Alright. You may have learned the basics to distinguish yourself in the freelance jungle, but to land a job, one of the most effective 'business cards' is having credibility thanks to a large pool of satisfied clients you have worked with. Today, we'll see how to ask existing clients for that precious feedback. Let's roll!
Asking Clients for Feedback
First, this supposes you already have some professional work done under your belt. Even just a single client's feedback makes the difference, so don't worry if you're yet to reach five, ten, or even more feedback submissions.
What I usually do is keep track of every invoiced client, and as soon as I receive the money, I will wait one month more, then re-contact the client. It's often via email. Either with a new message or, better, as a follow-up of the completed project conversation (so that they will easily remember me).
So, I'd start asking if the end client (if I'm talking to an agency) was happy with the quality, and in the same message, I'd continue with requiring feedback to help me grow my business as a freelance.
At this point, I wait for an answer. This does not always happen, and in that case, I don't get discouraged but keep working on more projects for that client, asking for feedback every, let's say, six months until I get an answer.
Sometimes the response might be negative, and at that point, it makes no sense to insist. But if they accept your professional request, great: feedback is guaranteed!
The ProZ Feedback Card
Having a personal website page where you gather all your client feedback is very effective. Personally speaking, though, I have a good presence on ProZ and I just prefer to share my ProZ Feedback card instead.
About the Feedback card: when inquiring clients for feedback to add there, we can ask for a 'thumbs up', a written review, and a rating from 1 to 5 stars. Of course, I always ask all three, and expressly instruct the client to leave 5-star feedback, if they want to give a rating too (anything below 5 is detrimental to the reputation of our ProZ profile).
For a direct link to feedback submission for the Feedback card, simply copy-paste this (it's my personal one), and replace the digits with your ProZ profile ID:
To get your profile ID, just go to your ProZ profile page, copy the digits from the URL, and replace them with the digits of the link above. Very easy.
Keep Collecting Contacts
So, remember to collect contact information from your clients (e.g., in a spreadsheet). This can include anything from email addresses to social media links. What's important is that you have a way to keep track of them for marketing purposes - such as gathering feedback. You can then easily get in touch with them.
Clients will never get back to give feedback for you to show off. You need to take the first step if you're to reach higher-paying clients.
In the next post, we'll get back to structuring our email to land a job with a new client. See you soon.