You Can’t Build a Business on top of Unresponsive Customers
Working as a freelancer, you end up talking to all sorts of people. From the finance guy in New York who is looking for “affordable talent” in Eastern Europe or India to people who are looking for a legit, experienced consultant.
Putting yourself out there is certainly uncomfortable for someone used to doing objective work. You’re used to actually making systems talk to one another, and monitor the setup until it’s error free. To tweaking the design until the last pixel has been aligned perfectly. And now you have to talk to people? That’s not what you signed up for .. or is it?
Once they find a project (or more), most people get buried in the day to day operations. They forget to keep putting themselves out there constantly, and to keep communicating with their customers. The simplest way to see this is when the first prototype is delivered to the customer. This is usually when there is a lot of tension and disagreement on what was supposed to be ready. Conversations like “this doesn’t work / yep, because it’s not supposed to be working yet” are all too common.
Which brings me to my point. You and your client are already approaching the situation from different angles. There is no need to widen the communication gap even more. Be proactive, get them to try the prototype sooner rather than later. Make sure that they actually see what you’re doing and play with it.
Of course, they will be “busy running a business” or “working a full-time job” to pay for delegating this work to you. Don’t let that get in the way. A customer that is not communicating with you but is paying you, is very risky business. The later they play with your work, the less probable it is for them to stay on as a client. You will get used to getting the money from them, and you will get burned when they choose a different contractor out of the blue.
Why? Because when they do see your work, the gap between what you imagined and what they imagined will be too big. And they will have spent enough money to make them feel “it’s a disappointment”.
The sad part, is that this doesn’t only happen with freelancers. It’s all too common for the work of the engineers to be ignored by the sales and marketing teams until the very last minute before the launch. When they need a “demo” and they try to slip in “just a few small requests”. This only contributes to a building pressure and missed schedules.
Dear engineers, rise above. Communicate with your non-technical peers and make them listen to you. Today!
