What The Best Freelancers Want Out Of Your Business
By JD Esajian on June 19, 2015
What do the best outsourced team members want from those they choose as clients?
There is a ton of advice available on how to find, hire, and manage great outsourced team members, for both independent real estate pros and companies. However, there isn’t much on what they are looking for and how to actually draw the best prospects. This is critical. Whether you are a solo real estate investor investor, brokerage, or crowdfunding portal, the one with the best talent wins. How do you get the best to come to you, apply to your job postings, and stay?
According to Wall Street Journal coverage of the trend to outsourcing in June 2015, there are almost 7,000 jobs available every day, just for sales people, on just one outsourcing platform (Upwork). There may be many more job opportunities for content writers, data entry assistants, website designers, transcribers, and others. Remember, they can pick from jobs anywhere in the world. The job market has certainly flipped from where it was 7 years ago. In addition to needing to budget more for labor, real estate companies and team leaders need to anticipate that talent including agencies and independent freelancers are going to be pickier about who they take on as clients. Note that you are really now a client, not a boss or employer.
What are the best and most valuable of these service providers looking for?
Becoming a Magnet for the Best Talent
The WSJ report on ‘Coming Next: The On-Demand Sales Force’ references a San Diego, CA real estate investor who recently teamed up with one of Tony Robbins sales managers to launch a new podcast on sales. Tony Robbin’s veteran sales team recruiter points out that real estate CEOs and really need to give more thought to both serving their team, and being the type of person that others would want to work for. So how do you do that? What does that look like?
Let’s look at the seven point mental checklist most great real estate freelancers have…
- Is this going to be an easy gig to land?
If you are really great at what you do, people search you out. They bid for your time. As a top notch freelancer you don’t have time for jumping through old school interview processes. You could simply be getting paid instead of spending hours and weeks going through multiple interviews. So instead consider giving more chances and doing more testing. Do some preliminary screening and give someone a shot. If the work isn’t up to par you can dump them, or probably even get a refund. Old school hiring was so intense because employers had to make a massive investment in job ads, interviewing in person, training, and covering overhead for each in-house employee. Those factors are pretty much extinct today. So become more efficient in your hiring too.
- Will they actually pay?
The real estate industry has a notorious reputation for companies that simply don’t pay their vendors, or at least drag out invoices for months. This appears to be getting worse again as more people get back into the business to ride the current boom. Freelancers and even outsourced agencies don’t work like that. They are used to being paid immediately, and often in advance. They work on tight margins and thin cash flow levels. So they are always going to trend towards and prioritize the work of the clients that pay the fastest.
- Will they pay on time?
Some bad apples are ruining it for everyone, and these providers have to protect themselves by ensuring they’ll be paid. And they know that the longer it goes between delivering product and getting paid, the lower the chances of ever being paid get. So start with small projects or limited weekly tasks. Prove you pay and quick. Even automate it by using hourly billing services that deduct from your credit card on a weekly basis. That way you don’t have to think about it. They get paid, and keep working. You get to focus on actually closing more deals rather than getting bogged down in payroll. In contrast; if you drop the ball big time you’ve probably burnt that team member, their referrals, and perhaps the entire platform. And they won’t be shy above leveraging their superior online reviewing skills to let everyone else know either. This is as important as your personal credit report.
- Is this going to be a consistent gig?
Freelancing life is awesome. But the one thing it can lack is a consistent paycheck. Unless freelancers really have a great system down it is unlikely they have consistent year round income. That’s not a deal breaker. They probably have a ton of work. Far more than they can handle. But it is also more efficient for them to have a gig or two that is consistent. This might mean a couple hours a month, or 10 hours a week. But they will prize consistent gigs that provide a regular check. Don’t promise if this doesn’t fit your model. They’ve heard all the promises about “if this works I’ll have a ton more work for you.” Just deliver.
- Is this client going to be easy to work with?
This is different than asking for easy work. The best talent loves challenging work. But they also recognize the value of working efficiently, and in pleasant relationships. If you have to ask for 3 rounds of revisions on a piece then it probably isn’t the best fit for either side. Call it a day in an amicable way. Of course if you didn’t provide any specs for the work or a good project brief then that may not be their fault. This also applies to negotiating and constant bartering. All great real estate pros loves to haggle and negotiate the best deal they can. It’s always worth asking if you can get a discount, or how you can make trade-offs. But if you keep going back to re-negotiate on the same thing on a regular basis you might just burn your bridges. Despite the illusion of freelancers actually working from the beach just a couple of hours a day while they travel the globe, most actually put in an insane amount of hours. Many are putting in 50 to 100 hours a week. So they don’t really have time to take out to reduce their rates after you already agreed to something.
- Will this gig be good for my career?
Smart freelancers and outsourced agencies have an eye on growth and the long term too. They want to know if the next gig or client is going to boost their career, business, resume, and rates, or the opposite. What prestige, visibility, and benefit will they get from helping you?
This goes beyond your awards and TV appearances. Are you working on something that is really cool that they should want to brag about having a part in? Do you have a record of leaving good feedback and reviews for freelancers, or the opposite?
Remember this is more than about money. They want to be a part of success and not linked to failure. So will you actually make use of the work you provide, and are you being efficient? Or are you taking cheap short cuts and wasting your advertising budget? No one wants to be on a sinking ship, regardless of how great the pay is.
Three ways they’ll judge this is by; seeing how fast you implement their work, checking what rates you have been paying others, and visiting your website. You can pretty much sum up any individual or real estate company by their website in about 5 seconds. Have they invested in looking good? Or are they already doomed to fail? Some might even test out your contact forms to see how long it takes you to reply to leads. After all; it doesn’t matter how great a lead generator a freelancer is if you don’t bother to respond to and close those leads.
- Is this going to make me feel good?
You might not care. But the bottom line is that the motivation behind every action is to feel good. You take your hand out of the fire so it doesn’t keep burning. Home buyers buy because it feels good to own. Sellers sell houses to escape the pain of collectors or enjoy more pleasure in an upgraded home. So is working with you going to make the best talent feel good? Are you like the Google of real estate that will boost worker’s egos by coming on board? Will working with you help them to enjoy doing more of what they are passionate about? To do exciting and meaningful work? Maybe that is being a part of a fast growing and innovative company. Or it could be helping others by providing quality and affordable housing. Is their job title going to make them feel good? Job title’s don’t cost you anything. But they pack a ton of value. Never call them ‘assistants.’ Do you want to be somebody’s assistant? Can you upgrade your blogger to being ‘blog manager’, your first sales rep to ‘Lead Sales’ or ‘Business Development Lead’, your social media person to ‘Client Experience Manager’? You might even be surprised how much more they flourish with a better title too!