Reputation Management: Problematic Clients in Freelancing

One of the most crucial strategies to employ as a freelancer is reputation management. A good, well-communicated reputation can grow your income at an exponential rate, but a visibly poor reputation can severely hinder progress. One method in achieving a good reputation is to only work for good clients by spotting and filtering out bad clients before entering into a contract.

We’ll look at one tactic in filtering out bad clients in this, but let’s first look at a couple reasons why you’d want to filter out clients that have a high probability of being bad clients for you. The majority of the time, a bad client does not view a freelancer as an expert or professional. Instead, they think of them in an exploitive sense that they can get a lot of labor out of the person for minimal cost while holding the freelancer hostage to a ratings system.

Freelancers can extract the following from this exploitive view from bad clients:

• A good relationship doesn’t matter; only getting a result for minimal payment does.

• The tone of conversation will likely be threatening or controlling.

• Once the result is delivered, don’t expect a favorable star rating or review.

• Stress or mental anguish is probable during the contract.

Case Study

Fortunately, if you follow good proposal writing practices that focus on solving the problem, in most cases you will spot these kinds of bad clients on the reply. So we’ll use a real example from a freelancing platform to illustrate what to look for. In the example, a proposal was written for a job post that had a well-defined problem, and a high-level solution was presented that had already been implemented on another project exactly as needed on this project. A minimum of 1 hour was required to be charged to use this solution on the project (one that would likely take 2 – 3 hours from scratch).

As we look at the reply, consider what you would do if you were the client in the scenario. A freelancer has guaranteed a solution that will only cost 1 hour within your budget and can show the solution in action before settling on a contract. You also know that you need someone on an as-needed basis to solve similar problems in the future. How would you reply to this freelancer as the client?

The exact reply was "Hi David, thanks for applying. Do you always charge a minimum of one hour for smaller tasks? I have all kinds of small tasks such as this that come up frequently." If you would not have written back in this way as the client, then there’s already a communication and personality mismatch. That’s the important thing to understand. Regardless of what we’re about to see as we break down the reply and other factors, this would be an automatic personality mismatch if their reply didn’t come anywhere close to what you were expecting, and it should be a red flag 🚩. You should probably be thinking there’s a 90 – 100% chance you’re going to withdraw your proposal, understanding that giving them any chance to work with you has a high probability of wasting your time.

This is how the potential client’s reply could be paraphrased: “Hi XXXXXX, I looked past the value of your proposal that is likely to save me money and immediately focused on the dollar amount that was already in my budget. I don’t want to pay for your expertise or value your time. If I can pay you a fraction of your worth, I’ll be happy to give you small tasks that will waste your time.” You absolutely have to look for the hidden meanings in communication, and it’s a skill that is developed over time through experience. Was there anything that could give us clues or confirm suspicions from other freelancer experiences with the client? In this case there was.

On two separate reviews, the client stated the job was executed “at the very last minute” and had a “tight deadline”. The repetition of this client’s behavior illustrates the likelihood that they negotiate for bottom payment, procrastinate, and then order the work done in a high-pressure work relationship because of the self-imposed deadlines. There were also jobs in progress that were open for over two months that had no hours clocked against them telling us the confirmed scenarios in the written reviews are likely playing out: the client is procrastinating.

What these potential clients don’t seem to realize is that freelancers are not competing to access the work they have, potential clients are competing for freelancers who can provide the most value. Relationships matter, and good clients know it.

It’s also important to note that the exact same day this event occurred another potential client replied on a separate project starting with, “you sound exactly like what we’re looking for with several projects we’re working on. You were the only freelancer to give us some ideas of directions to take with this one…”. The client in the second brief scenario clearly understands the value of an expert and to build a solid working relationship from the start. In case you’re curious, a great video chat was completed and a mutually agreeable contract was put in place! The first potential client missed an opportunity, and the proposal was withdrawn.

Summary

A good method of spotting a potentially bad client is noting how they reply to a structured and well-written proposal. If the reply isn’t even close to the way you imagined how you would reply to a freelancer if you were the client, you can safely assume that the relationship moving forward is not going to be fruitful. Think of it as that they are not your client, but someone else’s. Surely somebody else will match how they think, but they are not right for you. Entering into an incompatible relationship is likely to end in regret and frustration in addition to damaging your reputation. Keep your reputation intact for the clients that deserve working with you and will treat you as the expert and professional that you are; you will meet them!