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?
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OK, so let’s talk about cold contacting! So over the last two posts, we’ve established a framework for getting ideal prospects and went over exactly how you’ll break the ice with new contacts.
Today, I want to focus on logistically how you’ll make first contact.
In a perfect world, you’d have referrals. Someone you trust (and who trusts you) would make a mutual introduction to the new contact. But what do you do when you don’t have a reference?
Last week we covered how you could pre-qualify 10 ideal clients that you’d like to work with (missed last week? Read this first.)
Today I’m going to introduce a strategy that will help you get in front of the people on your list, and maybe even walk away with a client or two.
The biggest single mistake people make when reaching out to someone they don’t know is their failure to produce value.
Not to toot my own horn, but now that I’ve grown a sizable audience I get people I don’t know emailing me all the time.
Last week I asked you if you wanted me to run a mini-series on cold calling / emailing companies. Well, the answer was YES!
So let’s begin.
We all have ideal clients. They might be companies we admire, companies that have projects that are completely different than anything we’ve ever done before, companies that can be stepping stones to getting bigger fish, and so on.
Back when I ran my consulting company, I took on a job (that even then, and especially in hindsight, made no financial sense) for a multi-national in Tokyo. Why? Well, I love Asia, and I loved the idea of talking about our “Asian clients” when meeting with future prospects. They were an ideal client in that they were a stepping stone for our company.
Exactly a year ago I started my newsletter.
Though it didn’t really start out as a newsletter. At the time, I was writing my first book, Double Your Freelancing Rate. I decided that instead of just collecting email addresses, I’d presell the book for 20% off. Well, it worked. And I netted a few thousand dollars in initial sales — even though I was quite a few weeks away from delivering a finished product.
I knew that if I paid something to someone I didn’t really know and was met with radio silence, I’d get pretty perturbed. Hell, I might even ask for a refund. With this in mind, I started sending out a weekly mailing to everyone who bought my book. I extracted highlights from what I was writing, summed them up into an easily digestible format, and introduced my signature plain formatted, “Hi $NAME, …, Cheers, Brennan” email structure.
I’ve had a few people over the last few months ask me about my thoughts around subcontracting for agencies or consultancies (what I’ll call “firms” throughout the rest of this post.) A lot of us freelancers, especially those who haven’t systemized getting new clients, often see working through firms as a lifeline. These firms have the clients and the projects, but they occasionally need outside help. And that’s where we come in.So you white-label yourself as an agent of the firm, get paid, and totally avoid needing to secure your own clients. And hey, sometimes you don’t even need to TALK to the actual client!But there is a downside.
It’s mostly impossible to avoid being a “resource” for the team you subcontract for (keep reading to find out what the exception to the rule is.) You won’t really be able to price yourself on the value you produce, and your client — that is, the firm — is going to want to make as much profit as possible off you.
