Who’s
Watching?
You never know,
do you? Even if you’re excellent at visualizing, it’s often impossible to guess
who might be watching you when you put yourself out there.
What’s your ideal
professional image? What are you transmitting? Is it consistent? Does it
accurately reflect your business focus?
What’s in a
client? They say it takes seven points of contact to get someone to like, know
and trust you, which is what building client confidence is all about. When was
the last time you worked with someone you didn’t particularly like? Chances are
it was someone who gave you specialized service, someone so knowledgeable that
even not liking them, you still wanted to work with them.
Direct Clients
Working with
direct clients takes years of investing in professional relationships. Typical recent
advice directs us to go to expos, become more knowledgeable in our fields, go
to client events and be well versed in their companies, and current events
generally – all activities that take years to cultivate.
But as you go
about your day-to-day life, professionally and personally, it can be hard to
separate your private and professional lives, because you never know in whose
company you might find yourself, and whether those people might be potential
clients, people who have heard of you, or even someone who is already your
client but whom you had yet to meet in person!
Professionally
you might have the idea that people are getting to know you, reading things you
write, and perhaps even following your work on Twitter. I see myself as a
go-after-clients kind of freelancer, but have you ever considered that clients
are out there hunting you, too? Waiting to see how well you do with current projects
so they can consider using your services in the future? Maybe mystery client
992 has a big initiative coming up in two years and is thinking carefully about
who the lucky translator will be to do it.
Proz invited
lucky li’l old me to participate on The
Pros and Cons of Working with Direct Clients, a panel discussion with
Patrick Weill and moderated by Paul Urwin, Sept 26 2017, in honor of International
Translation Day. This was a big moment for me and a great experience. But I
never imagined that a former major US network news anchor (someone I had known
for two years) would be watching and noting what I was saying about
translation! I was taken aback. And that’s when I realized that most of us can’t
imagine who is watching or listening in on our professional careers.
Paying
attention to who could be watching us professionally is a no-brainer, right? But
what about when we are wandering the world at large, casually and “off-duty”?
Is there ever “off-duty” for a freelancer?
Clients, Clients Everywhere
You may have
heard that airplanes are great places to meet clients, and interesting people
in general. But have you ever thought that every single person you sit next to
on an airplane is a potential client or source of referrals? Thinking this way is
a good start to meeting more potential direct clients.
Everything you
do matters. Every interaction counts. And it all adds up to the reputation you
want to cultivate as a business person.
I was recently
a dinner for fifteen, at a private residence where I had already met six of
those present. It was a lively night with much heated controversial
conversation and opinions flying high. About four hours in, a woman there told
me she knew exactly who I was. She was one of my clients whom I had never met,
and since we had only exchanged first names when casually introduced earlier in
the evening I hadn’t made the link to my professional connection with her. It
was a great reminder that you never know who you’ll run into, even when you’re
in casual mode with friends.
Who’s watching you?
Jesse Tomlinson is an interpreter, translator,
and voice talent. Originally from Canada, she now lives in Mexico and
translates from Spanish into English and interprets in both languages.
She is
currently translating Latin American authors born in the 1980s into English for
Proyecto Arraigo. See her essay on uprooting (“La
vida sin limones”) at http://bit.ly/la-vida-sin-limones. Contact: jesse@tomlinsontranslations.com.