5 Primary Questions to Ask a Potential Client
Who am I? I’m Allan, a designer who went from freelancer who was grinding out a meager living to co-founding a highly profitable web shop, now we build our own apps, we host conferences and workshops.
In order to accurately discern which potential clients should earn the time and focus of your company, it’s essential to employ the art of qualifying leads.
Qualifying is the act of determining which projects are the right fit for you. You do this by collecting some key information (from yourself and the potential client) and then gauging whether the endeavor is worth your while–with respect to the data collected.
Hopefully you’re able to determine some very important things:
- Is the project something you would want to work on?
- Is the potential client someone you could get along with?
- Do the expectations of the potential client align with how you work?
- Can the potential client afford you?
Shouldn’t I be taking anything I can get?
Some people believe that qualifying leads eventually translates into lost sales, and they’re right. If you have very few leads and lots of time, it’s probably best not to worry about asking these questions and rather, spend more time trying to make each sale. As your business grows, you’ll learn to throttle your project base by being more picky with who you choose to work with (as well as what you decide to charge).
Below are 5 crucial questions to ask potential clients in order to decide if a given project
is right for you.
1. Is this your first launch?
This question is all about expectations. If you learn that the potential client has never launched (or run) a project like this before, you may find yourself holding their hand a little bit more through the process, or having to lower your expectations a bit.
2. Describe your project in 3 sentences.
If someone can’t describe their idea clearly, you can bet that the project (and the relationship) is going to be rocky, to say the least. Perhaps in the earlier stages of your business you can afford to dream a little with a client, but as your company progresses, you’ll find this potential client become less and less appealing. Clients that are in the “dreamers phase” haven’t thought about cost and execution. They’re still in love with their special idea and you’ll have to wake them up, bringing them into reality.
3. What is your budget for the project?
This is the only question that really matters. Can they afford you? If they can’t afford you do any of the other answers matter? Do not waste time with people that cannot afford you. You’re a business, you have expenses, you cannot spend time on leads that don’t have funds. Do NOT move this lead into a phone call unless they can indicate they have money.
4. Are you in need of a designer in addition to a developer?
You may have a preference (or a strong preference if you’re like us) about whether or not you mind exclusively designing projects, developing projects, or both. Ask this question to determine what level of involvement the potential client has in mind for you. Get all cards out on the table now, in the beginning.
5. Who is your host?
This question probably doesn’t translate to other industries or maybe it does. Interestingly, this final question is a somewhat veiled attempt to learn what the potential client’s level of technical understanding is. If you discover that that lack of technical knowledge is present, you’ll want to tweak your approach to accommodate that.
The Conclusion
Most small web shops and freelancers aren’t able to have a full-time person devoted to sales, so it’s often up to the developer to decide how to go about selling a client on their service. It goes without saying that most web shops are also without an entire department devoted to analyzing leads and conducting multiple interviews with a potential clients before starting on their project, so if you can qualify the right lead by asking these questions, you’ll find you’re spending your time and energy effectively rather than wastefully.
For those of you that will be in the Tampa Florida area in June, consider attending the Less Money Conference. Attending this workshop will give you hands on information about the business side of freelancing and growing a web consultancy.
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by PixelsAway.
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Great points, as for number 5 “Who is your host?”, I think that even more important than their technical understanding part, is that hosting is something often not included in their budget.
Many people think that by hiring someone to build a website for them, it will automagically be online.
While I understand that some companies include the hosting for their clients projects, I’ve seen to many of those relationships go sour and the client ends up with no website and many times even the domain name is taken away because they let the company register that as well, and it was done under the company not the client name.
Hi Ken, to add to what you’re saying, we always used that transparency with clients. We’d tell them you don’t want us to own your domain, we want you to own it, we want you to have the hosting account setup so you’re not tied to us. We want you to feel free to fire us at anytime. I think for alot of potential breathe of fresh air.
I usually ask the following:
Do you have a written specification or outline of your project/website?
If they say no, then you know they haven’t taken their idea seriously enough, or that they don’t know the process yet.
So the next question is:
Can you write out a specification or outline of your project?
This is the crunch time, if they are too lazy to do it themselves, then this client isn’t serious about the project or requires a developer.
Omar, I agree. I have a theory that anyone that submits a contact form with less than 2 sentences of information is just wasting time and like you mention, hasn’t thought the project out well enough.
Good article…
, so i brought them in to reality which was difficult to handle 
….
Point 2 is really correct, It happened with me in my early career days many times. but then I started realizing that I cannot afford dreaming with client
Farhan, I, like you, want to help people. But any second I’m on the phone, bringing people into reality I’m not running my business, not billing hours and not spending time with my family. Spending time talking to leads that aren’t ready to pull the trigger can be a huge time suck. It’s hard to draw the line sometimes and not be as helpful as you can be. Such is business.
Very good advice. I had never thought to ask about who client’s web host is. I do ask about their budget though
My first client had never worked with a freelancer, and was basically starting his consulting job from scratch. This was the first time I had ever had the opportunity for a larger job and I had no idea how to go about it. I scoured the internet for questions I should be asking. It was overkill, but he did provide the detail I needed. However, after reading this post, it might have been better to begin with questions such as these. I’ll definitely keep these in mind for further use.
Good list!
one other question that frequently comes in handy is “what makes this project a priority for you?”
Too many times we’ve seen it where people start projects then they get put on the side or the client never really gets “engaged” – this question helps determine the “engagement” factor they may or may not have.