As a job seeker, researching prospective employers is part and parcel to the entire process. Not only do you get to find more information about an organization prior to an interview, you can also seek out opinions from clients and former employees in order to determine if this is a right fit for you.

However, as an entrepreneur or freelancer, doing the same thing with prospective clients may seem, at the very least, awkward and at worst intrusive. After all, here is a potential source of income for you, and how is it going to look if you make mention of the fact that you want to research them a little further?

Obviously, there are differing opinions about whether or not conducting background checks on prospective clients is appropriate. But the truth of the matter is that, like when you were a job seeker, you want to make sure that the client is the right fit for you.

This subject hits pretty close to home for us. On at least a couple of occasions, we have agreed to do business with clients who turned out not to be on the up and up. The end results became a massive loss of man-hours and money. Effectively, we wasted our time and efforts and turned down other projects.

As much as we, as entrepreneurs, appreciate the business our clients have to offer, clients, conversely, have to understand that this is no game to us. We didn’t get into business for ourselves to give away our services. And 99 percent of clients do understand this.

So, how can we spot that other one percent? Or, a better question should be: When is it appropriate to do more research on a prospective client?

Normally, this is the part where we lay out advice on what to do. However, we’re interested in hearing what you have to say on the subject. Please feel free to comment on this post or reply to us on Twitter at @togsolutions. We’ll follow up on this subject next week.

We look forward to hearing from you!