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May 19, 2010One great thing you can do when you have a few years experience is to stop, take a step back and really analyse where all of your previous work has come from. If you have been a freelancer for 5 years or more, this will be easier but even if you have just been freelancing for a couple of years it is worth doing. Here are the some of the questions to ask yourself.
How many projects did you do in the last 5 years?
What kinds of projects were they, the length and duration, who were the clients and in which industry. Also how did you get the projects? How were they sourced. And then start thinking about the end result of the projects, what went well, what needs to be improved, what lessons you have learnt. Then in total, how many projects and how much revenue did you get per client? Who are your main clients and within these clients who are the main contacts.
All of this is to take stock of your current situation. So, when I did this, I was shocked to realise in the last 2-3 years just how few clients I had worked with. On my cv, I have list a whole load of clients I have worked with, many on a regular basis. But I suddenly noticed in the last 3 years, the number was smaller than I had imagined. I was doing more with these clients than with others. But I was sending out 50 e-mails a month to what I considered to be my ‘warm’ customer list. What was going on?
So, I really started thinking. What was it about the clients I was working for and all the people on my prospects list with whom I had never worked? I came to the conclusion that one thing was face to face meetings. There were many people I was contacting on a regular basis who I had never met face to face. It was a simple thing which I had never considered before. So, I set about asking people for meetings and I then found out the likelihood of me working with them for whatever reason was very low. It was a difficult thing to learn but also a great thing because I could then strike them off my list and start focusing on more likely prospective clients.
Now, what is the story for you? What can you learn by comparing all the people who gave you projects? What are the similarities between them? Are they from firms of a similar size, or culture or specialisation. What about the companies and people who were likely prospects but never gave you any work? It is well worth investigating this.
Another good question to ask is what are you good and what do you enjoy? A great thing which happened to me over the years is that as I raised my rates, the companies I least enjoyed working for were the first to complain and stop giving me work. This was great. Eventually I found my ceiling and now stick to this. I feel grateful for the work they give me and realise if I want more or a higher rate I have to go out there and find the work with the end client myself.
So, with this blog post, I am really inviting you to think and analyse your earnings, your business development methods and word of mouth referrals to see what is working and what is not. You may also want to ask others. How can you improve your service? Are there specific skills you need to develop such as accounting, presentation or general confidence skills? Is there any other ways you can do both business development and delivery or should you be looking at a different field because your market is changing. Perhaps you can also be looking abroad.
What else have I learnt? I wanted to get outside transactional projects into longer term projects plus I wanted to work from home rather than in offices all the time. So, I have focused or perhaps it is slightly by chance as well, but I have gotten some great projects which have allowed me to work according to my own schedule. This gives me a great direction in which I want to go. It can also serve as a focus for the next five years. Where do you want to be with your freelance consultancy career?
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