I’ve been upgrading and training my team, streamlining processes and engaging with fellow freelancers on a large scale. One thing that I find works well for me during these simultaneous processes is the conducting of surveys.  Simply asking for feedback; be it from your team, trusted clients or a group that values your input like the freelancers I interact with daily, can be a great indicator as to whether or not your new ideas will soar, just glide or simply flop.

My team and I recently had a conference call with almost 80 freelancers in just about every industry and sector you can imagine and boy was it fantastic! This call was geared toward freelancers who are just starting out and had questions about everything from keeping their fiscal books in order to juggling more than one client while you’re still a solopreneur. Everyone was so engaged and vocal that I knew this would be a great time to get the thoughts of everyone on the call regarding whether or not they could use the information I was putting in my e-book. I got  a resounding “YES” from the callers. This was a simple and quick; yet effective and FREE survey! It let me know that when I’m done with my e-book, there is a customer base for it. In fact the reason I started writing the e-book in the first place was because of a survey I conducted with many in this same group regarding what would help them on their freelancing journey.

Most people think you need to sign up on a website to do a mass survey; but if you’re conducting a conference call, you can do what I call a “shout out”. Everyone can shout out a “yah” or “nay” depending on your questions, make a note of the number of participants on the call and their results and you’ve conducted a survey. There are also tools on a lot of conference call software programs that allow participants to type in their answers and you can run a survey that way as well. Again, nothing fancy or costly, but the information you receive from these surveys is invaluable. I always try to present ways to do what the “Big Boys” are doing without spending a dime, because I know those just starting out or who are on a tight budget can appreciate this information. When you conduct your first survey, feel free to email me directly and let me know how it went! First take the SURVEY below! I just added an updated one on June 4, 2012 🙂

[polldaddy poll=6285038]

This is Shilonda Downing signing off for: Virtual Work Team LLC.