefit, it incentivizes the client to be easy to work with, since they know they can save money if everything goes smoothly.

But when I estimated Greg’s project, I didn’t use a range—and he asked me why. Looking back, I’m not sure why I didn’t.

I suppose it was because I’ve worked with him so long that we have lots of trust and value each other and the relationship. Maybe I was so focused on details in the scope of work that I was too confident in my numbers. If the project runs longer than expected, however, or if the book comes in 40 pages longer than we discussed, he’s not going to quibble about the cost. He pays very well and promptly, and has always had my back.

Still, it’s nagging at me that I made a rookie mistake.

The takeaway for me is that you need to stick with your system. It’s a key message in Greg’s book, and apparently one that I needed to be reminded of.

***

Photo credit: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

How referrals motivate prospective freelance clients

You’ve undoubtedly heard of the five emotional drivers of sales, or one of the variations on the theme. Legendary copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis’s list included fear, greed, exclusivity, guilt, and need for approval. Referrals actually check two of the boxes.

When you position yourself as a referral-based business, that conveys a valuable message to prospective clients. For example, one of the most successful doctors I know only takes new patients who are referred by existing patients. Without saying it directly, he’s conveying that there’s so much demand for his services that he won’t take on just anyone. He can be choosy, and he knows that his existing patients will be judicious about who they refer, lest they jeopardize their own relationship.

In our case as freelancers, referrals also provide pricing leverage during any negotiations, since the potential client knows—again, without needing to say it directly—that a project needs to be something that meets your high standards and they might have to be patient about getting into your queue. Interestingly enough, that illusive quality can also increase the prospect’s desire to work with you: It’s human nature to want what you can’t have.

The second applicable motivating factor is need for approval. In a service business, it’s not quite the same as someone running out to get the newest Tesla or iPhone, but the principle is similar. When a referrer tells a colleague “Hey, I’ve got the perfect (writer/editor/designer/etc.) for you,” the likelihood is that they’re at least going to contact you—because they know the referrer will eventually ask if they ever acted on the recommendation.

Once you position yourself as a freelancer who’s successful through word of mouth, that’s how your network will start to think about you—and that’s how they’ll talk to others in their network. And of course, just because you market yourself as referral based doesn’t mean you can’t take on business that isn’t referred.

Join NAIWE for Referrals Training

Registration and details: “Revving Up Your Referrals”
Date: January 26, 2022
Time: 2:00 pm Eastern

Test your website forms or you could be losing freelance business

I run three different websites with slightly different WordPress themes: my customer-facing portfolio, my freelancer-facing Dr. Freelance blog, and my publishing company for books about freelancing. Unfortunately, that also means three sets of plugins and versions to keep updated, and three dumpsters of spam to empty on the regular. The reason for this blog post today isn’t to whine about maintenance, though. It’s a reminder about one other critical aspect that it’s easy to overlook: test your website forms. And the reason for that reminder is because I don’t want you to do what I did: losing a piece of potential freelance business because I failed to test mine!

An author whose book I’d edited last summer sent me a note to expect a referral. I waited about 2 weeks, because the ball was in the new refer-ee’s court, then finally dropped him a line to find out the status.

He responded, “Thanks, but I didn’t hear back from you, so I went with another editor.” Ugh.

Lesson Learned: Website Forms Need TLC Too

It turned out that he had attempted to send me a message through one of my website forms rather than to my email. Sure enough, I tested the form. Despite the cheerful “Thanks! Message sent successfully” response generated, the message itself had disappeared into the internet ether, never to land in my inbox.

I was bummed, but wrote him a nice note saying that I hoped we could work together on a future project. Then, I set about trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my form plugin, Contact Form 7. I knew the problem had occurred after an update to my WordPress theme. Even though I also updated the web form plugin at the same time, there was a setting—deep in the cobwebs of GoDaddy—that was preventing it from sending due to a conflict with Office 365. Basically, the default is to use the “local email exchanger,” and it needed to be set to “Remote Email Exchanger.” (If you’re struggling with the same issue, further details here: Contact Form 7 emails won’t send to Office 365.)

After a few hours of incredibly frustrating troubleshooting and a 5-minute call to GoDaddy tech support, my problem was solved. More important, a new item was added to my regularly scheduled maintenance: test my website forms.

In a Pricing Rut? Try These 3 Strategies

pricing rutIf you want a truly profitable freelance business, pricing and estimating aren’t just a matter of crunching the numbers on your hourly rate or looking up the ranges on an industry association website. We’re accustomed to putting most of our energy into creativity for our writing, editing, and design clients—but when was the last time you devoted some brainpower towards freshening up your pricing methodology?

Different prices for different clients. I recognize that there are freelancers who price everything the same, whether the hourly rate or the calculation for a firm quote. (I won’t argue if that’s what works for their businesses. It’s certainly the simplest route.) Unless you have a truly uniform clientele, however, you’re likely leaving money on the table. To cite an extreme example, it doesn’t really make sense to charge a lawyer or Fortune 500 company the same rate as a local animal shelter. But the principle is also applicable to situations when you can detect that a client is going to be high maintenance with meetings, phone calls, etc.

Seek out other resources. If you’re depending on industry rate sheets and surveys as your primary basis for pricing, you’re overlooking one of the best resources around: solid networking with people who use freelance services, but aren’t necessarily a client. Think graphic designers, marketing and advertising folks, web firms, magazine editors, and even freelancers who subcontract. Caution: This isn’t a shotgun cold-call situation; it needs to be people who you have a relationship with. (And if you don’t have cross-industry relationships, put that on your to-do list!)

Always be experimenting. It’s easy to imagine that an annual price increase is sufficient. While that’s a good start, it’s worth trying different strategies with how you present estimates. One example would be what I call the car sales approach—give the client low, medium, and high options, with additional bells and whistles as the price goes up. My favorite is to provide an estimated range rather than a firm price. That gives you more negotiating wiggle room—and it also encourages clients to go easy on the phone calls and rounds of revisions in order to keep their invoice down.

I’ll be discussing these strategies in more detail—and lots more about pricing and estimating—at the “Gateway to Success,” the 14th annual “Be a Better Freelancer”® conference, October 11–13, in St. Louis. Hope to see you there!

 

When Creating New Client Estimates, Think Small

Don’t be fooled—I’m not referring to the price tag being small. What I’m saying is that the more granularity the better when compiling your estimate for services, particularly for a first-time client or someone who hasn’t worked with freelancers before:

There are three primary reasons for being detailed in an estimate:

  1. Showing significant detail indicates that you listened intently to the client’s request and understood all the nuances. Essentially, you’re repeating back to them what they told you—communicating that you’re on the same page. From a visual perspective, a comprehensive estimate conveys more authority. (Think of how you perceive estimates on, say, automobile repairs—even if you don’t understand what all the line items mean.)
  2. If the client wants to negotiate, a detailed estimate gives you a lot more wiggle room to take out specific tasks rather than just decreasing your price.
  3. Finally, having a formal list of work-product tasks in your estimate and agreement/contract puts you on much firmer ground if your client is inclined toward scope creep. You can (politely!) point to the document to say “that’s outside our scope, here are the ramifications.”

Following the rule of “the newer the client, the more detail is required” is guaranteed to save you headaches. As time goes on and I develop a strong, trusting relationship with a client, it becomes less necessary to give quite as much detail, particularly if projects are somewhat obvious.

Improving Your Vision

I attended an academically rigorous high school, where As were hard to come by. My senior year, I taped a handwritten note above my desk that simply said HONOR ROLL. It was a constant reminder of what I wanted to achieve.

Truth be told, I missed the honor roll by one letter grade in the final term. Still, it was the closest I’d ever come to making it…and I was confident that putting my goal in writing (and in a place I couldn’t ignore) had pushed me psychologically.

Fast forward to life in the working world. During my early career in magazines, the goals weren’t of my choosing, but they were clear: Brainstorm the topics, assign the articles, hound the writers, edit the copy, get it into the art department’s hands, and stay up late gorging on pizza when it was closing week and we had to send everything to the printer. Rinse, repeat.

Putting Your Goals in a Place They Can’t Be Ignored

As freelancers, it’s on us to determine our goals. At least once a year, I’ll sit down at a local coffee shop for a few hours and write down an unedited list of things I want to achieve over the near and long term. But I made a mistake two years ago: I left the list inside a notebook, which I filed and forgot about for months.

If I’m honest with myself, it’s probably because it’s a bit overwhelming—and maybe counterproductive—to look every day at a piece of paper with 50 or more handwritten goals on it. That’s where a vision board comes in. Much like my honor roll reminder way back when, being able to glance at a poster board helps with inspiration. (If you’re interested in some great info about vision boards, I highly recommend Christine Kane’s process.) For me, it’s an extra step toward keeping the big picture, quite literally, right in front of me.

Obviously, a vision board doesn’t solve everything. You also have to create systems for your freelance business, a broader topic for another day. Nonetheless, for a daily reminder of why I’m doing what I’m doing, investing in a poster board, some magazines, and a glue stick pays significant mental dividends—especially since a vision board is far too big to tuck away and forget!

On a business note: I’m truly looking forward to my stint on the NAIWE Board of Experts and talking shop with fellow freelancers. If you have freelance topics you want me to address in my upcoming blog posts, articles, or webinars, please share them in the comments. You can also ping me on Twitter: @DrFreelance

Here’s to a fantastic, prosperous 2019—whatever your vision is!

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

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