In my first real career, I worked in radio and eventually became news director of a radio station. Since I had multiple half-hour newscasts to fill each day, I had to put together lots of stories. That often meant calling people who had no idea who I was. It was a form of cold-calling and I got pretty good at it out of necessity.

When I became a freelancer, one of the suggested ways to gain clients was to cold-call businesses. Despite my comfort level with picking up the phone and making calls to people I didn’t really know, I decided that, for me, cold-calling wasn’t the approach I wanted to take.

I have no doubt cold-calling can work, because I know people who have found lots of success that way. My success as a freelancer came a different route.

I mention this because I read an article today on Clayton Makepeace’s site. It was written by Bob Bly and titled The Trouble With Cold-Calling.

I read a lot of Bob’s books when I started my freelancing career, so I have a lot of respect for him.

What makes his article interesting is the responses, one of which is by another guy I have a lot of respect for and whose books I’ve read: Peter Bowerman. Peter is pro-cold-calling. (As a useless aside, try saying “pro-cold-calling” really fast five times.)

It’s great to see these two, and others, debate this issue. That’s why I’m pointing you to the article today.

As I said, cold-calling wasn’t for me, but I’m not anti-cold-calling. I’m a “whatever works for you” type of person. I’m also a “if you don’t have any clients, you can’t afford not to try everything you can to build your business” type of guy.

But if you’re not sure if it’s something you should do, read the article and the responses… it might help sway you one way or the other.

I just got Peter Bowerman’s excellent Well-Fed ePub in my inbox. I’ve mentioned Peter before on this blog. While he mainly deals with freelance copywriting, so much of what he says applies to freelance design.

He was talking about using some common sense when in doubt about your freelance business. From personal experience, I know how easy it is to either get overwhelmed when you’re just getting started, or to over-think things.

One of the issues you’ll face is figuring out what clients want or need so that you can market to them properly and deliver what they want if they hire you. It’s always a good idea to dig deep and figure out what is motivating the client and every last detail about what they want design-wise.

But there’s also a level at which you need to keep things simple and not be overwhelmed by deciphering the mind of the client. As Peter said,

“Clients want what anyone who hires someone wants: to simplify their life, spend less time doing that task, and have the desired end result when promised and for the fee promised.”

If you know nothing else about what clients want, the previous sentence, in all its simplicity, is a great starting point. Even after you know the gory details about a project, it still comes down to making life easy for the client and doing what you’ll say you’ll do.

By all means, continue to probe and get details about clients and their projects. But when a client believes that you understand that one of your main jobs is to simply make his or her life easier, you’re a lot further along than a designer who comes across as only thinking about himself/herself and cashing that check.

As some of you know, I started my freelance career as a writer. And one of the books that was really important to me in getting off on the right foot was Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer.

If that name sounds familiar, it might be because I’ve mentioned his newsletter before.

Even though I now do layout, I still read Peter’s excellent Well-Fed ePub each month. His October 2007 issue started with a great article. So good, in fact, that I asked Peter if I could reprint it here. And since you’re about to read it, you can guess what his response was.

So, over to Peter…

*****

I was working on a project recently for a financial services firm that involved several interviews with client personnel. It was my fourth project with this client, so I’d proven my value to them. I called one of my interviewees at the designated time, and he asked if he could call me back in five minutes. Sure. Thirty-five minutes later, he gets back to me. He was apologetic, I was understanding, AND I automatically, and with zero thought about it, added the 30 minutes “waiting time” to my final bill.

Later, I contemplated what it means to be a professional. It all starts with a mindset. Undoubtedly, there are clients out there who, if they’d kept their hired writer waiting for half an hour, would think, “It’s just a writer. I’ll get back to him/her when I’m done.” Translation: my time is more valuable than yours.

Now, while that attitude is, well, unfortunate, what’s far sadder is that many writers would not only accept that sort of treatment without a peep, but it wouldn’t even occur to them to charge the client extra. Unthinking acceptance vs. unthinking billing (me).

I know that my main client, by the fees he pays me, his repeat business, and yes, his respect for my time, considers me a fellow professional. If he knew I’d been kept waiting for 30 minutes for a set interview, he’d expect me to charge for it, and would likely think less of me if I didn’t. Seriously. And with that acknowledgement of my professional status comes trust: on this project, he didn’t even ask me for an estimate. He knows I’ll deliver a quality product at a fair price.

But, I pick my clients carefully. I work with only those people who will value my time as I do theirs, who value excellent writing, AND have the resources to pay for it. Yes, I realize, that not everyone, at every stage of their careers, has the luxury of being as discriminating. That said, whether you’re making $25 an hour (if you are, don’t tell me, unless you want a scolding) or $125+ an hour, you can absolutely decide to ONLY work for people who respect you and your time. Or, at the very least, if they don’t respect your time, they’re willing to pay for disrespecting it. Here’s to respect.

*****

As a designer, you may not spent much time, if any, interviewing people. But I trust you can still see the value in what Peter has written and can even think of some areas where you should be applying his advice.

I’ll be honest with you…I’m not always as good about this as I should be, although I’m getting better. But that “mindset” that Peter talks about is really key. Design (or copywriting) isn’t a hobby or something that we play with to keep ourselves occupied. It’s our profession and we need to treat it as such.

Perhaps that means that you mention in your client agreements that certain things will result in an extra charge. This might require you to think back on some of your projects and see where you were giving away your time when you should have been charging for it. And if you come up with items like that, work them into your agreements.

That’s another reason why I advocate a “buddy” system…finding another designer that you share victories and failures with. I’m fortunate to count another designer as a close friend. We share just about everything when it comes to the lessons we’re learning so that we both improve and get the respect we deserve as professionals.

Peter’s Well-Fed ePub is a free, monthly newsletter. You can subscribe and check out some of the back issues here. I highly recommend that you do. As I’ve stated in the earlier blog post, I think it’s important to know what copywriters know. And as freelancers, what we designers go through isn’t too different than what the writers are going through and that’s something Peter focuses on quite a bit.