Tomedes Translation Services,
Sheffield, England
http://www.tomedes.com
Part 5: Your Clients
Clients are the lifeblood of your translation service. The fact is, without clients, you have no business. One of the most important aspects of your freelance translation service is to find clients and then to develop and maintain good relationships with them so they return to you again and again with projects.
It is always a pleasure to work with good clients, to establish a professional relationship built on mutual respect and trust. It is worth your time to market yourself and your translation services to attract the best. A first step in establishing trust is to reassure your clients that you have the skills and expertise to finish their job in a timely and professional manner.
Unfortunately, more clients do not necessarily mean more income. More translation jobs do!
More clients do mean more negotiations, more financial paper work and more headaches for most translators.
Too many translators spend too many resources getting new clients that will not bring them more jobs. We believe that translators should focus on translating and not marketing because that's what they are good at.
Try looking for a minimal number of clients that will bring you tons of new translation jobs each. Take www.Tomedes.com for example – one client (a single and secure payment source) that will let you work on many translation jobs at your time and your rates.
Chapter 5.1: What is the best way to get new clients?
When getting new clients you must set a goal. The best goal as we in www.Tomedes.com see it is getting the most profitable clients for the least resources spent.
There are many ways freelance translators get new clients. We will focus on the most common ones.
1. Good old advertising – Many translators' still use old-fashioned ways, like newspapers ads and postal flyers. These methods are relatively expensive and their return on investment is usually negative. We would advise you to focus your efforts on online marketing.
2. Online classified ads – this is a basic online method many translators use. Looking for job on websites like www.craiglist.org and www.monster.com or local jobs sites usually requires a lot of time without making a real advantage of the global nature of the translation.
3. Online advertising – This method is one of the most popular ones, particularly using Google AdSense or a similar tool. Advertising your services to people who looked for the exact same services using Google or other search engines is a great idea. The problem is, all the translation tycoons have already been doing it for a number of years. You will need a lot of money to compete with them and to get reasonable leads using this method.
4. Join a translation agency – joining a translation agency was a good option a few years ago but not anymore. Agencies spend a lot of money on marketing due to growing competition, and the freelance translator ends up paying their advertising expenses through high commissions.
5. Translation marketplaces – this is definitely the best option today and more and more freelance translators realize that. Working from home or a small office at your own time and your own rates is a privilege translators did not have just 5 years ago.
But even among the translation marketplaces, you have a few different options.
You should look for one that delivers you a single secure payment as opposed to many small transactions from clients from all around the world.
You should look for one that will handle the negotiations with the client for you. This will save you a lot of time and money. There is only one marketplace that fits all the above – www.Tomedes.com
Chapter 5.2: How should I negotiate with my clients?
Many translators ask us for negotiation guidelines. The best advice we give them is not to negotiate. One should do anything he can do avoid negotiation.
Your client is probably more experienced than you in negotiation and negotiation often leads to unbridgeable conflicts between a translator and a client.
Working with www.Tomedes.com you will never have to negotiate with the client. www.Tomedes.com will manage the marketplace for you.
If you are still interested in negotiation guidelines, here are a few tips that may be worth a fortune:
1. Decide on the thresholds you are not going to cross. For each negotiation parameter – money, time, revisions - define your limit. Then, decide on your starting point for each. You must leave a bargaining margin for each parameter
2. Put yourself in the place of the client – try to think as the client thinks. Analyze which parameters are more and less important to him and when talking to him, say what he wants to hear.
3. Don't make the first move – a basic negotiation guideline is always let the other side make the first offer. That also works for your case. Ask the client about his budget and his timetable - when he needs the translation job to be completed. You might be surprised by his answers, so don’t sell yourself short.
Chapter 5.3: How should I handle rude clients?
The best way to handle rude clients would be to avoid them. Unfortunately, we cannot always identify a rude client when we meet one, so here is a list of proper reactions for rude behaviors by clients:
1. Action – The client does not value my work. He does not appreciate the time, effort and thinking I devoted to translating his document.
Reaction – No action will compensate you for your feeling. Any reaction on your part will probably elicit a negative response from the client, and this chain of reactions will do no good for you or for your business. The best action would be to move on to working for a better client.2. Action – The client expects me to work for free – he wants me to proofread, translate or fix revisions for free.
Reaction – In this case, you might ask a colleague if the task the client is asking you to do for free is reasonable. You cannot be objective at this point and free revisions and even free translations in some cases may be acceptable.3. Action – The client requests endless revisions.
Reaction – You must always define the number of free revisions before starting the translation job. When you consider his revision requests, be honest. Does the client exaggerate or are these revisions essential due to your mistakes or misunderstanding. If you believe the client is exaggerating, talk to him and try to explain it to him with examples from the domain of his occupation.4. Action – Payment issues – The client is willing to pay you only a partial amount, not willing to pay at all or wishes to postpone the payment.
Reaction – These cases are unfortunately more common that one would expect. You should explain to the client in a polite manner the importance of this payment for you before threatening him with legal issues (most of the time, he knows your threats have no actual meaning).
Every business has lost debts and in some cases it will be better to go on and work on other translation jobs instead of hiring a collection agency.
The best method to deal with rude clients is to avoid them in the first place. By working with as few clients as you can, you will be able to develop long-lasting relationships with your clients. When you work with www.Tomedes.com we will handle the client relationship for you - a great idea to avoid these difficult issues.
Chapter 5.4: How should I handle unexpected events
You probably have experienced some unexpected events that affected the quality of your work or made you miss a deadline for a translation job. Try managing your risks in advance – think of any event that may happen and incorporate it in the quote you give the client. For example, if you know you will be unable to work one day, add this day to your quote.
The best advice we can give you is to be honest with your client. The moment you learn of something that might affect your work, contact your clients and let them know. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn that usually they understand completely and will not ask for any compensation.
Anastasia, A Russian translator registered with www.Tomedes.com , told us about a time when she accidentally sent a translated document to the wrong client. She immediately contacted both clients and surprisingly both understood her honest mistake and appreciated her being frank with them.
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