When interviewing a prospective client, or working with a new one, there are three key questions which make or break the outcome of your work together. Getting into your client’s head early and upfront will help you both manage expectation, and establish the key criteria for the most successful outcome:
- What situation do you [client] find yourself in that brings you to enquire about [my work]? What are the challenges you’re currently facing as it relates to [my work]?
- What would be your ideal way of working/engaging with me? [frequency| channel| duration]
- What concrete results are you hoping for at the end of our work together, in other words, how will you know whether engaging me has been successful?
Once you’re both clear on the deliverables, you’ll know whether you’re the right person for the job and if successful, it’ll be easy to reference-check your progress along the way.
BONUS – you can ask the same three questions when the work is done i.e.
- What was your situation…?”
- What was it like working with me…? and
- What results did you get…?
Which is the perfect framework for a rich, textured testimonial.
Cool, hey?