Keep Clients For Life

Once you land a great client, it's important you try to keep them for life. Even when a job is completed successfully, losing a client can negatively affect your freelancing and income until you replace them.

What can you do to keep a client for life?

1. Under promise; over-deliver

Set deadlines and expectations for the job that you know you can easily hit, even if issues come up. Don't under-promise results so low that the client won't think you will do a good job, but under-promise just enough that the client will be impressed when you provide better results and complete the job quicker.

2. Offer solutions, advice, and suggestions beyond what you were hired for

Clients may hire you to do one specific thing but use your expertise to offer additional solutions. The more you can help the client, the longer they will rely on you as a go-to resource

3. Upsell clients your other services.

The great thing about offering other solutions is once the client knows you can deliver, they will also pay for you to tackle other problems. Any small bits of advice you offer is an opportunity to start another job or expand the scope of the current one with the client.

4. Admit what you don't know

If you don't know something, admit it. Don't try to lie to the client and fake it. Let the client know you will research it and get back to them. If it is completely outside your skillset, recommend someone else or a company that can handle it.

5. Make it as easy as possible for the client to work with you

As much as we may want our own processes for working, it needs to be as easy as possible for the client to work with us. Don't force clients into software, workflows, or other processes that are hard for them. Find out what is painless for them and adapt your processes to fit that.

Once you start doing these few things, your clients should start turning into lifelong clients.