Freelancers: Outperform The Agencies in 10 Steps!

We often think of interactive agencies as the model for efficiency, as businesses that deliver high quality solutions to clients as varied as they are.

However, while on the whole, clients benefit from working with outside agencies, the agency model is fraught with problems, often produces mixed results, and frequently fails to add real value to the business in question.

We've passed the phase when industry experts believed that companies with names like Scient, Razorfish and Sapient could help a business succeed in the new economy just because they sounded like they were on the cutting edge. We're now realizing that the new "new" economy is all about the consumer, and the creation of products and services that these people need.

Freelance designers and developers have the opportunity to avoid the pitfalls into which the big agencies plunged by combining:

• business sense,
• professionalism, and
• a strong desire to add value through their contributions.

Nearly every reason clients cite for commissioning the services of external interactive agencies can also be met with one or a team of freelancers. Interactive agencies promise clients a proven methodology by which they provide expert advice and consultation to deliver on-time solutions that improve their client's performance and productivity.

Freelancers, as I'll explain here, are just as well positioned to deliver with equal success on this promise. I'll describe several reasons why businesses would be wise to choose freelance help instead of agencies, and explore the ways in which freelancers can add value and win repeat business by focusing on the client's requirements and customers.

Why Should A Potential Client Use You?

If you're going to compete with agencies for work, be prepared to justify the perceived risk of choosing a freelancer. Here are some points you might use to convince potential clients that they should choose you over an agency:

Value For Money

For various economic reasons, it is significantly less expensive to go directly with a qualified freelancer than paying for an agency's overhead and indirect. Freelancers typically charge a quarter of the average agency rate for a similar position (less markup), cover their own expenses, and are less prone to surprise clients with unexpected fees for additional related work.

Speed of Delivery

Because there are less contractual details and expenses associated with hiring freelancers, they are able to begin projects much faster than agencies, with lower ramp-up time to quickly begin making a contribution and completing the project.

Ability to Work Onsite

Many projects require the onsite presence of a staff member from the interactive agency to augment the client company's own project team. In this scenario, it is nearly impossible to find an agency who'll assign one resource to one project for an extended period of time, without charging extra fees at a higher rate. However, by being onsite, freelancers can increase the rate of development, iterations and testing, which ultimately creates better end products more efficiently.

Improved Client Collaboration

Overall, the agency model involves little client collaboration. Agencies typically treat clients as just that: external parties, divided from the agency by an invisible wall that stops constructive collaboration from taking place.

As a result, agencies fail to examine and understand the business of their clients, and end up trying to solve the wrong business problem. To avoid this pitfall, there must be a commitment from the agency to work closely with people within the client company who are intimately involved with the challenges, requirements and history of a particular project. Freelancers can bridge this gap by working within the existing team structure as a neutral third party, providing project-specific leadership, education, advice, and ideas that cannot be generated within a traditional agency approach.

Hand Picking the Professional

Hiring freelancers is very much WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). If you've agreed on a proposal, most likely you've also hired the person who will perform the work. Within the agency model, it is rare indeed for a client to hand pick the person they'd like to work with. It is more common for agencies to assign the resource who is currently under utilized or in between projects, often with experience that has little relevance to the particular project in question.

Improved Accountability

While accountability is often cited by managers as the reason for going with agencies, freelancers can provide professional and personal accountability -- a level of trust that's often stronger and more reliable than anything written by legal departments. Legal contracts can also be structured to increase accountability by addressing a client's specific concerns, and creating incentives for the freelancer to meet detailed requirements.