Do your employees/contractors have direct access to your customers?

[NickNack]

I’m building a productised “wing” to my freelance business, which will be about smaller, simpler jobs than my bespoke work. I’m planning to sub a lot of it out once it’s up and running, and wondering how others handle this.

My sales platform works like a ticketing system, so I can assign jobs to other users and have them work with customers directly, but I’ve heard some horror stories about client-poaching. If I get big enough to bring full-time employees on I’ll be able to vet them a bit more, but in the early stages I’ll be subcontracting to other freelancers, so that trust relationship won’t be there.

Alternately I can loop in the contractors outside of this platform, basically doing a copy/paste of the client brief and sending it direct. It’s a bit more work obviously, but sidesteps that risk, and keeps the customer communication experience consistent.

I would be keen to hear how others have managed this...

 

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[peterb0yd]

As a contractor, you have the option of keeping as much distance between your employees/contractors and your clients as you want. You can be the layer between them, hire a PM to be the layer between them, have no layer, or mix and match. It really depends on your business and how you can best provide value to clients.

I'm going through this process myself with a different business model than yours. My service is highly technical, so there is no way I'm going to demand direct communication between my clients and engineers. That would be a nightmare.

I plan to be the layer in-between until I can find and afford a better project manager to take over client/contractor communications.

To me, this has nothing to do with poaching, and everything to do with the value being offered.

For the contractors, you offer them more value by doing the project management. Interacting directly with the decision makers can be a burden at times. Not only that, but you're finding the work for them. If you have enough work, they don't have to do as much business development (which includes managing the relationship with the client).

For the clients, you offer them more value by providing a layer in-between. You have a system in place to determine their needs. You (or your PM) have a relationship with them and understand their business. Your employees/contractors do not I assume.

That's my 2 cents at least.

 

[Bekit]

I’m building a productised “wing” to my freelance business, which will be about smaller, simpler jobs than my bespoke work. I’m planning to sub a lot of it out once it’s up and running, and wondering how others handle this.

My sales platform works like a ticketing system, so I can assign jobs to other users and have them work with customers directly, but I’ve heard some horror stories about client-poaching. If I get big enough to bring full-time employees on I’ll be able to vet them a bit more, but in the early stages I’ll be subcontracting to other freelancers, so that trust relationship won’t be there.

Alternately I can loop in the contractors outside of this platform, basically doing a copy/paste of the client brief and sending it direct. It’s a bit more work obviously, but sidesteps that risk, and keeps the customer communication experience consistent.

I would be keen to hear how others have managed this...

Whether you run a strong risk of employees/subcontractors poaching your clients depends on a number of factors.

It depends on the service and how it's executed. For instance, a building contractor who subcontracts the plumbing and electrical out is going to have to worry way less about the subcontractors having direct access to the client than some consulting business where the book of business and client relationships are your lifeblood.

Here are a few assorted thoughts...

1. Is there a strong likelihood that your employees will be able to out-execute your service if they work with the client directly?

I once worked as a writer in a marketing agency where the writers were kept from interacting with clients. This made the quality of the writing go WAAAY down, as we could never hear from the business owner, discover the unique value they brought to the table, learn to write in their voice, or showcase them in a way that made them stand out. So we were limited to writing thin, generic, paraphrased content for every client. This obviously brought way less value to the clients.

My employer probably thought they had something to fear. If someone like me actually developed a relationship with the client, there's a strong chance the client would switch to working with me. So there was a non-compete agreement in place, in addition to the no-contact systems that were set up.

But the truth is, the fact that the client got lower value by working with my employer than they would have by working with me directly was precisely BECAUSE of the poor decision to isolate the writers from the clients. And in reality, the clients would have potentially gotten WAY more value by staying with my employer, where they had a whole team of talented people available to work on their stuff, from designers to coders to AdWords experts to project managers to Google Shopping experts.

So it really made no sense. The rule was based on fear, and it resulted in worse service and poor outcomes for the client.

In @peterb0yd 's example, it INCREASED the value of the service to isolate the clients from the engineers. In this example, it decreased the value. You have to figure out what the case is for you.

2. Flip side.
As a copywriter, I have considered taking on small projects that I don't have time for, hiring a freelancer to write the copy, and doing all the client communication and quality control myself. So the client might not even necessarily know that it wasn't me who did the work.

Even then, it's not like my employees would be in the dark about who the client was. So they could easily say to themselves, "Hey, this is a company that pays for copywriters. I'm going to pitch my own services to them."

But by doing the quality control and knowing my name is on the line, I would mitigate against the risk that isolating the client from the subcontractor would reduce the value to the client.

I would just evaluate whether there's a strong potential that (a) isolating employees from clients would reduce the value of your service, and (b) the employees will probably be able to find a way to poach the clients anyway if they really want to.

There's a trade-off between mitigating risk and reducing the value you provide to clients.

3. You seemed to imply that hiring freelancers was equivalent to hiring people you don't trust. Why would not be able to either hire a freelancer you already trust or develop a trust relationship with them, the same way you would with an employee? In my experience, hiring a freelancer does not have to be equivalent to hiring a stranger in another country on upwork. For example, I know 1-2 dozen people in my network that I could contract for various types of freelance work, from coding to design to writing to VA services. But even if I didn't know anyone, I would certainly want to test the waters and build trust before handing over critical parts of my business to a complete stranger.

Hope these thoughts are useful to you in sorting out what you want to do!