Comments on: When Time is Short and Projects are Long

By: Kimberly Ben

Kimberly Ben — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:34:42 +0000

I think I lost business unnecessarily when I first began freelancing because it didn't occur to me clients would be open to alternatives and compromise. I don't know why; negotiation is at the heart of business. Great tips, Lori.

By: Paula

Paula — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:24:23 +0000

I'm precariously close to the edge right now. I've turned in a slew of assignments, but have two articles currently in the interview stage. One has a 1-week turn around, but I need to do interviews while all of my sources (and the publicists who can wrangle them) are at the TCAs all week.

Yesterday a GREAT publicist was pulling out all the stops to get some people on the phone at very short notice. I'd told her I was 2 hours ahead, but would be here if she could get someone to call me when they were on their dinner break. I had the computer unplugged due to incoming storms, so I didn't see her e-mail until this morning asking me to call someone...I feel awful. I'm begging for help all day, but quit "early" (around 6:45) - literally a minute or so before she sent that e-mail.

I know I shouldn't feel guilty because it's not as if I'm being paid to be on call 24/7.

At the same time, my sister has some light editing she'll need me to do for one of her clients - shouldn't be more than 2-3 hours.

This is why I blew off the column this week and refused a few smaller projects.

As long as I can get the interviews down, I'm good. And my editor - being at TCAs himself - is well aware of the difficulties involved in scheduling any interviews this week.

By: Lori

Lori — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:11:20 +0000

Great compromise, Cathy. Showed good faith and willingness to be flexible (like Peter Bowerman's post this month suggests). I'm about to face a similar pressure to get work done sooner rather than later. In my experience, that's always been a disaster, and clients rarely see that they were expecting too much too quickly.

By: Cathy Miller

Cathy Miller — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:58:21 +0000

I had a similar thing happen when a client was negotiating for an ongoing assignment. I told them I couldn't deliver the quantity they wanted in November as I am gone a good part of the month on vacation and the 3-Day Walk.

They pushed for me to "double up" the month before, but I already have booked assignments. I compromised with delivering half the quantity for November.