Anyone use any kind of CRM software?
If yes, what do you use?
// @liz_e
@seanuk @Malarkey @sazzy—
Nick Harris (@pixelenvy) February 05, 2014

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is system for tracking what stage your leads/proposals are at in your sales pipeline*. It also helps keep track of what you’ve said to which customer.

(*ok, this is a wanky phrase but, if you don’t think think you have a sales pipeline, and you are billing for work, you must have one in some shape or form!)

There were a few shout outs on Twitter for the apps Highrise (which I’ve used), Salesformics, Daylite & Capsule (looks good) but we’re not going to drill into those in this post because I just want to start by saying what my simple sales process is.

I’d love to hear your comments on this, comments on my/your process or any other thoughts on CRMs (especially some of the apps above). I’ll then put together a separate freelancer CRM app post.

My Process

For years I sort of played around with Highrise because I Like its lightweight, non-prescriptive approach but, over time, I found I just wasn’t kinda doing much with it. And, rather than learn a new, complex bit of CRM software, I decided to knock a quick Google spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheet

My Google spreadsheet is split into several worksheets:

1. Leads
2. Proposals (all)
3. Proposals (open)
4. Projects (all)
5. Projects (open)

Let’s now go through what each of those does.

Leads

If someone has been referred to me for work, or if there is a person or company I’d like to get on the radar of, I’ll add an entry to this worksheet. I’ll make a note of:

• A unique code for this lead (I like codes, it’s the relationalist in me)
• Name / Company
• Status (lost, won, open, stale, dead)
• A short description of current status (e.g. ‘Need to email‘)
• The date it was last updated

Once a week or so I’ll take a look at the OPEN (or STALE) rows and decide whether or not I need to take some action (e.g. call them, send an email etc). If so, I’ll update the row with what I did and modify the date field.

(Note: unlike a proper CRM I suppose I haven’t got a full audit trail of what I did and when, but I’m cool with that)

To be honest, I don’t spend as much time on this worksheet as the ones that follow.

Proposals (All)

Hopefully, as some point, I’ll have warmed my lead up enough to get to the stage where I’ve submitted a proposal.

The ‘Proposals (All)‘ worksheets contains these fields:

• Unique proposal code
• Project code (if/when this turns into a project, see later)
• Client name
• Description of current state
• £ Value

I tend to create proposals a number of different ways depending on the scale of the work, and depending on the client etc. It could be in an email, it might be a PDF, I may have created one in Quote Roller. Either way, I’ll record in the spreadsheet where I can find the original proposal because, if I don’t, you can guarantee I’ll be tearing my hair out months later looking for it.

(Some folks print out key records and put them in a file, I’ve tried that but it just doesn’t work for me very while. Doesn’t feel very digital).

Proposals (Open)

This should be pretty obvious. If the client is still considering the proposal then it’s open. And this worksheet is then important because I tells me that I need to contact these people to find out where they are with it.

Now this is something I chatted to Nick about: when I first started dealing with clients direct, I would be shy in contacting them. Thinking that sending the proposal email was enough to win the work. I probably did this because contacting the potential client felt a bit pushy, a bit salesy (who wants to be that pushy person?).

However, the thing is, your proposal (whilst important to you) is rarely the most important thing to the potential client. They to have a business to run, department to look after etc – your proposal is only one issue in their in-tray. You have to stay in touch with them to make sure your proposal gets the attention it deserves*.

(This is also an saying that there are 7 touch points before making a sale. I dunno if this holds water but people rarely buy things like complex websites without a few steps of interaction.)

Some folks are scared of asking about their proposal in case someone says “no‘, they don’t want it. However, in an odd way, that’s a good response as you can move on; better hear ‘no‘ than nothing at all.

When anything happens, I’ll update this worksheet with when I last spoke to the person and date stamp it. This allows me to quickly scan the list to see who I’ve not spoken to for a while.

Projects (All)

At some stage, clients will agree to some of the open proposals (hurray!). At this stage I take them off “Proposals (Open)” and I create a new entry on the “Projects (All)” worksheet. This sheet contains these fields.

• A unique project code
• The related proposal code (one must exist)
• The client
• Status (OPEN, CLOSED)

I used to add some financial information on this sheet but now I create a project in Free Agent (and I make sure I put the project code in Free Agent as well).

This newly created project code also crops up in Red Booth (which I use to manage projects) and Harvest which I use on & off for time tracking.

Projects (OPEN)

I’ll also make a note of this new project on my ‘Projects (OPEN)‘ worksheet. These are projects which me and my team are working on right now; this is my work in progress.. Typically around 5 to 10 things on here.

Fields on this worksheet include:

• Project code
• Client name
• Brief status (e.g. “Emailed to arrange a meeting w/c Jan 20th“)
• Date last updated

For some projects I also capture certain financial fields :

• Billing total
• Estimated supplier cost (I work with team of freelancers to deliver)
• Monies received (so far from client)
• Difference (function: between ‘billing total’ & ‘estimated supplier cost’)
• Amount still due (function)

This is a killer worksheet for me. This gives me an ‘at a glance‘ view of where my business is and what money is still left on the table.

Note: I do less financial stuff here now since I use FreeAgent’s project facility.

A Quick Recap

This spreadsheet is my birds eye view of where I am in terms of leads, proposals and projects. I also use it to get a feel for how much money is still left on the table (this helps me budget & forecast).

If you’re not doing a sales process already, I hope what I’ve posted here will be of some help to you; please feel free to shout out with any questions.

If you do have a process in place at the moment, I’d love to hear your comments on the above or any info about your process.

Thanks

Joel

p.s. did I mention the conference in Cardiff?

Quick poll for webby people who provide clients with a complete web design & build service, do you provide hosting too?—
Sean Johnson (@seanuk) January 16, 2014

This is a great question and one which I’ve seen crop up time and time again. Everyone has got their own particular angle so here’s my 2p.

Hosting

From day one I decided to host because I liked the idea of recurring revenue. It’s all well and good winning project work but one month you’re working 5 projects and the next you’re doing diddly squat; that’s a lot of peaks and troughs.

My reasoning with hosting client’s sites was that the recurring monthly revenue (I prefer monthly rather than annual) will, given time,  add up to something. And that something can help smooth out the troughs between the peaks.

Did it work out for me? Well yes…and no.

Considerations

If you’re mulling whether hosting is right for you then here’s a few things to chew over:

Have you got the skills?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no server admin but I know my way around a linux box. Editing Apache config files, SSH, restarting, trouble shooting file permissions, getting SSL working, getting MySQL backed up, DNS etc, I can do. So I was happy I had the basics covered.

Many of my client’s sites are hosted at Memset; in particular I like their virtual servers; many folk’s sites are pretty low traffic which means you can fit a lot on one.

My company tends to work a lot on WordPress now and I’ve also been impressed by WP Engine, dedicated hosting just for WordPress with lots of bells and whistles thrown in. Managed WordPress hosting suits me as you don’t have to worry about patching it all the time (admittedly that has got easier recently anyway).

Managed Options

Now if getting your hands dirty on the linux command line is not your thang then why not looking at something like Heart Internet. Heart’s reseller hosting is pretty cheap and offers lots of one click install stuff. Plus their support department seems pretty on the ball to me.

Note: just for the record, I’m not on commission with Heart, WPEngine or Memset. Those aren’t referral links!

(Oh, and take a look at what I’ve written in the p.s. section at the bottom as well…)

How Much Should I Charge?

Ah! The eternal question! You’re providing a service. You’ve found a best of breed hosting solution, you’ve configured it and installed the website…this needs to be factored into your pricing.

What else are you providing? Firewall? O/S updates? Database backup? Load balancer? Replicated server?

This all needs to be paid for.

Your starting point in price calculation is obviously what you’ve got to shell out to the hosting company , if you’re not making money on it then there is no point.

But what IS included in hosting?!

And this is where you have to be careful. There is no point whatsoever getting (say) £100 a month for hosting a client’s site if they take up so much time that it costs you £500. So the answer is to carefully ring fence what is hosting & what is support.

Everyone will have their own definition but I try to draw the line as follows:

Hosting is the physical server and basic tasks to keep the web server up and running. Hosting includes X amount of (say) office hour* support to help ensure the web server is running. Client’s typically never had to contact about this as, if there is a web server issue; I’ll know about it before them.

Hosting does not cover application support (which means ensuring the website is running) or help with a CMS.

Support can be more about being responsible for the actual website. Depending on what you’ve agreed you may be helping with the CMS, updating the website core files (e.g. if it’s WordPress) or performing X amount of changes at no extra charge.

As you can see from the above; you really really need to be clear with the client as to what is and what is not included in your hosting & support. In my experience, if you are NOT clear on this then you’ll end being out of pocket and the client will still be peeved as you are not jumping when they ring every 5 minutes.

Clarity

As usual, it’s up to us to ensure that the client is crystal clear about:

• What you consider hosting & support to be
• What you are prepared to support (and what you are not)
• What conditions might invalidate support (e.g. third party fiddling around!)
• How they should contact you with support issues
• When they can expect a response from you
• How much time they can expect you to spend on their issues
• What happens if that time is used up
• etc

Assumption is the mother of all disasters so being clear saves a load of grief.

From early doors I’ll present the client with hosting / support options. They don’t have to host with me but I make it clear that if I do not host then I typically cannot offer any support on the basis that we do not control the hosting environment and cannot guarantee what state it is in. This is to avoid some plank (on behest of the client) mucking up the server and expecting muggins here to clear up their mess free of charge. In the words of Alan Partridge: no way jose.

SLA

I’ve never signed a formal SLA (Service Level Agreement) re support but, like with most things, you’ve got to take these things seriously otherwise you’ll let clients down. One area I was nervous about was holidays. My company set up is that I’m the only employee but I’ve got a trusted network of freelancers who now do more of the clever stuff. I tend to field support emails so will get a member of my team on the case as and when.

Issues could arise if I were on holiday, in those circumstances, I need to make sure the support system is a bit more proactive. I’ve used ticketing systems such as Zendesk but I’ve not quite found the right fit yet. I’m after something which I can use intermittently and can easily change who is or isn’t agent; better still, being able to assign when an agent is on duty would be cool.  However, I manage my client’s expectations well and, truth be told, they simply do not pay the kind of money where I need someone manning the support helpdesk 24×7 (I do offer that high end service to clients, just to scare them with the price

Closing Remarks

So, if you’re mulling hosting & support, I hope that’s given you some food for thought. If you have any questions, please shout out below.

If you are hosting/supporting and have got some ideas to add, please also speak up.

Peace.

Joel

p.s. I’ve always thought that another option (especially for folks in my situation) is to have a third party supporting agreed issues. Well, guess what, it looks like Adam Griffiths is doing such that at hostingandsupport.co – details on the website are thin on the ground so Adam emailed me with some more info:

Here’s why I wanted to start hostingandsupport.co: Basically, I knew a bunch of developers that wanted to provide hosting and/or support contracts to their clients but were either too busy to do it, or didn’t want to deal with keeping a server online or ‘silly questions’. The service I am providing basically lets people start a recurring revenue stream that needs almost 0 input from themselves. A win-win.

What I’ll do is: update the site software each month, whether the site is hosted with me or not, I’ll back the site up if hosting with me and I’ll monitor sites for downtime. If the site goes down at 3am, hosting with me or not, I will help to put it back online.

The whole point to this really is to take a task that some developers & designers don’t want or aren’t quite sure how to provide and let them provide a good service to their clients. This should also help them boost revenue and maybe one day buy a boat!

Ok that sounded quite martkety didn’t it? I essentially won’t be doing anything someone wouldn’t already be doing as part of a support contract. I’m trying to relieve some people from doing this so they can do what they love (and earn more money), and on the other side of the coin help people who don’t or can’t offer this service to offer it and to boost their overall revenue.

Sounds good eh?

p.p.s apologies for the long p.s.

*Website and speakers for ‘The Business of Web Design’ conference in July will be announced by the end of month. 

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.

We, as people who solve problems using web technology, need to bear that in mind.

The act of ‘building‘ is only one element of what we bring to the table. In reality (and this surprises many people) it may not be this element which adds the most value.

Experience

For many of us; it is our experience which the client is buying in to. It is our experience which guides us to elect the best path for client to take. Our experience allows us to plan on the client’s behalf. Once the planning is done; the actual execution can almost become a secondary task. Almost.

Let’s try and give this some context. Yesterday, Ruby/Sinatra smarty Tim Millwood tweeted this:

#FreelanceProblems: unpaid project management sometimes takes more time than the paid development work.—
Tim Millwood (@timmillwood) December 11, 2013

…aint that the truth!

As designers/developers our natural instinct is to think:

How long coding or in Photoshop [INSERT TOOL OF YOUR CHOICE] will this task take me?

And that “coal face’ element of the job is indeed a factor in how much we bill. But you must also focus on all the other bits which need to be accounted for as well (e.g.)

• Scoping the problem with the client
• Negotiating with the client
• Meeting/emails
• Preparing documentation
• Setting up the client in your workflow
• Organising your workflow/team
• Invoicing

…that list goes on and on

All of those elements need to be billable; because someone has to pay for them. And you’re in business to service clients. And if these expenses are incurred in the pursuit of you executing work on behalf of clients; then you need to remunerated.

And we haven’t even mentioned bills, computer kit, training etc.

All of this stuff has to be paid for. And, when you recognise that fact it helps you work out your pricing; because your pricing needs to be high enough to cover all of the elements required for you to perform the duties of your work. If it does not, you are losing money. And that is bad business.

Invoice line item 34 : Yoga for my Wellbeing

Now I’m not saying that you need always to be explicit with your invoice line items (nor am I saying ‘be devious‘). If you think your client will query the time spent answering their emails or general project management then either work hard to educate them or, as a short cut, include those costs into your dev time. It doesn’t bother me how you do it – just make sure that you get paid for your work (and all of it).

The planning of work and the handling of the client can ended up taking as much time (if not more) than the actual ‘work‘. But it is a crucial pre-cursor to getting the dev work done in the first place. So don’t be ashamed or reticent about billing for it.

Hopefully that has given you some food for thought: let Einstein help you earn more money.

Joel

Let’s take a look at what people had to say (oh, and any comments I’m adding are just general advice; I’m not saying that it is right for that particular person etc).

Cole Henley:

I earned more money but struggled with the regularity of cash flow. Periods of feast and famine were tough with a small family to support and never took as much time off from work as I would have liked.

I also ultimately struggled managing my time and my expectations (of myself).

I found it difficult working in isolation so opted as soon as possible into a co-working space.

Well, Cole kicks off here with some real classics. Sure you can earn more money but you’re more than aware that work can dry up at any time; and the weight of a young family (and our own punishing self expectations) can bear down heavily.

Dan’s experiences also bear this out:

Feast and famine – A glut of work followed by a fallow period of ‘not much on’.

Having money in the bank, before the get go, certainly can help give your freelance career more runway. And you do need runway; if you’ve not got a lucrative contract from day 1 then you need time to find your feet, time to find your rhythm, time to find decent clients – but time costs money.

Matt Saunders:

I found that working alone at home was a lot more lonely than I expected it to be.

If you’re used to working in a vibrant agency office then you do need to prepare for this. As Cole says, co-working spaces can help. There are also places like Regus. Or set up an office together like Shane & Ben did.

Dan Davies

The hours were longer. The money (IF I got paid) was alright to begin with and the projects were usually amends to existing WordPress sites. When I did get to work in Starbucks, the place was too noisy and I couldn’t concentrate. When I finally got to work on the train, I never got a table.

I now work better hours but, hell, it has taken years to get to this point. In truth, I think you probably have to go through the furnace of working stupid hours for the wrong clients. Nothing teaches like experience.

As far as the working in Starbucks goes… ah yes! That catalogue perception of the carefree life; free wheeeling between web design, sipping mochiatos and attending Tai Chi classes. Whilst that may be a mirage, as you can see from Dan’s experience below; things can get better.

To be fair, I worked on some great projects near the end of my freelance time and I really enjoyed the 6 months in Manchester. Did a lot of growing up that year.

Rick Hurst

while I was a permie, I would be aware of what was being charged by my employers for the work I was producing, so my thinking was “I can just build one intranet a year, over the course of a few months, and then won’t need to work for the rest of the year – if I build two, i’ll be rich!”

I found myself working all the time, because I overcommitted to work and tried (and failed) to juggle on-site freelancing with direct client project work. In the first year I just got away with it and actually made decent money, but then lost any of the surplus money that theoretically would buy me some time off during my second year, due to a few mistakes – bad projects, sub-contracting work to inexperienced people then having to do it all again myself etc. By year three I had regained control financially but I was still working non-stop. The idea of “being my own boss” was laughable, as I found I had about 20 bosses, all more important than each other. I found that while I believe i’m capable of managing projects and writing code, I can’t do both at once, and I certainly struggle with managing multiple projects at once.

Managing client expectations is critical. Don’t pull an all nighter or work all weekend if it’s not actually necessary. My old mate Luc (who’s now had the good sense to move to Melbourne) once worked in a place where he figured out the priority scheme was CODE RED, CODE RED ULTRA & CODE RED TRIPLE ULTRA*. Basically there is no priority level: everything (according to the client) is high priority. Everything is urgent! It’s hard to work in an agency like that. It’s impossible to freelance like that. That’s a one way ticket to the funny farm.

Nowadays I always dig into why clients have the deadlines they have; remember they are their deadlines – not yours. If their deadlines are not achievable then say so. Save your midnight oil for when it is needed.

Matt Saunders

I’m not that good at touting for business or, to be brutally honest, marketing or promoting previous work. I found I was relying on word of mouth and existing clients to keep the work coming in. This meant that I didn’t really give myself the opportunity to push for the kind of work I actually wanted to do.

I enjoyed being in control of my own time but felt more pressured to deliver as everything was on my own head.

Brutal honesty. I have to say there is nothing like setting up your own business for bringing on a bout of brutal honesty. To most people, sitting in their shiny, new freelance business, “marketing” and “sales” are alien artefacts; complex foreign objects eluding the comprehension of us mere mortals.

This is further echoed by a touching, anonymous comment:

Probably my fault, I’m not much of a salesman, I just want to make cool things.

No, it’s not your fault. People don’t just erupt from their mother’s equipped with all the business skills of P.T.Barnum, they are learnt. In some shape or form, we have to market ourselves – and when we are dealing with potential clients, we are selling. So, like it or not, we have to make our peace with the demons of sales & marketing. And making your peace doesn’t mean you’ve got to turn into Gordon Gecko.

Matt Hill

Love Matt’s comments; so typical and so eloquently written:

I thought it would certainly be easier than it turned out to be! I had no idea it would be basically three full time jobs in one.

Perhaps the biggest shock was being completely unprepared for the amount of sales work I’d need to do. I was doing both full web design & build for small business sites, and also doing front-end work for agencies. While I got some lucky breaks through word of mouth, I still had to promote myself every where I could think of and that rarely yielded the quality jobs that I was looking for.

The day to day running of the business was something I hadn’t really considered in great detail. Managing cashflow, tracking time, doing tax returns: all the paperwork was quite onerous and not something I particularly enjoyed. I eventually got some decent systems in place, but it took me far too long and I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

I was also very naive about being able to take flexible days. There *were* times I could do so, but on the whole I’ve never worked so hard, often late into the night. The reality for me was that I had to work considerably harder to make ends meet, although I later realised this was partly due to me undercharging for my work.

Many points to be made here but allow me to focus on this: the biggest thing which people fail to prepare for is the fact that we are not productive and billable 40 hours per week. Hell, anyone who has worked anywhere already (secretly) knows this: come in with a hangover, mess around on a bored afternoon and you’re productivity is already down to 75%.  And that’s with you NOT having to worry about running a company!

Now factor in these ‘running the company‘ tasks; perhaps do a time & motion study on yourself. Find out how many hours you can realistically bill per week; and let that dictate your per hour cost (rather than an idealistic world where you are billable 100% of the time). Oh, and with time take a look at tasks which you can outsource; as you get busier you may as well pay someone to do that bookkeeping when you could be billing your hours (at a higher rate), investing in learning (which makes you more billable) or playing with your children.

Benjy Stanton

I thought I would be able to pick and choose some ‘cool’ projects like designing posters for bands. I also thought it would be easy to sell stuff like t-shirts and icons to generate passive income.

Profitable work doesn’t always come from the places you expect.

I thought finding clients would be the hardest part of freelancing, I don’t particularly like selling myself.

The concern about selling shines through again here; we really don’t like having to put ourselves out there do we! However, the point I want to talk about here is this “Profitable work doesn’t always come from the places you expect.“; aint this the truth. As true as bad clients lead to bad clients, a truth I’ve found is that good clients recommend you to other people who also turn out to be good clients. Don’t treat that website you are working on simply as a widget traversing your web design factory conveyor belt; it’s part of your oeuvre – be proud of it; tell Twitter about it, blog about it. Let the work become part of your marketing. Don’t by shy now.

Andy Davies

I had a runway of savings and picked up my first client just before I actually made the jump so I had cashflow very early on, this client also produced a lot of repeat business.

After a while clients came in through recommendations and reputation so attracting clients eventually became much easier.

Balancing client work against research and speaking was harder as essentially the latter are non-paid activities (they could be counted as promotion but…) and client work seemed to be most busiest when I had speaking engagements due.

I’ve found “word of mouth” (WOM) to be crucial, even in this world of social media (social media just puts WOM on rails). Reputation takes time to build so, again, you need plenty of runway to allow for this. Also, being backwards in coming forwards when telling others about our good work will not make ourselves easily discoverable; don’t make it hard for people to pay for your services.

Closing Thoughts

Thanks to everyone for their honest thoughts about their experiences and I hope this helps if you are also experiencing some of the scenarios described above.

If you too have something to share, I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below.

Oh, and don’t forget we’ve got a conference coming up in July next year in Cardiff which is just about the business side of web design. Perhaps follow on Twitter or sign up to the monthly newsletter to make sure you stay informed.

Joel

*Luc has mentioned that codes actually continued: CODE RED MAGMA, CODE MAGMA MEGA CATASTROPHE, THE END OF THINGS, and finally BORIS JOHNSON

Doing anything but paid work can be seen like an extravagant luxury; but it is not. Bear in mind that when you’ve got your head down, at the coal face of building or designing websites etc that your business is actually heading a direction. And unless you take time to step away from that coal face that you are not focussing on that direction. But a direction it is heading whether you like it or not.

Ways to step away:

1. Conferences

Why not spend a day away from the office learning about new techniques and meeting up with peers? I find that conferences are a great time for me put my mind in a different zone; to allow it to focus on a broader horizon than just getting the current projects out the door.

Conferences are also good for me as I work with lots of freelancers; the ability to meet and mingle with new folks who can help my clients is fantastic (and ultimately good for my business).

(Note: I do have a sore head from Handheld’s after show party last night mind).

2. A Business Day Out

This can be very useful. Take a day/morning off and (importantly) go somewhere where you do not normally work. Turn your email off. Stay off Twitter. And take time to really think about your business. Perhaps get your scrappy business plan out and see how that’s going. Perhaps read a business book or some business articles that you’ve been meaning to cast your eye over. Perhaps think about how you want your business to look in a year’s time; or 5 years time*.

(*Yes it can feel like a luxury to do this when you’re fire fighting projects but think about this: if you don’t know where you are heading; how are you going to get there?)

3. Re-charging the batteries

You can’t just work harder and harder; we are not machines. If you pull an all nighter to get a project done; exactly how productive are you the next day? Not very I bet.

Working too hard over a long period of time is not good for you. Its not good for your physical & mental health; not good for your relationships and it’s not good for your clients. It dampens your enthusiasm for the work you love; and that’s not good.

Perhaps once a month schedule in some personal time when you do something just for yourself; visit an art gallery; take your camera out (which has been sat on the shelf for too long); go for a stroll across a blustery beach. Let your mind free wheel. Whatever works for you.

Unless you spend time re-charging your batteries then your work and your clients will suffer.

4. Books & Online learning

5 Simple Steps offer a great selection of industry focussed books. You need to invest in the time to read and learn as this is actually the resource which you are offering clients; your knowledge (websites are just an output).

Treehouse offers online learning opportunities and many conferences have workshops (on a side note I’d like to see more practical workshops; I love hands on learning).

There’s an infinite buffet of topics to choose from; but don’t be swamped by that. We can’t know everything about every subject – embrace your constraints. Don’t push yourself to learn topics which just aren’t you but, at the same time, allow yourself the scope to learn about topics which are at edge of what you currently do. Ultimately, have fun with it. And treat your learning as a core part of your business (which it is).

5. Mentor

Seek advice from a business person you trust; they may or may not be in the same sector as you. It’s very useful to be able to talk openly & candidly to someone about your business; sometimes we are just too close to it to see the blindingly obvious solutions. Put the feelers out for someone you can talk to; don’t be afraid to ask.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and don’t work too hard.

Joel

1) Contracts

I have to say that I’m not a fan of those contracts written in impenetrable legalese – those just look plain scary and I’ve found them to spook reasonable clients. On the other hand, some contracts are nice plain English – I much prefer that approach. And why not have a clause in your contract which details your ‘payment schedule‘ for the project; this lays out, in no uncertain terms, when you expect to be paid, how much, what happens if you are not etc. Don’t leave these crucial details up to an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement because, if you do, at some point it will turn around and bite you on the arse. Hard.

2) Deposit

Before a project begins, it is important that the client has parted with some money. If it is a new client then this is really, really important – talking about websites is one thing; putting your hand in your pocket to kick off a paid project is another.

How much a deposit to ask for? Well, like everything in life, that depends. Some people say 50%. Personally I typically aim for around 25% as I like to smooth the money over the life of the project (my projects are around 6-20 weeks elapsed time). By all means request a larger deposit for a new client if you are worried about getting your fingers burnt.

If they don’t want to pay the deposit (and can come up with no reasonable reason why not) then you need to walk away. Shaggy dog stories of when money may turn up should really set your alarm bells ringing. The only occasion I’ve been flexible here is when I’m dealing with very large companies such as multi-nationals who may have procurements systems which are set in stone; in those instances you just need to use your best judgement.

3) Regularity of Payments

A project typically has a set of phases; discovery, planning, design, build, testing etc. I tend to make the end of each of these phases a billable checkpoint where the client agrees to sign off what has gone before; this then triggers an agreed part payment of the overall project cost.

Note:  I have to hold my hands up here; sometimes projects drag on longer than they should (not normally my fault I hasten to add!) – and on these occasions I’m reminded that I really should set firmer deadlines for when stuff should happen so that, even if something hasn’t been signed off, ‘x’ money could be released. My staff need to be paid each month; so I need to make sure that money comes in. I’d be interested in what time related clauses you ladies & gentlemen use.

4) Final Payment

I normally state that the final payment is required as and when the website is ready to go live; i.e. the project is fully paid up before we press the big, red button. This has another benefit in that the conversation is then about support post launch; instead of being caught up in an endless cycle of changes which has somehow been lumped in as part of the original project (we’ll be delving into this nest of vipers in a future article).

5) Late Payment Fees

Put these in your terms and conditions. The GOV.UK website has some excellent information on this. Basically you can charge a set fee for debt recovery and interest on the outstanding debt. The debt recovery fee is handy to compensate you for the mucking around you have to do chasing people (remember, that is time which could have been spent working on billable projects or playing with your kids).

Again, some larger orgs seems to have insanely long payment terms and they aint gonna change them for you. The important thing here is to find out what their payment terms are first, find out what is negotiable and then see if it’ll work for you (and, in these circumstances, what we cover in point 8 might be useful).

6) Cancelled Projects

If a client cancels a project part way through, you should make sure that your terms and conditions cover your ass. You might think “but it’s ok, they’ve paid for the work done to date” but you’re missing the point: you’ve budgeted your company resources (even if that’s just you) on delivering that project; perhaps you’ve even turned work away because your pipeline is now full. Why should you now be penalised because a client has created a large hole in your workflow?

Obviously it pays to always try to be reasonable and fair with clients but reasonableness & fairness only go so far. If your terms & conditions state that if a client cancels a project, the total cost of the project is due or the total cost of the current stage is due (irrespective of how much work has been done) then you have more options if things get hairy.

7) Refuses to Pay

Luckily I’ve never encountered this (although I’ve hit pretty much every other issue!) and the circumstances where I normally hear about this happening typically involve a lack of contract, terms & conditions, clear specification etc; you really want all your legal boxes ticked in case push ever comes to shove.

An easy option is to get a legal looking letter sent to offending client; that’s often a quick & cheerful way to shake things up a little. One such company who offers this service (and more) is Thomas Higgins.

Seeking firmer legal advice is your next recourse. You may end up going to the small claims court. Don’t expect this to be an easy process though and, if that debt isn’t huge, you may well be tempted to write it off as a bad experience and think hard about your process so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.

8) Factoring

Factoring is where you get paid (regularly) by a third party based on the invoices you raise; if the client doesn’t pay, then this isn’t your problem and it’s all handled by the factoring company. The factoring company take their cut; but that’s the price you pay for the added security.

I’ve not used factoring but, thinking about it, it could be an option for the larger clients who pay on on long terms (e.g. 90 days);

Here’s a link to a factoring company I’ve found online but I’ve not used them so please don’t take that as a recommendation.

Parting Shots

Please shout out if you have anything to add to the above or with any comments you’d like to make.

Joel

I first went freelancing/contracting in 1998, when I was working on OS/390 IBM Mainframe kit (old skool!), plugging holes in the Y2K bug. I loved contracting; the money was better for starters. But, more than that,  I’d always hated working for other people…and that seems to be a common thread.

Some people fell into freelancing though, redundancy or a simple lack of full time positions:

“Thrown into it when was I made redundant from my agency job in 2011.” - Cole Henley

“The company I was working for went pop” - Darren Beale

“the decision for me going freelance was not made by me but the company where I worked. - Dan Davies

“Freedom. Fed up working for others.” - David Goodwin

“It just sort of happened” - Dan Dineen

“I would say I fell into freelancing.” - Victoria Jones

“I was very unhappy where I was” - Matt Saunders

And I can certainly sympathise with the anonymous soul who simply said:

“Hated my job.”

In the early 2000′s I was contracting and working at places that I really, really disliked. The travel was a grind and the work was soulless; so I know how the above person was feeling. There is only so long you can put up with the pain of hating your job, at some point something has to give; you are in charge of your career – take the necessary steps to get to where you want to go.

“I imagined that with the ludicrously high rates I could earn freelancing that I only needed to work for a few months a year to match the salary I was on as a permie.” - Rick Hurst

Ah yes! The lure of money! What does Del Boy always say? “By this time next year Rodders my old son, we’ll be milllllionaires!“. I’m pretty sure that it was money which first lured me into contracting in the late 90′s; I’d hear the hourly rate some hired hand was on and think “but, I’m better than you and earning a lot less?!“. But it’s never that simple of course; a full time role has other perks (aside from your monthly wage). And being a freelance/contractor also means you have to make hay when the sunshines – you don’t know where your next project may be coming from.

“It turned out that I loved being my own boss and the new found sense of control and freedom that came with it. What had been a stop gap became a full-time freelancing career for the next 6 years.” - Matt Hill

The above echoes a common theme of stumbling in to freelancing; perhaps that’s the nature of the beast but part of me wishes/hopes that people can increasingly take a long hard look at what they want out of their careers and plan a path which suits them; and not simply get dragged along in wake of circumstance.

“Freedom to work on more interesting / different projects.” - Joshua Marshall

Freedom to work on more interesting projects is a cracking reason to freelance but, for the majority of people, you have to put in the hard yards before you get to the stage of being picky with your clients/projects. If you’re smart, you’ll have a few clients ready & warmed up when you do decide to go solo (as Benjy below did); I did not – I had to create a parachute after I’d jumped out of the plane – not always the best plan (but sometimes the only option).

“I worked for a small web design agency, but one of the directors was leaving, so I decided to make the leap into freelancing. I was able to take all of our design-work clients with me.” – Benjy Stanton

“I didn’t plan on doing full-time client work but also wanted time to do research and talk about performance at conferences, I also wanted to be able to take the school holidays off and spend time with the kids.” - Andy Davies

Ah! The dream of the freelance life! Sipping a cool margarita on an exotic beach, the kids playing in the surf, whilst running your business via a shiny new Macbook Air! For most people, the initial reality of freelancing is a blind panic to get in as much work in as possible; hanging over you, the shadow of next month’s mortgage and a fear of letting yourself and your family down (why don’t I get a proper job?!). Andy is spot on here with his aims for freelancing; be warned though – it can take a while before you get the work/life balance that freelancing and running your own show can offer.

Closing Remarks

A lot of folks seemed to stumble into freelancing, as I’ve mentioned above, that concerns me a little. Hell, if I could speak to my 25 year old self again I’d give him a stern talking to – try to plan it out a bit more. What’s that saying? The longest journey begins with a single step…

Many thanks to everyone who generously shared their experience in the creation of this article (and the series to come).

Next time we’ll explore the answers to the following question:

“What did you think freelancing would be like?”

Joel

p.s. don’t forget we’ve got a conference coming in Cardiff next year (18th of July) which is solely about the business of freelancing and running your micro-agency.