Freelancing 2023: New Client or Waste of Time?

I love #FreelanceChat on Twitter. The topics are often solid and the discussion gets lively. (Every Thursday at noon ET.) In a recent open-mic chat, someone asked the question:

How do you know when that client prospect is not going to hire you?

That’s pretty important to know, right?

Let’s look at this scenario and you tell me if this was a client who was buying:

“Mark” worked for Acme Insurance. I met him at a trade show. We talked, and he expressed interest in working with me. “I’ll send you an email when I get back to the office.”

Two weeks later, I sent him one figuring that post-conference communication is always hit-and-miss.  I had pulled together a portfolio of samples specific to his company’s business. I sent that over with a detailed email, reminding him of our conversation and giving him a little of my background.

He responded after two prompts, saying he was about to get a promotion and we’d talk in September (it was July).

The following year, I saw Mark again. He expressed the same interest, even went as far as to loop in his CEO this time.

I sent more curated samples, explaining each one and how they might pertain to his business. Again, post-conference he got busy and he didn’t respond to my follow-up emails. No problem. I checked in every two months.

The next year, I was walking through the exhibit hall and heard someone call out my name. It was Mark. The conversation went as before, with him saying he was overwhelmed with projects and needed someone to help with writing. He’d call me in two weeks.

I didn’t send anything this time but did send one email asking how the show went.

This is a contact who reached out each time. Each time he said he wanted to hire me. Each time he was just a little more eager to connect with me. No, he never hired me. It’s been 20 years. I’m long past waiting.  In fact, after that third year, I stopped waiting. He wasn’t hiring me. He was only wishing he could.

The red flags were there. At first I didn’t see them, but I soon learned to look past his enthusiastic words and see what was happening.

• He had no power to hire me.  That first conversation was followed with “I will convince my director that I need your help.”
• He wasn’t following up. If it was that urgent, he would have been in touch with me first.
• He gained no traction with his promotion, nor with his CEO.

That scenario wasn’t an easy one to decipher at first. But nowadays, I’m a little bit wiser, I hope.

[bctt tweet=”Is that #freelance client going to hire you? 5 red flags.” username=”LoriWidmer”]

Here are some of the common red flags that a client isn’t going to hire:

Do they focus on price a lot?

I mean a LOT. If your conversation is dotted with, “Well, how much for THIS? And what about THIS?” they’re tire kickers. Not saying tire kickers don’t eventually hire, but look at what they’re valuing — price. They’re not asking you to prove you can do that kind of project. They’re asking you to prove they can afford you. Big difference.

Have you had one phone call and a few emails and they’ve not hired you?

Show of hands — how many of you have been in that phone-call-about-the-phone-call loop of hell? How many of those calls were about hiring you? Are they still discussing budget a month later? Are the emails decreasing in frequency? Are they still dancing around minutiae instead of sending over a contract? Honey, it’s not happening. I had one client who wanted two more phone calls to discuss a relatively small project. The emails? I was being detailed to death. And no. They never pulled the trigger.

Are they “talking with other writers”?

Don’t waste any more time. That line means they aren’t hiring you. I’ve never been told this and have had them come back. It’s fine for them to talk with other writers. However, if they mention this in their initial contact or at the beginning of that phone call, that’s just them disclosing that you’re one of a few they’re considering. That’s them being kind and letting you know that it’s not a slam-dunk for you. And that’s okay.  But inevitably, and correct me if your experience has been different, the “talking to other writers” is their way of ending the conversation because you’re not a good fit for some reason. Or they’re not very good at hiring freelancers.

Do they talk endlessly but can’t/haven’t described their project?

In one excruciating example, I had a potential client talk to me for 54 minutes. In that 54 minutes, I asked him a number of times and in a number of ways to describe his project. He couldn’t. He said that a friend’s accolade that appeared online was exactly what he wanted his website project to convey. That accolade? Unintelligible. In that case, I didn’t want to be hired, so I stepped away. In another case, I had a client change his project four times in the span of two hours. Hard pass. If your prospect cannot describe succinctly what the project is and your leading questions cannot draw it out, that project is doomed. And they’ll be reluctant to hire until you can tell them what they want to hear, which hey, good luck reading the tea leaves on that one.

Are they trying to get you to give them free advice?

This is a shitty move that doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The client prospect will ask you to describe how you’d do that project, or ask you to send over a quick outline so they can see what your approach is. Or maybe they want the full outline. If they’re drilling you for how you would phrase X or what slogan you would use for Y, stop them cold. Tell them you’ll be happy to answer that question once you’re under contract. It’s like a designer I talked with once — she started charging for home consultations because homeowners would take her design sketches and do it themselves. Keep that in mind next time a client is asking a lot of questions about what you’d write.

Writers, what red flags tell you you’re not converting that client?
How do you handle it when you realize this isn’t a match?