Winning Repeat Clients - Tip #1: Communicate Well and Often

The first "trick" to a successful freelancing career is to be good at what you're offering. I can't teach you that. Well, maybe some of it, but that's not the focus of today's post. I want to share my tips for making your clients really happy such that they return ... beyond just delivering what you promised.

I'm not a sales or marketing person (although I can write about those things - try me!) and I'm definitely not a schmoozer. I've started a career that I enjoy and I want my clients to be happy, so the things I'm going to tell you actually come naturally to me--most of the time. Occasionally I have to remind myself that these steps will help me build that solid base of customers that I need to really make this work. We all get a little lazy sometimes, right?

Anyway, let's dive in. Today's tip:

Communicate Well and Often

Repeat clients make me HAPPY

I could talk about communication for like 10 blogs worth of rambling, but I'm going to focus on one main idea for now: in short, keep your client updated on the project status before he has a reason to ask.

Often freelancers help from a distance. David Jones in San Francisco doesn't know who I am. He doesn't know that I'm working away on his project on my couch in Atlanta (oops, did I just tell you I work on my couch? crap). If he's a first-time customer, or even second- or third-time customer, he doesn't yet know that he can trust me to deliver by our deadline come hell or high water ... or that I will let him know if we're off track.

I had to learn this somewhat the hard way. I was used to my corporate job where everyone trusted me to do my work. When I first started freelancing, I would get annoyed with clients that emailed me with the old, "How's it going over there?" Now I know the secret: beat them to it. Just communicate. Tell them something. If you're merely a Skype handle four states over and a picture that's supposedly you, but maybe not, you can imagine how your client might get nervous when he doesn't hear from you regularly.

Tell your client when she can expect to hear from you next or when you expect to have the next "piece" completed, or even tell her you're going to be off-the-grid for a couple days and will be in touch next week. As a freelancer, you do have the luxury of setting your own schedule (that's one of the biggest perks for me), but you will make your life much easier if you communicate it to your clients when it makes sense.