How to Keep Your Freelance Gigs from Melting Down

Freelance gigs can implode for a huge variety of reasons, including failures on our part such as being overbooked, unfocused or distracted by personal life issues. And sometimes it can feel like our clients are lobbing grenades into the project – delays, miscommunications, indecision and more. Stack too many of these issues in one project, and we have the ingredients for a total project meltdown. Rather than getting angry, the best response is to develop methods of preventing those issues in the future. As the service provider we need to be in control of the experience at all times, and to guide our clients through a process that has structural guardrails preventing the worst kinds of project killers. What we need is a workflow blueprint.

Some people have strong policies in place that protect themselves in their role as the provider, but often those policies are so customer-hostile that they fail the prime objective – great customer service.

Without repeatable and documented process flow, projects can feel unstructured and open-ended. Our clients will detect this lack of structure, and will behave accordingly. In its most comprehensive form, this workflow blueprint includes every step of your processes from prospecting new clients to receipt of payment. It is a step-by-step decision tree of procedures and practices that you have carefully plotted out to ensure the three key objectives –top-tier customer experience, great final product and protection – are always being met and respected. Clients want control over the final product. You want control over the process. A good system gives both sides what they need. Some people have policies that protect them as the provider, but are so customer-hostile that they fail the prime objective of top-tier customer service. Others allow themselves to be trampled on in the name of service. Neither are viable.

Once you have a workflow mapped out, follow it closely on every project. When an oversight is discovered, your needs change, or a client introduces you to some new hellish form of project pandemonium, you update the workflow. But you always follow the workflow. If it’s clear to your clients that you have a well defined and thoughtful process that doesn’t disadvantage them in the ways clients tend to care most about, most will respect your blueprint and follow it and your projects will melt down far less often.