7 Practices to More Successful Corporate Assignments

On a writers board, someone mentioned a difficult experience with a difficult corporate project that was turning into many revisions, big reversals in direction, and increasingly hostile clients. If you haven't done many corporate assignments, it's easy to make a classic mistake and assume that they are like editorial, in that someone says what they want and you deliver it. Corporate work can be far trickier to manage (not that editorial is easy). Here are seven tactics that can help you manage the process:

1. Limit on number of drafts with additional payment for additional drafts.


2. Start with an outline that they must sign off on, and don't write a word of draft copy until you have agreement on the outline. That way it's clear when they want to change directions. It also lets you go through some alterations without much pain.


3. Indicate in the contract that drafts are based on approved outlines and, if the direction changes, so does the fee.


4. Get the names of all people involved in the approval process. Often you'll get someone in marketing claiming to have the say, but that is almost never the case. You want all decision makers involved from the beginning so you can get all the feedback early, rather than turning it into an edit-by-committee experience that you'd get at one of the big women's magazines.


5. Remember that you are the facilitator and are there in part to help them come to agreement on what they want to say.


6. After any meeting, you circulate a draft of minutes so, again, there is no confusion.


7. When someone wants something different, you patiently walk them back through drafts and meeting minutes, all calmly and coolly.

It may sound like a lot more work, but it's actually less. This give you control of the process, which will cut the total amount of time you spend on the job and will come up with something that they have bought into.