Selling is a Conversation between Two People
When you think of going into business, you may think of the freedom you’ll have as your own boss (see Part 1 of this three-part series, You Are The Boss), or about all the good work you can do and people you can impact. At some point, however, it occurs to you that you’ll need to sell your services. If you’re like many people, that’s enough to make you stop before you even begin.
Selling is a loaded concept. I often picture a man in a leisure suit and loafers asking me what it will take for me to drive this car off the lot today (ewwww). Selling conjures up images of being pushy, of not listening, or not taking no for an answer. Or of an endless stream of people all of whom you’re supposed to talk to and say something clever and just right so they’ll like you and buy your stuff! Or, um, is that just me?
What Kind of Marketing Plan Does a Self-Employed Professional Need?
You need a marketing plan to get clients. That’s the first thing to know. A professional who tells you that he or she has gotten plenty of clients without ever having a plan is either: a) working way too hard, b) not telling you the truth about how many clients they have, c) working a plan that they’ve never written down, or d) one of those rare, incredibly charismatic individuals who seem to draw an audience as soon as they enter a room.
I find that most of the time, successful professionals who claim to not have a plan fall into the “c” category. They are working from a plan in their head. If you can do that, more power to you. Most people — myself included — need to write a plan down in order to keep it straight.
Hard Work + Smart Choices Aren’t Always Enough to Land Clients
You’ll often hear me say that the secret to finding clients is to make effective choices about what to do to market your business, then do those things over and over. While that advice is absolutely true, implementing it sometimes runs into some roadblocks.
What happens when you deliver what you think is a dynamite 10-second introduction, but your prospective clients don’t seem impressed? Or you have several lunches with potential referral partners that seem to go well, but no business results from them?
10 Ways to Get Your Marketing Unstuck
Have you ever found yourself knowing exactly what you need to do about marketing your business… and then not doing it? You are not alone. Many self-employed professionals and creatives find that the hardest part of marketing isn’t figuring out what to do. What’s hard is actually doing it.
You Already Know How to Market… So Why Don’t You Have All the Clients You Need?
For the past twenty-plus years, I’ve been asking self-employed professionals to tell me the most effective ways they know to get clients. No matter where and when I ask this question, their answers are always the same: “networking,” “referrals,” “word of mouth.” These are the right answers. The professionals I ask know this to be true.
But then I ask a follow-up question: “What are you doing right now to market yourself?” And what I hear back is surprising, given the answers to my first question. More than half the people I ask tell me their primary focus is on something other than those answers. They’ll tell me they are building a new website, or mailing out postcards, or running pay-per-click ads, or cold calling strangers, or launching a Facebook page, or exhibiting at an expo, or posting promos on Twitter.
Yes, Writing Blog Posts and Articles CAN Bring You Clients
“I’d like to attract clients by writing articles or a blog, but I’m not sure what to write about.”
“I tried blogging for a while, but it didn’t bring me any business.”
“When I write, people seem to like it, but I have only a handful of readers.”
These are some of the comments I hear from self-employed professionals who think that writing about their area of expertise might be a path to attracting clients… but feel like they don’t have a map. I understand their frustration. It’s easy to make crucial mistakes when using writing as a marketing strategy. But you CAN do this successfully. Here are six guidelines to make writing pay off.
How to Overcome Your Reluctance to Make Sales Calls
As a professional selling your own services, you may believe that your discomfort about calling prospective clients on the phone is because you’re not a “real” salesperson. But studies reveal that up to 40% of full-time salespeople experience episodes of call reluctance that are serious enough to threaten their careers.
Are You Marketing the Right Stuff?
Jan is a graphic designer who was always struggling to find good clients. “I could find plenty of people who needed my services,” she recalls, “but they thought my rates were too high. I either ended up agreeing to work for less, or they found someone else. And then when I did get the job, they took forever to pay me.”
Like many graphic designers, Jan’s marketing emphasized her business identity work — creating a company’s logo, business cards, and other collateral, with matching design elements. Her primary audience was new businesses who were just getting started. But then Jan had a brainstorm.
“I realized that the clients I was marketing to were people who didn’t have enough money to pay me,” says Jan. “They were startups with tight budgets. And since they hadn’t been in business long, they didn’t place much value on working with an experienced, high-quality designer. They were just looking for the lowest price.”
The Secret to Taking Care of Clients is Tracking the Numbers
Taking good care of your clients means taking care of your business, and one of the simplest paths to taking care of both your clients *and* your business is by tracking the numbers.
Rejection: It’s Not About You
One of the most persistent barriers to success for self-employed professionals is fear of rejection. Sometimes this fear is quite conscious. You know that you are avoiding marketing and sales because you’re afraid your prospects will say no.
Other times the fear is lurking in the background, making an impact you’re not always aware of. You may find yourself procrastinating about making a phone call or setting up a sales appointment, and blame it on laziness or poor time management. Or you may avoid following up because you “don’t want to bug people.” Or perhaps it feels pushy to ask directly for a sale.
