When you’re inquiring about a professional service, let’s say taxes, computer help or marketing consulting, which is more attractive to you: a service provider who seems ultra-competent and gives the impression that the process will be easy for you, or a service provider who charges low rates and gives the impression that the process will be cheap? While few clients are completely price-insensitive, I think that it’s important to always be looking for ways to make your clients’ lives easier and avoid bogging them down in the complexity of what you do.
For example, let’s say that you need a really good small business accountant. You know that accountants charge fairly high rates; upwards of $100 an hour and maybe as much as $200 an hour, so you have a ballpark figure in mind. You call CPA #1 and explain your situation. His/her response: “Well, switching accountants at this time of year is complicated. If only you had called me in January. I need your personal and business returns for the past 3 years, don’t give me the originals, you’ll have to copy them and drop them off. I’m only here 10-4 outside of tax season so you have to come during those hours” and so on. At that point, do you even care how little this person charges? Even if this accountant’s rates were below what I expected to pay, I would be turned off. I hate accounting, I hire an accountant to make my life easier, and this person has already bogged me down with too many details and too many hoops through which I have to jump.
But how about this: you call CPA #2 and explain your situation. His/her response: “No problem at all, thanks for calling. If you’re interested in switching to us, you’ll just need to sign a release form and then I’ll call your current accountant and ask them to fax us your past returns. Our hours are shorter outside of tax season but we do everything electronically with password-protected files so you can scan and submit your documents whenever you want. Also if you’re interested we could review your previous returns for errors or missed deductions and there’s no cost to you unless we find something.” At that point, I would be willing to pay the high end of the rate range I was expecting, because this person conveys the impression that my life will be immeasurably easier and I will save time (and therefore be able to work more and earn more money) by using his/her services.
Think about applying these types of scenarios to your own business:
- When you receive an inquiry from a client, assume that the client wants you to solve their problem, not give them a deal.
- Don’t get pedantic. Think: do you really care about the minute details of your service providers’ jobs? Right. Stick to the information that your client really needs.
- Think of simple ways to streamline things for your clients. If you always translate their quarterly newsletter, can you contact them on a predetermined date to talk about the next issue? Can you set up a secure file transfer site so that your clients can access their translations whenever they want? Can you send them a short survey to ask how you can better meet their needs?
- Try to frame things positively. Not “I can’t finish it by Thursday morning unless you can get it to me by Wednesday noon,” but “If you can get that to me by Wednesday noon, I could definitely have it back to you by the time you get into the office on Thursday.”
- Don’t make translation sound easy (we know: it’s not!), make the client feel that you will make things easy for them.
Corinne,
You’ve done a very nice job detailing the fundamental difference between offering a service (the client invests in an outcome) and selling a product (the client buys widgets, aka words). I’m Stumbling this post 🙂
Thanks Patricia! That’s a great way to put it, investing in an outcome versus selling a commodity. Hope all is well with you!
Excellent, excellent, excellent. I particularly like your point about positive phrasing to guide client actions.
I suppose for some people, paying for translation is a lot like getting your teeth drilled. But I’d rather have a mouth full of rot than pick a dentist for her price. The consequences of skimping can be painful. (Actually I should say “his” price, because the lady dentists I’ve found are inevitably better than the men. At any price. God only knows why.)
If we were to analyze all our project proposals according to the model you suggest here and approach new prospects in the same way, many of the whine and cheese sessions engaged in by translators might be replaced by champagne brunches.
Thanks Kevin! I agree with you about the dentists (both that cheap dentists are to be avoided and that women dentists are better!). Here’s to some champagne brunches!
I like this post a lot Corinne. It gets to the heart of the differences between good and bad service providers. I’m sure there’s a place for it for translators because I get many compliments from LSP project managers along the lines of ‘you’re so professional/responsive/easy to work with’ that it can’t be the norm to be thinking of how to make the client’s life easy.
I use the ‘only tell them what they need to know’ rule (they don’t care whether you’ve got three jobs or three children keeping you busy – they just need to when you will get it to them). And on the positivity front I use the ‘look for a win-win situation’ rule. Clients LOVE it when I recommend an alternative if I’m refusing work, or if I recommend editors.
On the streamlining front, one tip i have is that medium and long projects for LSP’s I send an email around their EOB the day before delivery saying that everything is on track and that they will have the files as planned. Something along the lines of -“It’s all translated and I’m proofing everything now.’ works wonders at making them feel good about you as a vendor.
Thanks Karen; I think you are so right that what seems like norm is actually not. “Only tell them what they need to know” is a great policy, and I really like your point about recommending other people when you’re too busy or the job is not your thing. It doesn’t take business away from you, it makes you look more helpful and professional in the client’s eyes.
This is what it all comes down to! We (my business partners and I) persist in hanging on to the delusional belief that our clients love us because of our superior translation and writing skills. And yet, when we actually ask them why they keep coming back for repeat business, they almost never mention how damn good our work is 🙂
What they do talk about is *how we deliver* our services. Stress free, hassle free, positive, helpful, honest (even when that means saying “no”), easy to work with, accept criticism and requests for changes without going into diva mode, always a little “bonus” (advice about the effectiveness of a particular approach or document, corrections to the original text) and totally, completely reliable (no bad surprises or missed deadlines–ever).
I love the way you summed this up in your post, Corinne!
Sara, this is so funny and so true! I especially like your comment about “diva mode,” I think there’s something ingrained about translators that we have to be right about everything, but it’s good to put a lid on that response when a client has an issue. And thanks so much for the “bonus” tip, that’s another great way to make your clients’ lives easier.
Right to the point Corinne!
I heard a saying that sort of sums it up too:
“Before a client can care about how much you know, they need to know how much you care.”
Great saying Tess, thanks for sending it in!
Great post, Corinne! I LOVE the analogy with CPA’s and you make the point so well that if we go a bit beyond the call of duty, we really stand out against competitors (cheap or not!).
I thought about you a lot on my recent trip to Switzerland because I noticed that so many of the websites and brochures offered so-called “English” versions that read as if they’d come from an automated Google translator.
I suppose I should be impressed that the hotels, museums and restaurants made an effort, but because the English “translations” were unintelligible, I was turned off. As a travel writer, I like to be able to recommend places to American readers where at least a little English is offered (an English menu, perhaps, or museum signs in English), but when translations are done “on the cheap,” it’s so unprofessional that I don’t want to even mention it.
I fully agree with Sara. What clients really appreciate is not only the good quality of your translations but also the way you care about them : respect the deadlines, stay at their disposal if they have further questions, think positive, be honest. I have recently translated an agreement into French and in the original English version there were many errors, the client was very thankful to me for my comments. This is what I call a “bonus”.
Translations are sometimes very difficult and time consuming but when clients appreciate your work and the services rendered, this is a pleasure !
Brilliant, hehe, could have come from me — you read my mind. 🙂 And I am always comparing linguists to CPAs and lawyers, and I think it’s a fab analogy!
I also fully agree that you need to add value to your customer’s chain — and throwing in a few things along the way, such as correcting issues in the source text — is a great way to do that.
RE: correcting the source text
Just remember to be tactful just in case your client happens to be the person who *wrote* the source text :-0
Yes Sara, you are right, in my case the text was not written by them :))
Great article, very helpful tips on the business side of things.
Just came accross an article with resources pointing to interesting sources of info as to why a good translation can save your business and a bad one might cost you contracts
http://www.milatova.com/en/articles-about-Hebrew-translation
True ! I think that some translators think of themselves as technicians, but we are in the service business, and part of that service is not just making translations high quality, but also making the entire interaction easy and professional.
Very nice read, thank you for sharing your simple and inteligent point of view.