When hiring a freelancer to do part of your marketing project, there is almost always the same concern: whether he will deliver the product of his work on time. Regardless of what is their fruit of labor, design, content, blog post or website, freelancers are creative souls.

Recently I have talked to many marketing managers about their most painful problems. Quite often I heard that the most burning issue is a reliability of subcontractors. Some of them are very reliable yet deliver acceptable but not excellent content or design. Some of them deliver extraordinary, impressive things, but you can’t even hope they will deliver on time, or exactly meet your specification.

Once you know that you cannot fully rely on timeliness of a freelancer, or just started cooperation with a new folk in town, it might be good to have a toolset of managerial techniques helping to get what required and get it on time.

Checkpoints!

Ensure the day when the task deadline passes is not the first time you see what the freelancer’s has done for you. On the first meeting agree on some interim reviews.

Explain clearly what you expect on each review: a sketch on paper, conspect, final draft. Plan to verify the checkpoint by yourself or delegate to somebody who you trust will do that as well or better than you.

Meanings

A concept, sketch or draft can have very different meaning for you and for your cooperator. And this meaning can be a subject to relaxation and downscaling.

If the freelancer is late for any reason, he will present you a sketch done on a napkin as a final draft and honestly assure you that this is what he always means as a final draft. So clearly define what is final draft for you.

Draw and Note

Draw the meanings and timeline on a piece of paper or your tablet. Note what you both told about deadlines, meanings. Note every date and action item.

It might be your freelancer’s job to successfully deliver on time, but you are the manager so make sure you really manage: send the note to your cooperator after the meeting or call. Might be a bit frustrating (am I his admin assistant?!), but it’s better to frustrate yourself than to screw up your whole marketing campaign.

Get Off From Email!

An email conversation becoming longer than 3 emails is a clear indicator of the necessity to switch to another medium. E-mail is not for brainstorming, not for resolving problems, not for lengthy discussion.

Your freelancer might be tending to communicate via email because he is sitting with his ultra thin, shiny PC with a nice logo in a trendy cafe and has not a time pressure you have. He just sends you a doubt or trivial yet blocking question and switches to another project. Or orders next coffee and talks with another customer. But this is your project which will be delayed.

So once your email conversation is longer than 3 emails, call him, chat with him, or go to his trendy cafe. A simple call done just on time really can save one or two days of delay caused by misunderstandings in an e-mail discussion.

No warranty

Those techniques will often do. But they will not guarantee anything if your subcontractor is just a bungler. You cannot fix his inability to create, or lack of excellence. Although regular checkpoints, clear definitions, note taking, might help you to discover that early enough to find a solution for that too.

To avoid such a scenario, it might be good to build a network of reliable and well-tested cooperators around you. Talk with your colleagues, check references and never throw a business card of a talented man!

About the author: Alex Kowalczyk is an experienced projects portfolio manager, project management freak, entrepreneur and software engineer. He is the creator of foxytasks.com - an application with a mission to help marketing managers in their projects. An enthusiast of modern management tools and top quality engineering. Published on various international conferences and magazines. He loves road bicycling and Mediterranean cuisine.

Flickr credits: Yann Gar - CheckPoint Charlie; John Mignault - Pile of napkins; the weed one - minutes, mines; Jonas Seaman - Crappiest Cell Phone In The World.