Question for freelancers about contracts
How do you usually send contracts to clients for signing?
My process looks like this every time:
– send a PDF
– client says, “I’ll look at it later.”
– I follow up after a couple of days
– follow up again
– eventually it gets signed… or I lose the file in my inbox
Is this just normal freelance life, or am I doing something wrong?
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This is pretty normal freelance life, but there are ways to reduce the friction:
Make signing as easy as possible - tools like HelloSign, DocuSign, or even Bonsai have one-click signing. The fewer steps, the faster it happens.
Send at the right moment - right after a call when they're excited and committed tends to work better than "I'll send it later."
Set expectations upfront - "I'll send over the agreement now - once you sign we can get started Monday" creates soft urgency without being pushy.
Don't chase forever - if it takes multiple follow-ups, that's often a signal about their commitment level. Sometimes the slow sign is telling you something.
The PDF-and-pray method creates too many places for things to stall. Making the signature process frictionless usually cuts the back-and-forth in half.