Which clients fit the practice
Client fit depends on the match between a freelance writer’s expertise, interests, availability and working preferences and the client’s work, budget, schedule and conduct. The client mix also determines how exposed the practice is to losing one source of work and whether assignments for competing products can be accepted.
Ideal-client characteristics
An ideal-client profile should describe the client’s organisation, problems and need for the writer’s help as specifically as possible, including whether the writer works best with large pharmaceutical companies or niche clients. Building the profile takes experience, including relationships that do not work well, so it need not be right initially. Knowing the profile can help attract and retain clients whom the writer is motivated to help and who often pay the writer’s worth without argument. A good match can make marketing feel more authentic and less forced, encourage repeat business and motivate the writer to add value. Finding enjoyable clients can help sustain the business and avoid demoralising relationships.
A freelance should seek honest, amicable, intelligent, courteous clients whom they like or respect and with whom they have rapport. Early financial need may require tolerating difficult personalities, while an established practice can become more selective. Good clients value the work, accept reasonable fees and maintain friendly but professional relationships with open communication; unreasonable demands combined with unwillingness to pay reasonable rates are warning signs. One writer who was repeatedly asked to work faster and more cheaply decided, after comparing experiences with colleagues, that careful and thorough work was being undervalued and those clients should be avoided.
Shared values can guide selection. Two writers committed to strengthening evidence-based information online rather than alternative-medicine claims found that shared ethos made it easy to decide which clients to accept.
Long-term relationships with well-matched clients can bring productivity, efficiency, financial stability and peace of mind. Fit can be assessed in four categories: project type and topic, required time frame, business agreements and fees, and personal compatibility. Suitable clients match many preferred characteristics; preferred clients match most and avoid most negative attributes; ideal clients match all and avoid all negatives.
Three recommended exercises assess the writer’s strengths, identify suitable clients and establish what to avoid or negotiate.
- List areas of experience and interest, rate their degree and identify desired areas for expansion.
- Identify client types that complement those strengths and match the preferred working style, classify strong and very strong matches, and compile a list of ten potential clients in the very-strong-match category with relevant departments and contacts.
- List aspects of projects and relationships to avoid, clarify or negotiate, combining examples with personal experience.
For the first exercise, examples span four areas.
| Area | Examples |
|---|---|
| Deliverables | Regulatory documents; journal manuscripts; abstracts, posters and podium presentations; grants; slide decks; newsletters; promotional materials; educational materials for healthcare professionals; continuing-medical-education needs assessments; sales training; patient and public education |
| Writing styles | Prescriptive; scientific; promotional; plain language |
| Subject areas | Therapeutic areas; rare diseases; pharmaceuticals; devices; pharmacoeconomics; managed care; modalities such as biologics and gene therapy |
| Responsibilities | Clear, concise writing; reference annotation; reference and document formatting; project management; tables and figures; collaboration with scientific graphic designers; revisions and compilation of stakeholder feedback |
Client types considered in the second exercise include the following.
- Pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, hospitals and academia.
- Publishers, professional societies and medical communication companies.
- Medical education companies, medical advertising agencies and public relations agencies.
Preferred client characteristics include the following.
- Recognition of expertise and appropriate compensation.
- Timely invoice payment and projects in preferred writing styles, formats and topics.
- Manageable timelines and contracts that protect both parties and permit preferred software, hardware and scheduling.
- Professional, pleasant conduct.
Working from established expertise can be less demanding than trying to produce the best work while learning a field. Once the strongest matches are identified, professional organisations and LinkedIn can provide ways to meet representatives and market specific deliverable and therapeutic-area skills.
Less desirable characteristics to consider avoiding include the following.
- Chronically tight timelines.
- Chronic scope creep without compensation.
- Lack of boundaries, such as calls or emails at night, at weekends or on holidays.
- Lack of consideration, such as scheduling meetings without checking availability.
Knowing preferred work, available capacity and desired relationship characteristics can make it quicker to assess a prospect and focus marketing on clients aligned with the practice.
Client size
Preferred-provider arrangements can make large pharmaceutical companies difficult for a small supplier to reach. One fifteen-person medical-writing company in France responded by trying to grow and by targeting small and medium-sized companies, particularly French biotechnology companies for which fifteen staff represented substantial capacity. That practitioner recommended seeking clients whose size suited the supplier, suggesting that small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies could be more receptive to individual freelances than large pharmaceutical companies.
A young biotechnology company that has not chosen preferred providers or hired a medical writer can offer an opening for a small supplier. A visit, presentation and request for a project can begin a partnership that may continue as the company grows.
A less experienced client or younger company without established writing processes can create opportunities to develop style guides, templates and medical-writing or review procedures as separate billable projects. One experienced freelance found that some younger companies, especially venture-capital-funded companies under milestone pressure, prioritised speed over accuracy or completeness and sought help from their regulatory personnel or consultants in providing caution.
Markets and services
A practice’s markets can be defined by writing type, disease area or client type, and the breadth of coverage depends on the writer’s goals and interests. An annual review should consider enjoyable clients and projects, whether to specialise or diversify, willingness to learn unfamiliar subjects or formats and comfort with one or two familiar niches. For example, two partners who had managed large projects involving writers, artists, designers, typesetters and printers decided to concentrate on writing across media and client types because full-time project management, although potentially more lucrative, did not offer the quality of life they wanted.
Service boundaries can protect a recognisable specialist offering. An editing company founded by biologists limited its scope to health sciences, biology and biomedicine and focused on Portuguese-speaking authors; it explained that declining physics and chemistry papers was a business decision to maintain a unified specialist product.
Assessment of an opportunity
Good opportunities generally pay well, have reasonable deadlines and align the writer’s and client’s expectations of their responsibilities. The tasks and timing should be defined in writing. Potential referrals, future projects and experience in a new topic can also inform the decision. A writer should politely decline a project that feels wrong, and a seemingly implausibly good offer warrants suspicion. Checking company reviews, former employees’ accounts or colleagues’ experiences can help, as can meeting to discuss scope and fees when travel expenses are covered.
A three-question screening test treats a negative answer to any question as a sign that a client is not the best fit.
- Will the client provide repeat business?
- Are its rates in line with the writer’s expectations?
- Is its material of interest to the writer?
One experienced freelance uses the following warning signs.
- A stranger offers a quick project with a severe deadline and no budget.
- An introductory approach arrives at the end of the working day or week, or immediately before a holiday weekend, suggesting desperation and poor planning.
- A new client expects calls or meetings at night or at weekends.
- The client cannot describe the project but expects work to begin.
- A small budget is defended with the promise of many more projects.
- A client unfamiliar with the writer’s work demands a substantial reduction in the estimate.
In that practitioner’s judgement, missing a good opportunity is preferable to accepting a bad one. A good existing partnership can make expectations and communication easier, while a previously difficult client should not be assumed to improve; the same practitioner usually regretted giving a second chance and stopped after two attempts.
An experienced freelance editor identifies the following features of good editing opportunities.
- A pleasant client who responds to email.
- Answers to all the editor’s questions.
- A contract or email agreement specifying the tasks.
- An agreed fee or rate and payment time, ideally thirty days.
- Complete material supplied on time, or missing pieces supplied promptly.
- A specified, realistic deadline that changes when material arrives late.
- Trust in the editor’s judgement and collaborative discussion.
- Willingness to renegotiate the fee for substantial scope changes.
- A one-off assignment that leads to further work.
The same editor identifies the following warning signs, while recognising that other editors successfully serve individual authors.
- Unsolicited individual authors seeking inexpensive editing of excessive work in insufficient time; in this editor’s experience, many disappear on hearing the rate or try to lower it, and individual-author work is accepted only when particularly interesting.
- Rude or abrupt conduct or slow email responses.
- Unanswered questions.
- Requests to reduce the rate.
- Too many tasks for the available time.
- An expectation of on-call service outside working hours or at short notice, which this editor accepts only by choice for known clients who compensate for it.
- Payment terms beyond sixty days or no definite payment time frame.
A referral does not guarantee fit. A referred company sought two learning modules with predetermined hours but provided no adequate description of the work, insisted on immediate availability and dismissed the need for creativity. Its agreement also made payment after sixty days conditional on its own client paying, although it accepted the writer’s deletion of that and other clauses. A later brief still lacked substantive project information and imposed an hourly rate and total budget the writer considered unacceptable; the writer asked for a fuller description for a project estimate, declined if the total was fixed and explained the poor fit tactfully to the referrer.
Another practitioner balances interesting or enjoyable work, good pay and respectful treatment, allowing some flexibility in one dimension but rejecting extreme shortcomings in any. Disorganisation, inflexibility, rudeness and persistent fee bargaining during negotiation can foreshadow problems during delivery or scope changes. A client who criticises previous writers without explaining the failure may not know what is wanted, increasing the risk of extra drafts, scope creep, anger and frustration.
Client and project reviews
The 80/20 planning rule assigns eighty percent of the business to twenty percent of clients or contacts, with membership of that group changing over time. A client review should list clients from the last year or two and grade them numerically or by letter on criteria important to the practice, such as business volume, project types, rapport, deadlines and payment schedules. Clients can then be ranked: those meeting or exceeding every criterion receive most attention and marketing effort, those meeting most receive less unless the writer wants to develop them, and lower-ranked relationships are considered for improvement or replacement. Improvement may begin by explaining what other clients do that supports the practice; if it fails, the writer can research replacements or increase higher-ranked clients’ business.
Project types should also be listed and assessed for enjoyment, disliked subjects or assignments, opportunities to increase preferred work and the clients providing it. Ideally, preferred projects come from top-ranked clients; otherwise the criteria and workload should be reassessed. One practitioner recommends replacing a client annually with one whose personality, business practices, project mix and commitment the writer respects.
A writer may initially accept imperfect projects out of necessity but should fulfil commitments once made and become more selective as established. Enjoyable work for others can sometimes be worthwhile regardless of payment: one writer helped a parent support group produce two low-budget Down-syndrome educational videos using family and day-care photographs and a friend’s artwork. Another writer found that identifying preferred work and rejecting projects inconsistent with business goals or ethics improved the client base; a pharmaceutical client’s newsletter assignment combined that writer’s journalism skills and industry knowledge and led to more articles.
Client concentration
Repeat work from one main client can offer regular assignments, established teams and familiar contracting and invoicing, while creating a substantial gap if that client is lost and limiting variety. One new freelance obtained most work through one preferred supplier serving one pharmaceutical company, with payment within thirty days and relationships the writer valued. A forty-hour slide-set assignment for a local agency in a new therapeutic area added variety, favourable feedback and a wider potential client base. Promised future work, even some with signed contracts, disappeared when that agency lost a major client and no longer needed a freelance because its own staff lacked work.
Different departments or products within one company do not constitute a diversified client base. A practice working across six products and multiple departments at McNeil Pharmaceuticals lost substantial planned business after company-wide budget cuts following the 1982 Tylenol poisonings, despite completing some contracted work. It responded by developing clients among pharmaceutical companies, associations, publishers and medical education, advertising and communication businesses.
There is no agreed ideal client count, and the mix depends on project length, workload and the writer’s preferences. One recommendation is to obtain about seventy-five percent of business from a few regular long-term clients, allowing deeper relationships and easier prioritisation within each client, while reserving time for interesting projects from potential new regular clients. A two-person practice undertaking month-long or longer projects aimed for eight to ten regular clients, some providing four or five assignments yearly and others one or two major assignments. Its occasional clients sometimes became regular, and the practice continued seeking new work because clients retired, expanded internal staff, changed direction, merged or disappeared. That practice accepted all assignments and used nights and weekends during temporary overloads, relying on its two-person capacity to deliver.
Another practitioner seeks a critical mass of work rather than a fixed client count: continuous incoming business can involve five or six regular clients at one time and two or three at another. In that view, a larger regular-client base protects against changing demand, but the measure is workload, and prolonged dependence on one client is undesirable. Continuing marketing brings occasional clients who can become regular as they experience the service.
An anchor-client model in one established practice produced about seventy-five percent of annual income from two or three steady, well-paying clients, twenty percent from small regular clients and five percent from occasional work. The total was about seven or eight clients yearly; the writer suggested a larger pool while exploring and building a business. Another view is to accept as many clients as value the writer, pay well, work well together and bring continuing work, provided quality can be maintained and there is more than one.
A writer working with three ongoing clients while others were quiet had also completed projects for two new clients and was estimating for three more, illustrating why the current active count can understate the needed pool. That writer declined projects for lack of time, poor fit with personal or team expertise or inadequate budget, and declined clients where the relationship appeared unsuitable.
A different writer preferred two or three overlapping writing projects plus regular editing work, with more than about four overlapping projects creating excessive administration and mental load. The annual count, measured by US tax forms received, was usually six to ten clients: fewer risked insufficient diversification, while too many could mean excessive administration across small projects.
A stricter recommendation is to limit any client to twenty-five percent of working time, because dependence on one income stream weakens the writer’s ability to resist an undesirable situation. Work beyond that limit can be declined for lack of availability and referred to another writer or editor. Other writers feel comfortable with several simultaneous clients, illustrated as five to ten, or with three stable clients on longer engagements; finding a comfortable mix can take time.
Diversification can also concern deliverables. One writer combined longer regulatory engagements with smaller, more flexible manuscript projects to maintain another income stream when regulatory work slowed; a regulatory project could also lead from a clinical study report to its manuscript. This depends on expertise rather than being a requirement, and quieter periods can also provide time for learning or a break.
Competing products
Practitioners disagree about accepting assignments for competing products. One writer using subcontractors regards refusal as the only ethical response to conflicting work and monitors both personal and team assignments, particularly in therapeutic areas with intense new-drug competition. The refusal explains the existing competing assignment, demonstrates relevant experience, offers help finding an alternative writer, expresses disappointment and reassures the prospect that the same ethical standards would protect its work.
Another practitioner considers a confidentiality agreement sufficient because it prohibits disclosure of non-public product, research and marketing information rather than work for a competitor. In that view, exclusivity could jeopardise a freelance’s livelihood and should require substantial payment for the work declined. The writer worked for years on papers and monographs for two companies developing drugs in the same class, refused one company’s request for the other’s private information, and retained both clients’ trust with each aware of the other. The practitioner contrasted individual consulting with advertising-agency agreements, under which substantial retainers and project fees could accompany restrictions on work for competitors, even when products did not directly compete.