Too cool! The team over at FreelanceSwitch.com built a calculator for you to determine your hourly rate. It asks you questions about your budget for office and personal expenses and even asks you how much profit you want to make. What a great application - I’m suprised I haven’t seen someone come up with something similar sooner. I’m really impressed with their site overall (very Web 2.0) and they’ve definitely made a subscriber out of me.

I’m happy at my new job and I’m toning down the side work a bit, but this is a great confidence booster for anyone trying to make the switch from a salaried position to a freelancer. I do want to throw out a caution that I think my friends in sales can back me up on - you should use this calculator only to get your breakeven rate.

I always think of it this way - when you go the local market down the street to buy something at the deli, do you ask the owner how much it costs him or her to keep the lights on or how much his mortgage is? Of course not - you buy based on market value and what you’re willing to pay to get good quality meats and produce.

I’m a huge fan of billing based on value - not by hour and certainly not based on your overhead. It’s not about how much time you put in or how valuable that time is, it’s about the value you provide for your customer. If your customer is maintaining a website that costs $500/month in labor to maintain, can you show the value in a $6000 investment to automate some of that maintenance? If your client has an e-commerce site that isn’t marketed well, can you project how much market share you can create for them to justify an investment in your services?

If you lack the confidence to sell based on value, I don’t think you’re ready to make the switch. Have pride in promoting yourself and what you can provide for your prospects. Then, ask your first few customers to help you identify where you bring value and what it’s worth.

Congrats to the people over at Gapminder for getting nominated for a webby. Check their site out because not only is their message so important, but their presentation is really impressive. I was particularly attracted to the interactive graphs in tools - it’s a great way of getting their message across.

I’m all about statistics, but I think what really grabbed me was the ability to manipulate the graphs to get the data displayed the way I wanted so that I could do “my own” analysis. You can think about this as it relates to your business development. This can function as a great lead generation tool. Do you have customers in different segments where you can plot their average income gains as a result of purchasing your product? What about investors that want to see the projected impact of your business on the market? Quantitative studies like this are great, and so is giving your audience data that they can play with. This has many implications. In general, you present your ideas to people with limited time - how quickly can you get your message across?

Data visualization and interactivity are two very important subjects in a world where information is constantly being thrown at us. Presenting it in a way where the user can quickly understand the message and easily manipulate the data is vital to effective communication.

I think the guys over at Quibblo are trying to get this idea across en masse. There are tons of sites where you can design surveys and polls, but they’re the only ones I saw that presents the data nicely.

Rick Roberge raises some great discussion questions in a recent article concerning customer loyalty. In the world of Information Technology, I place an extremely high value on the development of customer loyalty. While I won’t attempt to provide a long-winded definition of what customer loyalty is, I will propose that the largest component of developing it in my business is developing trust. I have developed my personal list of trust aspects below:

1. Trust in your business practices - Your customers want to feel secure in making a buying decision. They want to be assured that they’re getting what they’re paying for. In my humble opinion, your customer wants to know that your company works for them. Be upfront in your business practices and how your customer fits into your business model. Answer the tough questions about your business to make your customer feel secure in their investment. I find that many people miss this important fact: when your customer makes a decision to buy, they’re not just investing in your product - they’re investing in the way you do business.
2. Trust in your people - Your people make your business practices work. Show your customers that your team cares about carrying them out. Introduce the team to your customers and take pride in those that make your business run. Develop trust in your offering by demonstrating your own confidence in your people’s ability to deliver it. I’m a firm believer that every customer should have a single point of contact such as an account representative, but introducing the account’s team helps put faces to function.
3. Trust in your product offering - This is often the most prominent aspect in making a sale, but not necessarily developing trust. Your product gets your foot in the door, but alone it doesn’t develop a long-term trust relationship. I include it here because your customer looking for a better deal is a natural and understandable occurrence. Continue to maintain and enhance your product so that you can stay ahead of your competition. Show the value in your product and how it outweighs that of your competitors.

The aspects and their respective priorities can vary based on industry and your target customer, but all aspects of trust boil down to one thing: honesty. Be open and aboveboard. Once your customer has realized you’ve violated their trust, you can bet their confidence in your product goes way down. The development of business relationships are not unlike personal ones. If you’re initially well liked and trusted, dishonesty is the only way to ruin a solid trust relationship.