How important are professional relationships in the life of a Freelancer?
Hello IH Community,
For those of you that are freelancers, I had two questions:
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How important are the professional relationships you develop?
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If relationships are important, how do you manage those relationships to stay relevant and top of mind? Or does this not matter as much?
Hi, I think professional relationships are important to develop and maintain in general, but especially for a freelancer. I mean, you never know when and where your next gig is going to come from.
I started as a freelancer for Zenkit (https://zenkit.com/ check them out, they're super cool!) and then after maintaining a close working relationship, I started working for them on a more full-time basis.
I think LinkedIn is a good place to start for managing relationships, and then you can build from there depending on how close the relationship develops.
@DinnieM, thank you for the response. That's a pretty neat product. Do you continue to do contract work or are you trying to move to a full-time gig at Zenkit?
LinkedIn has been great about connecting me with 100's of folks, but trying to sustain anything meaningful has been a challenge. It seems pretty transactional, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of those relationships.
No worries :-) Still contract work, but more regular.
I get what you mean about LinkedIn seeming transactional, but it's a good starting point. I think if you produce quality content (or whatever your labour is) then that will keep you relevant and at the top of people's minds.
Great question! I used to use Contactually for this purpose before they changed their focus to real estate. I now use OnePageCRM and sort people out into Leads, Prospects, Partners and other categories. I can set up actions to follow-up with them in x number of weeks, months. Will be interesting to see how other people do this.
Hi @richp_
I have heard that from a lot of people about Contactually. Do you find that the CRM allows you to capture everything you need? I always found CRM's data entry to be labor-intensive, and much like the saying goes "crap data in, crap data out". Have you found success using OnePage?
I have found that a simpler interface helps with being able to quickly input data. I've got an integration set up with my email software, Help Scout which means I can quickly add a new contact. Not as detailed as the bucket technique of Contactually and some of the other products I've seen on Product Hunt for follow-ups.