Most freelancers are reactive — they wait for new leads to come to them.
The problem is that getting leads reactively depends on luck. Will you get a new client when you need them? Or will you instead need to start looking for a job?
Our in-depth articles and guides on sales and marketing will help you generate high-quality project leads on your own terms, and allow you to eliminate uncertainty and doubt.
Whether through 4+ years of in-depth articles, premium courses, the conferences and events I host, or my podcast, my #1 goal is to help you become a more successful freelancer.
(Today’s guest article is from Mojca Mars of Super Spicy Media. Take it away Mojca!)
It’s the feeling of freedom and financial independence what makes being a business owner interesting, fun and fulfilling.
A lot of us would never go back to working in an office ever again. After all, we’re smart. We’re grown up. We know what we’re doing, and we don’t need someone else to tell us how to do what we do best.
But it’s not always rainbows and butterflies when it comes to running your business. The sole fact that you are totally free when making business decisions can be damning and outright scary as well.
Suddenly you’re responsible for your decisions and your success. No one brings projects to your table anymore. Business growth is in your domain, and if you don’t make it work, scary things can happen. And by scary things I mean going back to working 8+ hours in an office. Imagine the nightmare!
But business growth can be hard, especially when you’re working with a small team or by yourself.
The feast and famine cycle is something you grew accustomed to. You’re convinced that this is just the way things are.
But they shouldn’t have to be! And fortunately there is a way out.
So, how can you get out of this cycle without reinventing the processes and spending weeks changing your business in a way that won’t help?
If you’re a freelancer, you probably despise Upwork, Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour, and all the other marketplaces du jour as much as I do.
These marketplaces are full of bottom of the barrel clients. They’re looking to farm out projects to the lowest bidder, and rarely are looking for creative or consultative input.
As evidence, go check out the front page of /r/freelance on Reddit. No matter when you’re reading this guide, I’m almost positive that every other post has something to do with getting screwed over on one of these marketplace platforms.
The Holy Grail of consulting is having your own sales funnel. These are clients who seek you out for your expertise and want to work with you — and you alone.
But how do you create this funnel?
Don’t you need to be famous?
Don’t you need to be a known figure in your industry, someone who regularly keynotes all the big conferences and probably has a book or three out?
(This helps, as you’ll soon find out.)
The answer is no.
Anyone can create a sales funnel. Even you.
There stands the zebra with those incredibly contrasting stripes, and it seems to stand out like a sore thumb.
Those stripes that we think are so conspicuous are extremely hard for predators to spot. Human eyes are exceptionally good at seeing detail in daylight. However, their main predators, lions and hyenas, have eyes with a far poorer resolution by day. In studies done by the University of Calgary, the zebra stripes could only be seen by predators relatively close up. This means that what seems more than obvious to us is almost entirely camouflaged.
If you’re a freelancer pitching for a project, you’re pretty clear about what you stand for, and what you can do. The moment you have to explain your point of difference to a client, your message falls into a camouflage-trap. You use a tagline or just about any line that doesn’t cause the client to sit up and take notice. And you know what’s worse? Imagine you’re just one of many suppliers pitching for the same project, there’s a pretty good chance your message is going to get lost in the jargon.
Clients judge your emails in a split-second. This article will show you what they look for when they’re deciding to hire you.
You’re saying you can’t solve the problems you’re getting paid to solve.
This makes clients have to figure it out for you. Sure they tell you they’ll give it some thought and get back to you.
But. This. Never. Happens.
Your once hopeful email seeps to the bottom of their inbox. It turns cold, dusty, and gray. Weeks or months pass. Occasionally, the client sees it and thinks, “Oh yeah, that email.”
Eventually it begins to chafe away at them. It bugs them. Every passing day the question looms, “what do I think?” Until one day they shrug and click delete.
They exhale and never think about you again.
This is why emails are important.
(This is a guest post by Liston Witherill, a speaker at the upcoming Double Your Freelancing Conference. Don’t have your ticket yet? Buy your ticket while they’re still available and join Liston and 13 other speakers in Norfolk, Virginia, this September 16th – 18th)
Their conversion rate was way too low.
The business provides a very valuable service – the kind that actually makes dreams come true.
You see, they help their clients immigrate to a new country by knowing immigration laws and strategically completing visa applications.
But they had 2 really big problems:
1) they weren’t doing anything to nurture lost leads or turn web visitors into leads, and
2) they were really bad mind readers. More on that in a second.
To solve the first problem, we quickly put together an educational email sequence. This recovered lost leads and created more engaged prospects who emailed or called in to start a sales conversation. Simple and straightforward. Check.
