Understanding the scope of work is a very important part of your freelance journey because as you’re starting to work with clients and you’re on these phone calls and you’re on these sales demos. Understand exactly what the client wants is what will dictate how successful you are going to be. The truth is in freelancing scope creep is a big problem and scope creep is when you start out doing one thing over and over time a client starts asking for more and more.
And I learned this the hard way.
Some of my initial clients to begin with, I didn’t have that clear scope of work down on paper. So, I would use things like digital marketing, and social media advertising when I should have used more specific terms, such as. Facebook advertising, and website design and even going further than that and speaking about how frequently I will be doing things and what is included in that project.
Having those clear written deliverables allow you to go back to something that was agreed upon in writing. And I like to keep this all through Upwork messaging. So, then you can show them an exact message to Upwork of what you guys agreed on initially. This will help you develop those clear deliverables and stick to then throughout the course of the project. If the client wants something that’s outside of that scope, that’s no problem. That gives you an opportunity now to upsell them and offer an additional service.
Ask How Success is Measured
When you’re on call with potential clients and you’re on sales demonstrations and you’re in that qualifying period, always ask them how they are going to measure success. It might sound simple, but in reality, it’s more complicated. Get specific with this.
If they say they just want more leads, ask them how may more leads in success to them? it is one hundred leads per month or it is $200? It is a thousand? And then do deeper. Ask them how much they’re able to afford for each lead is fifty dollars a lead good is 10 or five. It all depends on the business you’re speaking to because every product and service being sold has a different profit margin. So, you need to understand how you’re going to measure success.
So, when you go and start to work on the project, there’s no surprises down the line. You and the client need to know exactly what is going to be delivered on both ends. So, if the client needs to be the one to help deliver content and photos for you on market on their website, that need to be in the scope of work, and it need to say that you were only working with content that the client provides.
This will help you if, for example, the client comes to you and says that you’re not providing any content for the work and you can do back and show them exactly where you agree that they are the ones that are going to provide that for you. it’s very helpful because:
People forget what they say.
It’s very easy to try to get more out of a freelancer once they’re already working on a project.
Usually it’s easy for a freelancer to just try to help that client out because they want to secure that relationship for the long term.
But I’m telling you is to not get yourself in the position and make sure you understand how success is going to be measured with that specific client on that specific project.
Be Big on Communication
Stay dedicated to being on big communication. Don’t hold anything back. Make sure you ask all the questions you need until they answer everything you need to know in those two previous points.
If they’re not giving you clear answers on how success is measured or what exactly they need you to provide, it’s not time to give them a quote yet. If they keep pushing you on price and you still can’t get those answers, it’s showing you they’re not ready to even more forward yet. it’s another way to understand what the scope of work is and how close you are to landing that client.
Determining what to charge
Now that you understand the entire scope of work for the project and you understand how success is going to be measured. Now, it’s time to settle on a couple prices for the different services you are going to offer. As I say earlier, never just give one price for one product or for one service. You want to give multiple options to the client. So, they can decide what’s the best fit for them. I like to provide three different options for each potential project, and what I do is I provide it in an incremental basis.
So, I’ll start with what I can provide for the cheapest amount and then for the middle most amount and then for the most amount. That also helps the client understand that based on what they are going to pay, they’re going to get a different amount of value. This helps you get away from always being tied to hourly positions and helps you get paid for the value.
When you are determining what to charge a potential client, it’s a combination of a few factors you want to look at what the client’s budget is, that they posted the length of the job and the skill level that they’re looking for. So, if it’s an hourly position, they’ll normally put a range there of what it is that they’re looking for. And you can start to combine all those different factors and understand what you can get away with charging for the value you provide.
For this specific example, they’re looking for expert level freelancers and they’re looking to pay 50 to 100 dollars an hour for that freelancer.
Conclusion
Now you have a very good understanding of how to structure profitable deals in 2022. You have learned a lot to land your first job and this is very easy for everyone who really wants to work.
When you’re on call with potential clients and you’re on sales demonstrations and you’re in that qualifying period, always ask them how they are going to measure success. It might sound simple, but in reality, it’s more complicated. Get specific with this.
If they say they just want more leads, ask them how may more leads in success to them? it is one hundred leads per month or it is $200? It is a thousand? And then do deeper. Ask them how much they’re able to afford for each lead is fifty dollars a lead good is 10 or five. It all depends on the business you’re speaking to because every product and service being sold has a different profit margin. So, you need to understand how you’re going to measure success.
So, when you go and start to work on the project, there’s no surprises down the line. You and the client need to know exactly what is going to be delivered on both ends. So, if the client needs to be the one to help deliver content and photos for you on market on their website, that need to be in the scope of work, and it need to say that you were only working with content that the client provides.
This will help you if, for example, the client comes to you and says that you’re not providing any content for the work and you can do back and show them exactly where you agree that they are the ones that are going to provide that for you. it’s very helpful because:
Stay dedicated to being on big communication. Don’t hold anything back. Make sure you ask all the questions you need until they answer everything you need to know in those two previous points.
If they’re not giving you clear answers on how success is measured or what exactly they need you to provide, it’s not time to give them a quote yet. If they keep pushing you on price and you still can’t get those answers, it’s showing you they’re not ready to even more forward yet. it’s another way to understand what the scope of work is and how close you are to landing that client.
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