3 Smart Moves To Make After Landing A New Client

Dave Navarro |
Making Money
| August 31st 2008

Photo by emdot.

Landing new clients can be one of the most time-consuming tasks for the overworked freelancer–and it doesn’t pay you a single penny. Spending countless hours on the hunt instead of being billable isn’t the most effective strategy for the self-employed, so knowing how to increase the value of each and every client you have is a skill that you absolutely have to master.

Fortunately, doubling the income you get from your clients isn’t rocket science–it all comes down to using a few time-tested strategies for boosting their spending. Here are 3 smart things you can do after you land a client that can pad your paycheck for months (or years) to come.

Smart Move #1 – Think Two Services Ahead

Chances are high that whatever your clients are hiring you for is only one step in a chain of events that they need to act on in the future. Look at the service you’re providing and think of the logical next steps that will flow from that, and consider offering an extension of related services.

If you’re designing a logo for a client, find out if they have other art needs for their product packaging or website. If you’re writing web content for a client, test the waters to find out if they want any existing content rewritten, or brainstorm ideas for an entire series of articles. I used this tactic to spin a client request for a single piece of web content into a ten-part series (as well as an ongoing stream of SEO copywriting).

You can do it too, if you take the time to understand what your clients want and where they are going. And if you give them ideas they haven’t even come up with yet, you’ll look like the smartest freelancer they ever hired.

Smart Move #2 – Think Two Months Ahead

One of the savviest moves you can make as a freelancer is to find a way to turn a one-time job into an ongoing stream of monthly income. There are more ways to do this than you might imagine–you just have to dig deep and find ways of providing valuable extensions to the service you’re performing, so that your client gets an ongoing benefit.

If you’re a web worker, you could offer a monthly maintenance package where you continue work on the original job–for example, tweaking web content for freshness or optimization every 30 days. Or, you could produce monthly analytics reports for a client if you’re doing something measurable like SEO.

This works for more offline freelancers as well: the idea of a monthly maintenance package has been around for years (and chances are, you’re paying for one yourself). If you’re stuck for ideas, research the websites of your competitors to see if there are any ongoing service extensions that you should be offering.

Smart Move #3 – Think Two Clients Ahead

If you want to stay billable with the least amount of legwork, then naturally you’ll want to take advantage of word of mouth advertising, the most effective way to get additional clients. It’s not uncommon for one slam-dunk relationship with a client to blossom into a handful of well-paying opportunities–but you don’t want to leave something so valuable to chance. As you serve your clients, use professional, no-pressure strategies to leverage their network and their kind words to your advantage.

One effective way to do this by offering your client a one-time discount on your services as a way of saying “thank you” for their business–and to throw in a few coupons for first-time discounts they can give to others. If you make the first-time discount attractive enough, you may find yourself with a number of new additions to your client portfolio without the hassle of hunting them down yourself.

Don’t forget the power of client testimonials, either. Having a sizable list of endorsements to your name can be the very thing that makes a prospective client who finds you via a search engine decide that you are the freelancer they need to hire. But testimonials don’t always come unsolicited, so be sure and ask your clients for feedback on your services.

Bonus Move #4 – Think Two Freelancers Ahead

These are only three ways to make the most of your hard-earned clients – but I’m betting that you know of even more smart moves that can create a profitable win-win for you and the people who hire you. Share your wisdom and experience in the comments below, see if other freelancers have left any tips that you can use, and make staying billable in the future easy and stress-free.

Tags: Making Money

Dave Navarro |
Website |
Other Articles

There’s a famous guitarist named Dave Navarro. I’m not him. I’m a different kind of rockstar, the kind who sweats behind the scenes rather than on stage, kicking successful people’s asses so that they become even more successful. I’m a personal productivity coach who gets deep into the minds of people who have everything going for them but are hitting some speedbumps and roadblocks - and I pull no punches until they break past the limiting beliefs that are holding them back. I help entrepreneurs get “unstuck.” I push people past what they think they are capable of. I find solutions to their problems that they had never even considered, and I get them to think bigger, work smarter and believe in themselves more. I take their psychological baggage and help make sure it gets lost at the airport. I kick their asses, and then I teach them to start kicking their own so I can move on to the next rockstar-to-be.

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