All Freelance Work is a Community for Freelance Workers Including Free Portfolios, Job Search, Job Posting, Helpful Articles, Forums, & More for the Self Employed.
Home > Articles > Freelance 101 > Client Relationships and Client Retention
HOME BASED & SMALL BUSINESS ARTICLES: CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS & CUSTOMER RETENTION
How to Know When it is Okay to Turn Down Potential Freelance Business - You don't always have to say 'Yes' to taking on a new project...read this article to find out when it is okay to back out of a job.
Hey Career Professionals : How to Stand Out on Social Networking Sites Online - Social networking has seen significant growth over the last few years, particularly amongst professionals who are interested in making the most out of the opportunities available for meeting others in their career field.
Working With Clients As A Freelancer - Here are some tips to make working with customers easier so that your freelance business can run smoothly.
Should You Do Graphic Design Work on Spec? - It starts off simple enough. A prospective client calls and says, “Show us a few mock up ideas and we’ll pick which one we like.”
The Free Mockup – Should You Give Them to Customers - In the newspaper biz, we call this an Ad Proof. We supply proofs to customers for a variety of reasons...but should we?
How Do I Find My First Successful Client? - Are you having problems finding your first freelance copywriting customer? This article is for you.
How to Improve Your Communication Skills & Improve Your Chances With Potential Clients - Good Communication Skills are a Needed Asset When Working in a Home Business Dealing with Potential Customers. The Way That You Communicate With Potential Clients Will Translate into Either More or Less Sales, so Make Sure That Your Words are Being Received in the Way That You Intend Them to Be.
=======================
Customers Who Rave About You and Your Services - What You, as a freelancer or home-based business, Must Do In Order to Keep Your Customers Satisfied & Loyal to You and your small business' services
=======================
Simple Steps To Help You Resolve Complaints and Delight Your Customers - Every once in a while all businesses get a customer complaint. And, when they do, some interesting things start to happen. Follow these simple steps to help you resolve customer complaints.
=======================
Keeping Your Cool When The Customer Gets Hot - You're getting the blame because the unhappy person found you first, and it's not pleasant. When faced with angry people, there are four key steps that will help diffuse the situation.
=======================
3 Reasons Why You Better Know Your Customers…Or Else - It is difficult to think you might be turning away potential business. However, our life will be much easier once you've carefully defined your potential customer. And to further convince you, here are 3 reasons.
=======================
Customer Feedback: Everyone has an Opinion - USE IT! - Have you ever been in a department store and known exactly what you were looking for but couldn’t locate any staff to help you find it? Think of your website as your very own department store, and your contact numbers, email addresses, and FAQ’s buttons as your staff. Without these handy interaction tools, your purchaser will get frustrated and E-shop somewhere else.
=======================
Getting Prospects – Keeping Customers - Does it seem like your customer base is drying up into a trickle? It can be very difficult to attract new customers and keep them. We will explore several ways to go after new clientele and keep them coming back for more.
=======================
Giving Customers What They Want - Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell exactly what your customer wanted to buy before they started browsing through your store? Unless you are psychic, this can be almost impossible. However, there are ways to get into your customers heads and see what your business is lacking or how it could improve.
=======================
4 Ways to Get a Prospect's Attention Fast - Here are 4 proven techniques you can use to quickly capture a prospect's attention.
=======================
Tips For Maintaining Client Relationships - While the sales department can be very effective at generating leads and performing a lot of the up-front work that initiates a customer relationship, long term success depends highly on the implementers themselves.
=======================
7 Keys to Building Effective Business Communication Find out how communicate more effectively with your business relationships.
=======================
How to Really Connect With Your Customer - There are a couple of areas that are the most important when it comes to making your voice more credible when writing copy -- style and tone. By improving these two areas, you'll connect with your customer in a much more genuine way.
=======================
Customers: The Key To Successful Marketing - What is the primary reason your customers or clients come to you? Or purchase your product or service? What is the Number One problem you solve for them? Do you know? Are you certain? If you don't, your marketing could be missing the mark, and you could be missing out on sales.
=======================
Stepping Into Your Client’s Shoes - You could be losing tons of customers simply because your website is not up to par with today’s standards and does not properly deliver the valuable sales information that potential customers are looking for.
=======================
Freelancing Writing: When Going Overboard Can Cost You a Client - As editorial professionals, our jobs are to make documents as perfect as possible when it comes to editing, copyediting, writing, etc. However, going overboard can cost you a client, even if your changes are absolutely correct.
Ten Tips for Effective Meetings - Here are ten things that you can do to hold more effective meetings.
=======================
Difficult People - How To Deal With Them - These notes are primarily designed to help deal with difficult people when we have made a mistake. We often have to deal with other people where we have not made a mistake however the people we're dealing with often prove to be difficult and unwilling to accept what we say.
=======================
10 Tips For Long Term Client Retention - Attracting and retaining long-term clients is a powerful strategy for growing your business. Long-term clients are likely to feel more satisfied, are more likely to refer others, and are more likely to purchase additional services from you. The savvy solo professional or small business owner gains big from focusing on these 10 sound strategies for long term client retention.
=======================
Caring for Your Customers - I have many philosophies when dealing with customers, but I definitely do not believe that the customer is always right. However, when the customer is wrong, you must handle the situation delicately.
=======================
A Happy Professional Chooses Clients - Many professionals do not refuse clients out of fear of losing money. However, there is another side to the coin -- the high price of the negative effect of accepting everyone who walks in the door.
=======================
Eight Questions to Ask a Potential Client: Closing B2B Sales When someone interested in your product or service contacts you, closing the sale should be easy, right? They’re interested. They took the initiative. But all too often, for some reason, the sale falls through.
=======================
Building A Business Relationship - Since the majority of your business transactions are online, you’re not out meeting people one-on-one developing business relationships. So you need to focus on building these relationships via the Internet. You need to communicate and establish trust with your customers or business associates, as it is a vital step to your business success.
=======================
How To Calculate the Lifetime Value of A Client The concept of client value requires a bit of guessing and new thinking. Especially for people who are running a new business.
=======================
7 Bits Of Critical Information You Can't Afford NOT To Know About Your Customers It's about really knowing them as individuals, knowing what they mean to your business, and most of all, knowing what you need to do to keep their business.
======================
Mastering Getting And Using Testimonials - Perhaps no single element can perk up the response rate on a web page more than hard-hitting, credible testimonials. They work because somebody other than the seller is telling prospects how great, and useful the product is.
=======================
How to Convert Prospects into Paying Customers Getting lots of enquiries from potential customers is great. It means that you are well known in your chosen market. But all this popularity won’t do you much good if it doesn’t generate sales.
=======================
How To Get the Right Clients and Avoid the Wrong Ones - If you are like most service professionals and small business owners one of your primary concerns is generating as many leads as possible. And that may be your biggest mistake, resulting in wasting time on unqualified prospects and working with to many clients you wish you didn't have to.
=======================
How To Recover Your *Almost Customers* Use these four simple procedures to convert those "almost customers" into paying customers.
=======================
Words Your Customers Want to Hear and They Aren't - There is a different feeling in the air and I look forward to September like a "New Year's" day. Starting fresh, having an open mind and ready to take on new and exciting challenges. I hope you feel like that in your business. If you do, sharpen your pencils and let's look at a grammar lesson that could help you increase your business by just using a few extra words when you speak to your customers.
=======================
Top Ten Strategies for Adding Value and Creating Customer Loyalty - Adding value is key to business success, and these ten strategies will make your customers love you and will keep them coming back for more.
=======================
The Top 10 Ways of Thinking That Will Get You New Clients - Once you adopt a certain MINDSET, you begin attracting new clients. The following will help you develop and sustain the mindset that will have you consistently filling your practice or business with new clients.
======================
What Do Your Customers Really Want? Ask Your Competition Many marketing pieces such as brochures, sales letters, or Web sites include testimonials. I’ve found over the years that this is an untapped source for “customer intelligence.”
=======================
Losing Angry Customers - This article offers five ways to help you deal with angry customers.
=======================
10 Ways to Attract Higher Paying Clients Some people have little difficulty attracting and maintaining clients who have higher discretionary funds to spend for solutions. Others can't get to first base.
=======================
14 Ways To Boost Customer Response In A Tough Economy Today, you must step up your tactics to keep your customers buying and away from the competition next door on the cyberspace highway.
=======================
Communicate The Problem...Get The Client Positioning revolves around your core marketing message that clearly states who you work with, what problems you solve, what solutions you provide, what benefits you offer, what results you produce, what guarantee you give and what is unique and special about your particular service.
=======================
Knowing Your Customers; Closing the Sale Just because your business is based in your home that doesn't mean you can afford to ignore the most important element of your success: sales.
=======================
WHO ARE YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS? AND WHAT DO THEY WANT? the best way to get your new business off to a great start is to create a service that supports a clearly defined and reachable client base
=======================
Get The Inside Scoop on Your Competition
Replacing the simple decoder badge is the Internet: a powerful tool in our discovery of competitor information. Using the simple four-step system outlined in this article, you'll use your detective skills to uncover bits and pieces of vital details=======================
How To Fire a Customer It must be Tax Season. How do I know? I'm swamped with work. And I just fired a client. Again.
=======================
Dealing with Disgruntled Customers Unhappy customers who receive satisfaction can become your biggest allies. The trick, of course, is discovering how to satisfy their needs so efficiently that they'll forget whatever caused their disappointment in the first place.
=======================
When Clients Don't Pay, Pay Late, and other Anomalies of Freelancing It's something that freelance writers don't like to talk about or hear about, but it happens more often than we like to admit.
=======================
Bridging the Chasm from Lead to Loyal Customer It is as ludicrous to expect a potential customer to reach a purchase decision in one step as it would be to expect a Mount Everest adventurer to cross a chasm in one step. So how can you begin to move your potential customers across the purchase chasm?
=======================
How To Know Your Customers In and Out It is common knowledge that customers are the lifeblood of businesses. Let's face it, if you don't have customers, you don't have a business.
=======================
Managing Client Relationships Means Managing the Gap
=======================
Why You Must Build a Client List to Prosper If you run (or plan to run) an online business, it’s especially important that you maintain and add to a customer/prospect list.
=======================
Your Ideal Client - Have you ever had a client/customer that was more trouble than they were worth? Whatever the situation, chances are you had an inkling when you first met that client...a tiny voice that you didn't listen to, that was probably overshadowed by the bigger voice that said, "Hey, it's business; I'll take it!"
=======================
How to Get Your Customers to Respond to Your E-Campaign If you've ever done an e-campaign and received no response, maybe you overlooked one of the top four elements: timeliness, consistency, benefits and a call to action.
=======================
8 Building Blocks to Attracting Customers Are you frustrated by the lack of return from your promotional efforts? It may be that your plan for attracting customers is built on a foundation of sand.
=======================
How To Handle Criticism- The inevitable criticisms that come with the prestige of being called an author could very well be thought as an author's worse nightmare.
=======================
HOW TO SET YOUR FREELANCE RATES - A GUIDE FOR FREELANCERS & CONSULTANTSThere are many factors which business owners must consider on a daily basis as it relates to the running of their business. Things such as how to find good help, where to acquire supplies and how much to pay one’s employees are all pertinent matters which must be addressed. There are a few ways to go about figuring out your rates when it comes to how much to charge the customers.
BlinkList | del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | Netscape | Onlywire | RawSugar | reddit | Spurl | StumbleUpon | Yahoo MyWeb
