How do you handle 'outsourced' work?

[Outlaw]

My studio is in a pretty small county, small community, and there are not a lot of creative professional service-types around these parts. Over time, we've picked up work on everything from business card and web design to poster printing and marketing campaign design.

My question is, does anyone ever outsource work to other creative professionals, but play the middle-man for your clients?

For example, we do web design, but sometimes I need a good graphic design person or flash programmer to fill in spaces that I want more attention on. I have been working to establish good relationships with people who do this, but how do you handle these situations, and what do you call it?

When talking with my clients, I don't know whether to say we "outsource" certain portions of their job to associate creative pros, or to give the impression that we will "get this information over to our associate to work with," or what good wording would be.

When looking to network and establish a list of associates to outsource work to, how do you approach them? I've had success just introducing myself, my situation, and saying that I am looking for a best-, wholesale-, or referral-price for sending jobs their way - which I will then mark-up accordingly to my client. But I still feel funny about that "outsourcing" word, considering its possible negative connotations.

Perhaps I'm being overly worried about the wrong things, but I just want to make sure my language isn't serving to hurt my relations with customers or fellow professionals.

Thanks for your input, mates!

[KdLaneJr]

In the maritime maintenance industry outsourcing like this is referred to as subcontracting. The prime contractor is ultimately responsible for seeing to it the work is done and paying the subcontractor. It's a well defined relationship.

While this is a much smaller scale, I think it is very important that your clients never feel as though you are subcontracting or outsourcing any work unless it is absolutely necessary. The trickier part of this is providing an estimate in a timely manner.

I would refer to your associates as my graphic artist or my graphics designer, etc.

Ken

[Outlaw]

Hmm, so perhaps 'contracting' beats outsourcing for proper language to use.

Thank you very much, Ken!