Posts Tagged ‘advice’

For most freelancers and contractors, one of the things that customers want is regular status updates.   This may be to provide regular updates on project development, or support provided, activities completed or support/development time used.  Generally, I have 2 or 3 regular status updates that need to be sent every week or so.

Yesterday, I was given a great tip for providing easy status update emails.

Now whilst I am able to avoid having to send project progress status emails thanks to my cloud based project system, I still have to report support time usage for customers who have pre-booked some support days, or quick updates to senior company managers who insist on being kept in the loop but don’t want to go looking for the information.   This tip I was given has saved me lots of effort.

The tip is to simply set up an email with the status report, type a default template email (“Hello, this is how much support time we used…” etc) but before pressing send, use the “Delay delivery” option and set the date to the scheduled status date.   Then, include yourself in the blind copy (so you know when it’s gone, and have the template for the next week or month).

The email will then sit in your outbox, waiting.   Whenever I do an action which will need to be reported, such as do some support work, I just click on the outbox pending email, and add it to the email text.  Come the day of the status update, it gets sent automatically with the progress to date.  Effectively, I am using the outbound email as a notepad (so much easier than trying to remember it all).

When the status emails do get sent, I of course get a copy.  With this copy, I then simply hit “reply to all”, and I have the next template email for the next status run – just remember to change the “Delay delivery” option to the date that the next email is due and remove this weeks/months activities.

Note, with this system it is worth setting the status template email to initially say something like “This week, there has been no activity” so the email makes sense if not changed – this no activity can be removed and replaced with the activity once something happens.

Effortless status reporting.  Thanks for the tip Richard.

One of the things I have found really useful over the past 18 months was to find business mentors.  I have 2 sources of mentors; one is a small business group or 6 people which gets together once a month (or so) and we discuss problems, work out solutions and challenge each other to grow our businesses.

I have also been lucky to find a new Entrepreneur friend who has a lot of business experience.  Over 25 years, he created a business which started as just him, and grew to employ 150 people with a turnover of over 80million a year.   Now and again we meet up, and he gives me advice.

Both forms of resource have really helped my business over the last 12 to 18 months grow in size and turnover.  But Alex has been the best – he has really guided me.

Words on the BIG CHANGE

Just after the new year, I met with Alex for a meal and we got talking about the BIG CHANGE that most business owners look for to quantum leap their business from a struggling start-up into the fully fledged profit generating machine we all yearn for.

Without doubt, the advice on the BIG CHANGE is the one thing that has allowed me to double the size of my company in a year, and as Alex allows me to record the conversations, I provide the key part of the conversation for you:

Alex : The problem is that most small businesses, most freelancers, even most independent high street shops are looking for the BIG CHANGE that will move them up a gear.   Let me tell you a secret – there never is a BIG change that works!
Me: No?
Alex: No.  The only thing that works is making small, constant and positive small changes.  They all add up, and become bigger than the one BIG CHANGE that everybody is looking for.  Even when a company appears to make a big change, it’s just an outside perception of lots of small changes made from the inside.
Me: So what types of changes, and how do I know if they are positive?
Alex: That’s the thing, the changes can and should cover everything.  Marketing, accounting, money management, working, customers, support, products – cover them all with small changes, just make a small change in one area, then move onto something else.   How do you know if they are positive – well most times you can just tell – in your gut.  But if you have a doubt, measure the impact, and if it doesn’t move your company forward, just reverse the change and try something else.
Me: It all sounds great – but sometimes I am just so busy….
Alex: We all are.  We all are.   But, try this.   At the end of every working day, just before you finish, think to yourself “what did I do that moved me forward today?” The answer has to be something other than normal work – completing some code, or making a sale or creating a quote – they are the day to day stuff, it has to be a process change, or a system change or a mind set change or a direction change – something positive.  If you haven’t done anything on that day, stop, and do something positive.  Most positive steps will only take 5 or 10 minutes.
Me: And how will I know what steps to do?
Alex: That’s the easy part – if I asked you to write down some ideas, I bet you could already think of 40 or 50 you could do.  As you think of something you can do, write it down for future action.  If you see a company do something which may work for you, write it down, an article which gives a tip, write it down, you experience bad service but can turn it on its head for your company, write it down.   The hard part is finding the time.  So just aim to do one single positive small change per day, and before you know it, your company will be flying.

You know what, Alex was right on the money.  One small change, each day, and my business is really flying.

I was chatting over a coffee (tea in my case) with another small business owner and he asked my advice.  His problem was he was struggling to find his direction, he was reading lots of books, reading lots of blog posts, and whilst they had some good ideas, he still didn’t have an idea of how to grow or what direction to head.  Lots of reading resulted in very little change.  He asked what I did in those situations.

My Answer : Just Do It, or Skip It

I read a lot – I read business books, business blogs and business articles on twitter.   Some of them give me ideas, some don’t – it’s as simple as that.   Those that don’t, I skip them, forget them, don’t waste any more time on them.  But now and again, one will trigger an idea – something new to try, or a new direction or something to change in some way.

When this happens, I stop, add it to my do list, and move on.   Then as I do my normal work, when time allows or I am in the general area of the idea, I implement it.  Then I monitor it for a while.  If it works, great, I keep it – if it doesn’t, I take it down, delete it or don’t do it any more.

By making small changes, by taking small steps, and by making small course changes towards my goal of a better stronger business, by business will evolve.   I am not looking for the BIG IDEA – the idea that changes everything overnight – the small changes will do just fine

And I do this by taking action – noting it down – coming back to it when time allows – and just do it.

During December of last year, I noticed something odd.   Whilst I received 6 or 7 enquiries a month for new work, throughout the whole of December not a single web based enquiry came in.   I put this down to the time of the year, with the Christmas madness.   After all, checking my Adwords stats showed that people were still clicking through to my web site – so I guess people were just book-marking to come back in the new year, or my services were just not what they needed.  Right?    WRONG!!

What had happened was that my web hosting company were having problems, and as a result they had decided to change the IP address of my SMTP (email) server on their side which meant that when somebody completed an enquiry form – the email went…. nowhere.   The SMTP script did not connect with the SMTP server, and the problem was written to an error log.   The prospect got a nice web page saying that we would be in contact, but of course nobody contacted them because the enquiry was never received.   I have web monitoring on all of my sites, but this is not something that the monitoring would have picked up.

Now I could have put in all kinds of fancy checking, and auditing, and error logging, and error pickup and notifications – but you know what?  It’s just easier, quicker and more robust to perform a step through.

So now, every Monday morning I do a run through.  Starting with one of my search terms in Google, I click through one of my ads (which checks that Adwords is running and the adverts look OK), check that my web page appears when I click the advert, I then click through to the contact me form, and fill it out, to check that the email arrives.

Ok, it costs me £2 a week for the wasted ad-word click, and 2 minutes of my time every Monday.   But if one of those December click-throughs might have been a sale, that very small amount and that 2 minutes could be an awfully large amount of wasted money.

So how often do you check all of your flow throughs?

Time is a precious thing to me.   The biggest lumps of my time are taken up either with my family (any interaction with computers is frowned upon) or working (using computers, in which case I want to spend that time generating customer revenue rather than general surfing).   Which leaves a difficult problem of when and how to keep up with industry news, research or reading interesting articles which I can use to boost my business.

Luckily, there are the odd 2 or 3 minutes scattered throughout the day of wasted time.  Time spent queuing (for a train, at a supermarket, at a post office, etc), time spent cooking (all you have to do is stir now and again), and erm…. Sitting down.   All of these are the perfect times to quickly catch up with the industry news, blogs etc.

In the past, I have already talked about how I use Calibre with an eBook reader to create a book of RSS feeds for reading blogs I subscribe to.   But now, I have found a perfect way to catch up on all the odd articles referenced in twitter feeds, blogs, or emailed through.   This system is a web service called ReadItLater.

ReadItLater, as the name suggests, is a cloud hosted service where you can forward URLs, and then it will build a catalogue for you.  It’s rather like creating a favourite link in internet explorer or Firefox, but with the advantage that you can read the items off line when you have 2 minutes.  Because of the off-line viewing, you can read the saved item even when you don’t have a mobile signal or internet connection.

If you have never used ReadItLater, let me guide you through the perfect set-up for off-line catch-up. 

ReadItLater
The first part is to create a FREE ReadItLater account on the cloud.   Give it a user id and a password (with email verification), and you are all good to go.   Whilst the ReadItLater web site offers the ability to jump to your links through their own web portal, the real power is through the bolt-ons available. 

Internet Explorer/FireFox plugins
Adding a plug to your favourite web browser allows you to mark web pages, items and text for reading later as you browse.   Plugins for all major browsers are available for downloading for FREE – for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and iPad/phone.  Once downloaded, if you see a page, URL or link that is of interest, right-click the page or link and you now have an option to ReadItLater.   The URL link is now sent to your cloud account.  A new ReadItLater chevron button is also added in the toolbar to add the entire current page you are currently viewing.

Submitter
Of course, for maximum flexibility you should add a submitter to your mobile device.   Different versions are available for the iPhone, iPad, Android etc.   The two best (that I can recommend and that are FREE) are DroidSave for Android or EchoFon for the iOS.   With these installed, a new Share option appears from other installed mobile applications (facebook, twitter, your browser, emails, etc).  So if a tweet talks about a news item or a blog post you may be interested in, just click to share, share to DroidSave or EchoFon, and you can ReadItLater.  These apps just sent the URLS (shortened or otherwise) to your ReadItLater account. 

Off-Line Mobile Client  
Now whilst you can open up your saved links using the browser based ReadItLater web application, I find it is much better to install an off-line reading Client on your mobile device.   This application polls your defined ReadItLater account on a regular basis, and then pulls the saved links, together with a copy of the text and images so that you can read the item off-line (with no internet connection).   Once you have read the item, you can then archive it for later reference, or delete it.  Perfect.      The iPhone/iPAD ReadITLater app works well, and for Android, I can recommend the AndReader Andorid ReadItLater app, which works well on both mobile phones and Tablets (I have the Galaxy Tab).

Using this combination I no longer have to bookmark interesting items, add a ToDo to read them, or get distracted into reading them now.  Instead, I can mark the items that interest me, and Read Them Later when time allows.   Perfect.

We have all had those days.  Days when it seems the planets align, the black cats dance across our paths, the gods test us, and we are inundated with problems and screaming clients.  I call them my grenade days – its as if clients spend the morning throwing in virtual grenades into my work pattern either by support issues, problems, emergency changes and the other high priority ‘fixes’.  And for whatever reason, when grenade days arrive, it’s as if all my clients have pre-arranged to make sure I am kept on my toes as problems come in from all directions.

Problems can range from software or products that suddenly, without out input from me, stop working.  Or suddenly has faults that were not there yesterday.  Where there are no obvious problems, I can get emails or calls letting me know that the clients are suddenly not really happy.  This can include calls where they want to spend an hour or so on the phone running through the problems to try and obtain an immediate solution, or that they just want to meet to discuss the problems (without saying what the problems are, resulting in an unpaid meeting).  The worst I have encountered is the 4 word grenade which takes the form “not fit for purpose” – a general ‘it’s all wrong’ call to action.

In case you ever hit such grenade days – either from a multitude of sources or from a single client/project, can I offer you my 5 tips for dealing with these grenades:

Stop and Think
Sometimes, asking them for more information can make matters worse, so the first thing I do is stop and think about the likely causes of any problems described, put them into order or likelihood, and then step through them to see if any are likely.  If so, can any be checked without the customer involvement without too much effort, for a quick win?

What has changed
Products and software do not just stop working or develop faults all by themselves (well, they can, but lets assume that’s not the case).  So the next question to ask is; what has changed?   The common knee-jerk response from customers is generally ‘nothing’, but now run through the list compiled from the thinking stage, and see if anything has changed such as linked products or systems, configurations, data use, etc 

What needs to change
When problems occur, customers will generally tell you what is wrong in fairly dramatic terms, but what they won’t tell you is what they need to fix it.  So ask the question “what needs to change to make you happy again” (or words to that effect).   This puts the issue back on their side of the fence to tell you what to do – you can then decide if the requested action (come to site, fix it so we cant do such-and-such, work out where the data went, etc) is required, urgent and chargeable. 

Remember, they are Human
Humans love stories – and the more complex the story, the better.  Therefore when the customer contacts you with a problem or complaint, it may sound like the end of the world, but it may be fairly small and simple in real terms.   I recall one customer who called to say that the “whole system was reporting rubbish data”, and when we cooled him down and got him to explain in detail what the problem was, it was one figure in one cell of a report which was wrong (and this was down to the data being supplied from another system).  Also, remember that your contact may have the information 3^rd or 4^th hand from their own people, and problems tend to grow in size and importance as it moves up the chain of command. 

Document what is wrong
The final thing I have customers do (after they have finished their rant) is to calmly document the issues in a short (1 page) report which I can respond to.   This puts the emphasis back on them, giving you time to breath.  It is also a great way to make sure that you fully understand the problem, and it gives you something real and tangible to work with.  I have also found that my making a customer go through the document stage, they have worked out the cause of the problem themselves and its something they did.

I know a freelancer/contractor who has a problem.   His problem is that when it comes to applying for work – he always worries that he does not have ALL the skills that a customer is looking for.  Therefore, he is very selective of the contracts that he applies for, with the result that he often finds himself on the bench rather than working and bringing in the money.

Finding yourself faced with a requirement for knowledge on a skill that you do not have is a fairly common occurrence.  In my line of work, typically contracts will be posted with between 10 and 12 skill sets required (or at least desirable), and typically a contractor can only expect to be able to hit 80% of the skills.   But from my point of view, rather than being something to be scared of, this is in fact the perfect situation.

For me, being a successful contractor or freelancer is all about knowledge, and without our boundaries being pushed, that knowledge will soon become confined, specialised and worse – dated.   I much prefer to have a requirement for 10 skill sets of which I have no knowledge of 1 or 2 of the skills required.   As long as it’s not the main skill the client needs, I am happy to either bluff my way thorough the interview or just admit I have no real knowledge of these skills, and then pick up the skill during the life of the contract work.

It’s a perfect win situation.   I can fulfil the majority of the requirements, I can pick up the new skill at the customers site as I work on the project, and effectively, I am getting paid to be trained.   I cannot think of a single contract or freelance job which I have undertaken which has not pushed my experience beyond my current knowledge, and where I have come out the other side more skilled than when I went in. 

So don’t be afraid of the lack of those skills – instead embrace the lack of knowledge and use the contract to expand yourself.

Recently, I was working on a project for a customer, and two of the tasks I was asked to do was to recruit more staff – one was a permanent member of staff and the other was another freelancer to complete some coding.   The permanent position went via a contract listing board, and the freelancer job went to one of the various freelance bid boards.  After 24 hours, the CV’s and bids started to come in, and I was completely shocked by how bad all of the responses were.

Take the CV’s for the permanent position responses.  The advert was for a SQL Server developer, with experience of finance data, and SSIS development skills.   99% of the covering letters went as follows:

To whom it may concern,

Please find attached my current CV.  If you think I would fit the bill, let me know.

Regards

Whoever

Some of the CV’s had the skills I needed, some of them didn’t, but going through all of the CVs was hard work trying to work out who was who.

Then there was the freelance development work – every single one of the responses went as follows:

Hello, We are Such and such a company.  We provide such and such technical skills.  We would love to work with you if you can supply details of the job.  We have many staff who we can use, we will assign one once you tell us what type of work is required, and will complete it quickly and cheaply.  Let us know the details and we will bid.

Seems fine, except the work requirement already said what the work was – it was very specific – it said the databases, how many columns were involved, what the code needed to do, the style of coding to be used, code language, etc etc etc.  Those responding clearly hadn’t even bothered to open the bid details – they had seen the category (coding) and the max bid price, and just sent out a standard cut-and-paste response.

The point is, all the responses, all CVs and all job bids were scatter gun – the people at the other end of the interweb wire were sending out their CVs and bid notes to as many people as possible in the general hope that somebody would bite.   It was really awful to read all the cover letter and bid notes.  If just one of them had taken the time to respond with something which tied them in to the requirement, they would have most likely been awarded the work.  None did – and there were a LOT of CV’s and bids posted.

If I was sending my CV out for the contract work, my cover note would have gone something like

Sir/Madam,

Please find attached my latest CV.  I can confirm that I am a SQL Server developer, and as required, I have extensive SSIS development skills.  I can also confirm that I have experience of the financial data processing as requested, in both a transactional and data warehouse context.  I therefore feel my skills match your requirement.

I hope you agree. If you would like to meet and discuss your requirement or this contract in more detail, my contact details are…. Etc

The scatter gun approach never works.  Agency staff don’t have time to check you match for jobs – so they are more than likely to just bin the CV.  And even if it gets through to the end recruiter, a scatter gun cover letter will never make your CV stand out – you need to be specific and TELL THEM why they need to select you for the contract role, freelance gig or customer work.

So if you are sending out your CV and you are not hearing anything back, take it from me – it’s likely your CV was never opened because your cover letter didn’t call them to action.

One of the things that I have found to be on the increase for me personally over the past 18 months or so is end of work payments.   By this, I mean that I have done the work, completed the project for the customer, installed the software/delivery/report and raised the invoice.  Then, right at the end, the customer will ask for something more.   I am not talking about extra product work (more developments), but instead the customer needs additional services such as support, or call off help time, or question sessions.  I have been asked to supply this extra resource in a variety of ways, and all have their own advantages and disadvantages:

Support and Maintenance
For any company looking for growth, this is the ideal situation – its how big business makes their real money.  Once you have delivered a project, a sum is agreed between you and the customer, and they pay you this fee annually up front and you provide fixes, advice and resolution.  Note, support and maintenance never includes new features or tweaks (these are for enhancement requests for which you charge your normal rates).   Its insurance for the customer – they know your be around to fix things that go wrong and they know how much it will cost them as they have paid up front.  The flip side is that if the support payment charge is too low and they hog a lot of your time with questions and problems, you can actually make a loss against the revenue it can bring.   Of course, if they only need you a little for the year, you have made a shed load of money for little to no effort whilst you go off and do the next project.

The ratio between a support/maintenance figure and the initial delivery/development cost will vary from industry to industry, and of course will be down to the size of the project.  But a starting point (this is typical for say computer software supply) would be around 25-28% of the initial cost, but be prepared to haggle over the final figure.  And of course, if the support is renewed at the end of the 1^st year, don’t forget to include a provision to uplift the yearly charge by inflation.

Call Off Booking
Call off booking is where the customer may need help in the future, so they agree to pre-book and pre-pay for a number of days of effort, and they are then free to ‘call off’ (use) the time as and when required.  They would do this as it makes the administration easier on their side.  Whilst they don’t want to set up formal support agreements, and at the same time don’t want to go cap in hand to their boss to raise purchase orders every time they need help, raising an order for 5 or 10 days of support time in advance may be an easy decision.   For call off booking, its best to make sure that the payment is in advance of use, that the days paid for expire after a set length of time if not used (say 6 months or a year), and that they understand that because they are not on a formal support contract, it will be provided on a best endeavours basis (i.e., you will provide support when your time allows).

Clearly with such an arrangement, you will need to carefully track your time, and I suggest a minimum time slot for rounding.  For my customers, I provide call off booking with a minimum use of ¼ of a day.  If they pre-pay for 5 days and need a quick answer by phone or email, this uses a ¼ day of their 5 days.  This saves having to reconcile down to minutes and hours.   I justify this minimum by the fact they will be interrupting normal work, and it may take an hour or so to get back on track.

Whilst it’s not as good as support and maintenance, call off pre-booked time does mean that you have the cash in the bank for work that may or may not be required in the future.

As and When Agreements
The next arrangement is not really an arrangement at all – it’s most likely what you do now.  When they don’t want to set up support, and don’t want to pre-book, they will just call you when ever they need help, and you charge them.   There is no advantage for them and no advantage for you – so it’s a neutral balance.

Agreed future call off rates and time
The final option is the one to avoid at all costs – where they force you to agree to future day or hour rates, and to be available, with no promise of the work.  All the advantages are on the customer side – and you don’t get any balancing money up front.   The difference between this agreement and the “as and when” is that they have nailed you down to price.  This is not an issue until the time you want to raise your rates, and find you can’t.

Timesheets – urrgghghg – the very thought can make the hardiest contractor, freelancer or small business owner shudder with the thought of over complicated administration.  I mean, timesheets – what is the point?  Really?  Your working hard, your making money, you can see your business bank account growing (or at least not declining), so who needs them right?  Well, maybe you do – or something very like them!

Let me ask you this – the last project you did – be it bespoke for a customer, freelance or on a contract – did it make you money?  Was it profitable?  If so, how much?!?  If you don’t know the answer to those three questions, how do you know if next time you quote for work, you need to up your day rate, increase your estimated time, maybe reduce it to make you more competitive, or if you were on the money?

Over the last 3 or 4 months, I have been recording time on projects.   I have not been over precise in time recording, but generally when I start work on a project I start a clock, and when I am done I stop the clock – it’s as simple as that.  When I was interrupted by a call or an urgent email or went for a cup of tea, the clock just kept running.  But if I stopped work on one project and started on another (for a change of scene) I did change the clocks on my projects.

I did this exercise as I wanted to really see how bad (or good) my estimation skills were on a couple of projects, and to be honest, they are not that far out.  However, I noted that I was quoting a little light on the real time taken to complete projects, so I have now made a mental note to increase all future quotes by around 3% of effort (rounded up to the nearest half day).

Now time recording does not have to be a major chore – there are plenty of free applications available for the web (if you use Freeagent for accounts, BaseCamp or ProjectTeamPM, they all have online time tracking and reporting), Windows or Mac desktop widgets or even better (in terms of recording time when you are not at your desk) on mobile devices such as Android or iPhone.

It doesn’t even have to be a full time commitment – its useful to do detailed time recording for a week (record time on calls, emails, surfing, eating, commuting, etc) to see where your time is being eaten up, and then try some outline time recording on some projects (as I did and described above) for 1 or 2 projects – just to see how good your quotations really are.  Of course, if you have contracts or freelance gigs which are billed on a daily or hourly rate regardless on the amount of time you spend, then I am sure you are already tracking your time correctly… aren’t you?!?