Best clients know value of experience | Jan 21st 2007
By Jacqueline Dooley
It doesn’t matter whether I call myself a freelancer, consultant, subcontractor or remote employee, at the end of the day I bill myself as an expert. I’ve been in the online marketing industry for nine years — longer than most of the people who hire me to work for them.
This lends itself a lot of responsibility. In my experience, companies reach out to freelancers for one of two reasons: because they need someone who can come in at a very high skill level and work directly with a client for a short period of time or out of sheer desperation.
In first scenario, companies are truly looking for experts and, as a result, these types of projects tend to be the ones I enjoy most. The agency that brings me on board as an expert will likely have some experience working with a consultant. They will immediately recognize my value based on my level of experience and will often introduce me to the client from day one as a valuable resource for the project.
It’s when companies hire me out of sheer desperation because they are short handed and need somebody, anybody to help get the work done, that I run into trouble.
Agencies that rarely or never outsource to freelancers usually don’t know how to work with them. They see me as a vendor, not a member of their team. They usually don’t know how to best leverage my expertise and they keep my interaction with clients to a minimum. They don’t recognize my value and grudgingly include me in day-to-day correspondence. Even though I may be able to come in and get the job done with very little direction, they see me as just another body doing busy work.
Generation gap
The truth is that while sometimes I feel like the oldest person in online marketing (particularly when I visit agencies where half the staff are in their early twenties), I’m proud of the length of time I’ve been in the industry. And you know what? It does make me an expert.
I really believe agencies are doing themselves and me a disservice if they don’t leverage that to their advantage when they bring me on board to work on a project.
Perhaps I don’t sell myself like this because I’ve taken on the apologetic stance of the subcontractor grateful for work rather then presenting myself as an expert that can add very real value to any project.
Whether I call myself a freelancer to one client, a subcontractor to another or an expert consultant to yet a third, I’m still doing pretty much the same thing for all of them. So why should it matter what label I put after my name? The answer to that isn’t simple because it’s wrapped up in how I perceive myself and how I want to be perceived.
The projects that give me the opportunity to show off my expertise to the entire team — including the client — are the ones I find the most fulfilling. I’m beginning to realize the busy work just isn’t cutting it anymore, no matter how much they pay me.
Maybe I’m a marketing snob, but after nine years in this business I’m much more comfortable sitting at the table with the vice presidents and chief operating officers and talking about how to affect their company’s bottom line than sitting on the sidelines putting spreadsheets together. Perhaps it’s time to hire an assistant.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, January 20th, 2007.