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Going Pro - Your First Paying Client
Part
VI: Taking Care of Your Clients
Your clients, even the ones for whom you developed sites free of charge, are your greatest asset and deserve your care and attention. There is absolutely no doubt that the most important source of new clients for most developers is referral from existing ones. To
maximize this valuable source of work you need to do all you can to make sure that your clients are delighted with you.
There are obvious basic things you need to be meticulous about: answer their emails and calls promptly; be straight in your dealings with them; give them the benefit of your knowledge but make sure you build the site they want, not the one you might prefer; make an effort to under promise and over deliver and make huge efforts to avoid doing the opposite.
Being pleasant and helpful in all your dealings with clients may seem obvious, but is very important. People like doing business with people they like. A smile in your voice on the phone even if you don't really feel like smiling and a friendly tone in your email correspondence can be very important in bonding the client to you and making them feel comfortable in discussing any issues they have with your work. More problems arise due to lack of communication than for any other reason so smoothing the lines of communication will benefit both parties in the end.
Try not to take criticism personally. If you put great effort into a proposed design with which you are really pleased and the client hates it on sight just smile, file it away for another day and get on with the revisions. Criticism is a tool, each critical comment is refining your understanding of what the client wants and bringing the project a step nearer to completion.
None of this means that you need to become a doormat. If you have a client who makes unreasonable demands, asks you to do work you consider to be unethical or with which you are uncomfortable, constantly disregards what you know to be good advice or is not making payments as agreed, then you are perfectly within your rights to terminate your relationship.
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Conclusion and Links
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Part V: Managing the Project
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