Freelance Business and Client Acquisition
As a freelancer you need to take absolute responsibility for everything in your business. You must be able to win clients, you must price your services appropriately, you must ensure you complete your jobs and therefore get paid. The whole cycle starts with the first point though, you need to learn to consistently win clients.
Finding clients when you start freelancing is extremely important. Without clients, you will not make any money and you will quickly run out of money. You may as well just work a 9 – 5 job. But finding clients will be integral to your entire career as a freelance contractor. You must always find a way to close your next client to ensure you earn your next pay packet.
So how do you get clients? There are a number of methods you can use to win clients, some of which we have summarized below. Some of these are easier than others, some may suit you and some may not. To be honest, one could write a book on each one of these methods, but in this article I will keep it brief, so you get a good high level view.
1. Contacting Clients Cold
In the old days, there was cold calling. Now, with the plethora of communication mediums available to us, I prefer the term cold contacting.
Cold contacting is a difficult way to acquire clients. There is typically a very high rejection rate (Ie. clients saying no to you) so you need to have a thick skin. It basically becomes a numbers game. If it takes you 100 rejections to get a new client signed, your client portfolio will grow depending on the number of phone calls you make. If you make 100 phone calls, you’ll have 1 client, 300 phone calls will land you 3 clients and 500 clients will keep you busy with 5. Your success depends on your ability to weather the 99 failures in good spirits before you win the next client.
2. Marketing and Advertising
Advertising is where you “spend money to make money. You basically buy up space on someone else’s property (and by property I mean TV station, radio program, billboard, magazine, bus-stop, website etc) and put your sales pitch there. If your client sees the pitch, likes what they see, they call you and buy your services. Your advert does most of the selling, you just take orders and execute your services. A benefit of advertising is that obviously you can reach a wide audience. A disadvantage is that it costs money.
Successful marketing and advertising requires an investment of time and money. You need to research to ensure your campaign is positioned correctly. You need to test to find the mix of words, pictures, sounds and smells which will stimulate a positive reaction from your target audience. Until you find a campaign that works, your most important resources of time and money will constantly be drained. But when you find that one that works, its happy sailing for you my friend.
3. Referrals
This form of marketing is similar to cold calling as the emphasis is on you making contact with your prospective clients. It isn’t cold though as it entails you have been introduced by someone.
Using referrals means you need to contact your entire network, everyone you know, to see if there is anyone your family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, friends of family and family of friends may know, who may need your services. Once you find people who need your services, you can use the person who told you about them, to give you an introduction and recommendation. The reason this works is that you are leveraging off the trust your friend has in you, and the trust your potential client has in your friend, to generate an element of credibility in your skills. That way the potential client has a much easier time deciding to use your services, than those of someone that no-one has recommended
4. Get Involved With An Organization Who Already Owns Your Clients
Back in 2003, I left the Australian Superannuation industry and specifically, a company which made database software for all the major players in the industry. I did my own thing for a while, but then realised how much money there was to be made, contracting back to the superannuation industry. Instead of contacting all my old clients throughout the Superannuation industry, I contacted my old employer. Why not, they already had a relationship with all the clients I was going to speak to anyway. So we discussed some potential engagement models, and finally agreed that they find me work and take a percentage on every hour I charge their clients. I used them successfully as an informal placement service and booked myself out for years.
As you grow in your freelancing career, you’ll quickly learn that there is no absolute and perfect way to find your next client. All of the above are proven methods in their own right, but the most successful freelancers, consultants and contractors will use a mixture of some or all of the above.
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