I write this article from some practical experiences which I quickly learned in my very short experience as service provider. I learned it in very hard way and thought of sharing it with you. I am very sure these practices will make you life better while you opt for providing services to your valuable customer. Clients always think of you as an expert and they go by your word considering themselves as layman. So any mistake done by you as a commitment cost heavily in your business. Let me share what you shall do and what you shall not.

1. Ranking Commitments: I found many experts guarantee their clients that they will place the result in top ten listings right away. It is just a blunder. Ranking depends on many factor and you are not sure what other competitors are doing in order to get the top ten ranking. So such heavily bloated commitment will never be fulfilled, and your client will only think of you as a liar. So, it is better if you approach them on realistic angle and explain them how can you up their ranking slowly and steadily over a period of time. Try to explore what is the rank of the website on various keywords and first concentrate on the keywords which affect her business most. A client will be happier to see progress in ranking. But a not fulfilled promise will only help her to turn her back on you.

2. Take her into confidence: As you carry out your work, update her on your work. Tell her briefly what you did in past one week and how that improved her business prospect. Teach her how ranking works; provide her useful link which will help her to learn quickly. A learned client will understand your problem and difficulties than a layman.

3. Manual submission and auto submission: Obviously as an SEO expert you will go for either manual directory submission or automatic submission. Depending upon the fee you charge, you may consider either or both the methods for directory inclusion. You shall be transparent in your approach and must tell your client the pros and cons of both the processes, efforts, time and cost involved in it. Let take the decision jointly and this will help you to earn her confidence. She will start trusting you more for the transparency and your sense of responsibility. Please remember as a sponsor she is one of the stakeholders in your process.

4. Alternative method: The sponsors primary concern always remains to promote her business. She expects of you advices and your interest in her business. So teach her what other alternate marketing venture like adwords, adsense, PPC can help her to grow her business. If you find any new technique, update her about that. This way she will understand that you are a responsible person and she will allow you more freedom and responsibility in your work.

5. Serve her excellently: A client service never means just fulfilling your commitment. You have to do it as you are paid for it. So there is nothing exceptional that you did. So, what is an excellent client service? An excellent client service depends on mainly two factor; one is working proactively and the next one is acting when need comes. If you think a certain step will help her in her business, do it. This your proactive approach. Again if she needs your help badly in some point of time and if she gets your help at the right time, you know you have own her.

6. Act sensibly: A sponsor is a human being and possesses all emotions like you. She can get angry with you, can be morose, over joyous. So, depending upon her mood you must control your communication. If she is very disturbed, she may not like your lecture on technique. So you must be wise enough to understand her mood and communicate effectively.

7. Beware of your comments: As a service provider, beware of all the comments you make. If you criticizing, a certain soccer team and the client is a die hard fan of her, she may not like it. This will seriously affect your professional relationship. So try to avoid any discussion outside professional scope as long as you are not sure of her inclination. If you are sure of her interest, pragmatic discussion can work like magic and she may start thinking of you as her friend.

8. Service commitments: Regarding delivery you must plan very accurately before you commit. A missed delivery will cost you heavily and she may think of you as an unrealistic person. If you think you may miss the delivery date, inform her before hand with reason.

9. Quality of delivery: If you are supposed to deliver X on a date and you deliver that, but the quality of X is not at par with what you are supposed to deliver as you hurried to deliver it on date. This is a dangerous situation. You shall not sacrifice quality to maintain timeline. If you are delivering X and you know the faults in it, deliver it with known reports. Tell her that X has these bugs and all these bugs will be corrected by a suggested date. Again this level of transparency will always go to make your client happy.

10. Relationship: Try to build a long term relationship with the client. Never think of a client as a sponsor for short tenure. You know how much investment is required to won a client and how much to retain her. She may provide you businesses over a long period of time and your expenditure on marketing will be less. Just think this way that a client is a client forever, irrespective of the fact that she is doing or not doing business with you.