The freelance writer gets confused whether he should write a free sample or not. He knows that refusing to write a free sample will mean losing the client, and writing a free sample may result in client’s disappearance, which is not unheard of in the business. Many clients, under the disguise of asking for free samples to evaluate the candidacy for a fictional big project, just take samples from various freelance writers and disappear.

The question is what should a freelance writer do, in situation like that?

There is not one single answer to this. You may or may not write a free sample. It all depends on you and kind of sample being asked to write. I cannot tell you that you should write or not, but I can tell you about the process I go through when deciding on whether to comply with the wish of getting a free sample or not.

Client authenticity checklist

Indeed, you need check the person’s authenticity before saying yes or no to his wish to have a free sample, and you can do this by doing the following things, at least I do these things:

1. Run a Google search with the client’s name, nickname along with the words like scam, cheat, fraud, scammer, etc., one at a time. This is done to find whether there is any reported fraudulent activity related to him. If he has done anything mischievous to people or service providers, you may find something. Well, this does not happen always, but most of the time, you will get what you are looking for.
2. I check the reviews and rating of a client, if I have been approached by him through a freelance exchange websites or forums. If there is enough positive reviews about a client then I think favorably of his request
3. Is the client giving me too rosy a picture to be true? A cheater will often show you a grand, often unrealistic, view of the future, in case you get the work, for which you will have to submit a free sample custom written on topic given by him. I stay away from such bait.
4. I never write a sample, if a client asks for a sample of 500+ words. From my experience I can say that such demands often come from clients with dubious intentions. I often offer to write a sample of not more than 250 words, and occasionally 300 words.

These are steps I run a client through before accepting or rejecting his offer. I think this will work for you. At least you should try this strategy, if you do not have any. Something is always better than having an absolute zilch.

There is another fact, and it is related to objection handling. No matter what objection your clients have, or what problem they say they have, you can handle it and that too by following a set of steps given below.

Sincerely listen to what he has to say

Do not object or stop your client from speaking his heart out. Cutting him short is a sign of weakness. Let him speak not only and try to understand his point of view on the matter at hand. More so because he may himself tell you the answer to the objection he has raised.

Make him talk

If your client is not the kind who bares his heart out then make him talk. Ask questions that will make him reveal more about the objections. More often than not clients reveal the solution when talking about their objections, so make them talk.

Ask questions related to the objection your client raised

Ask questions to unearth the reason behind the objection raised by your client. Quite often, the issue raised by the client is mere a disguise (or external appearance) of the real objection he has. You need to ask relevant questions so that you can unearth the real reason behind his denial to make a purchase now.

Do not try to prove them wrong

Proving your clients wrong is the worst thing you can do in a sales situation. You are not there to win a debate, so do not go with that mindset. Let you client speak about his problem, and except that whatever he says is write, after all he is the one who is there stuck in a problem.

Be gentle to him, and even if you have to say that your client is wrong, say it in a way that it does not hurt his ego. It should not appear that you are playing the one-upmanship game. Make him realize that you are trying to solve his problem by understanding his point of view of the situation.

Take notes

This is vital, and notes taken when the client was talking will also help you in addressing his concern. Take notes, but not in a way to break is stream of thought. Your note taking should go undetected.

The things I have discussed above about objection handling are very important. You need to cultivate yourself in such a way that the above given objection-handling technique becomes part of your nature. Inculcate these into yourself, and practice it until it becomes your nature.

Then what other works a client will demand?

Basically, you will be asked to do stuffs related to writing only. And in my career, primarily I have been asked to do following types of work (other than writing):

• Many clients have asked me to do like keyword research, for writing purpose only. This actually is not all that bad. It helped me conceptualize the article or press release while researching.
• At times, clients also asked me to submit articles to various social bookmarking sites. I helped my clients with 2-3 submissions, at max. I do not think I would have agreed to submit an article to 100 or so social bookmarking sites. It would have been waste of time for me, but for 3-4, I never said no.
• Clients may also ask for content suggestions, and about other things he can do to meet his goal. This in fact is an opportunity in disguise to cross sell other services that you offer. If you are writing only articles for your client then you may suggest him to use press release to get some link juice, or may be forum posting and all.
• I have also given some marketing and SEO suggestions to my clients. Depending upon your background (I have my background in marketing), you can either say yes or politely say no.

Word of caution

Do not say no to your clients’ request, at least not directly, if you can help him. And also do not ask for money for every suggestion that you offer—I know people who do so—because it looks cheap. For that work you may get paid, but it will reflect badly on your professionalism. You may lose the client.

If the work is going to take hours of your work then say this to client, and if it is going to take hardly 10-15 minutes then do not bother. It also depends upon your relationship with your client.

A similar need has risen in the wake of the current corporate fiasco. This time the reason for the failure is the greed and shortsightedness of the corporate executives, of the managers who run the company and the world economy under the disguise of inspirational leaders. Their greed and focus for short term profit led the whole world to the economic crevasse, a crevasse so deep that coming out from here is very tough and will require the strength of character that is lacking in today’s’ business executives, and even if we come out of this crevasse and the economy revives, the world will never be the same again. The base has already shifted, and now an altogether different type of management style is needed to run business; now we need some truly inspirational business leaders who can pull us single handedly out of this fissure.

If the time is good, movement is easy, and when we do not need to exert ourselves to move ahead then we need someone just to look after the entire process, and to point out if something goes wrong, which rarely does. In such times we need a manager, who does not need to be inspirational or charismatic, he should only be diligent.

But, if the time is not favourable, and things started falling apart, these managers render themselves useless. In situation like these we need true leaders. The leader who can pull even the last one of us out from the deep crevasse we are stuck into by the sheer strength of his character. In such situations, we need someone to inspire us, someone to motivate us and instill the lost self belief in us. This is not the time, when dictating task and measuring the performance records will fetch any result. These tools were made for the time when things were normal, not for the time when everything has fallen apart. They will not be of any more use, but unaware of these facts today’s business managers are continuously using the same set of tools, which led them to this disaster, and the more they use it the deeper we fall in the trench.

This is the time when a fresh thinking is needed to assess and deliver the solution that was never heard of before. We need to understand that we cannot solve the problem with the mindset in which the problem was created. We need to shift the paradigm, we need to do away with the managers and their old way of thinking, and replace them with visionary leaders and their innovative ideas. We need to look for the leader who has a deep understanding of the situation and who is not scared of trying new things. We do not need those pretentious “been there done that” managers, rather we need an honest leader who accepts that he has not been through everything, and one who has the courage to accept that he doesn’t know the solutions to all the problems, but still he believes that if we work together we can get out of this economy crevasse. This is the style of leadership, which is needed. We need Leadership 2.0 to solve our problems. Like Web 2.0, Leadership 2.0 should also stand for every change that is forthcoming.