Ask Rezzz

Sales is something that you learn. It’s a constant learning to be honest with you.

Sales today isn’t what it was in the 80s, 50s or 30s.

How you improve your sales is more about you and the relationship with your client than it is about sales tactics and tips.

The question today has a bit of a “I want a silver bullet” feel to it. I hate to disappoint you but there isn’t.

However I will share with you, 3 things that you can do to affect your sales cycle and get those leads to close and sign that proposal.

Step 1: Educate clients more and better!

First thing to work on is the top of the funnel, the awareness stage, basically the client education part of your business.

The more informed a lead or prospect is:

•  About their problem
• About the possible solutions to their problem
• About the options that provide the solutions

The more they are likely to understand what it is they are buying from you when you present it.

70% of the buying decision is made way before someone reaches out to you.

If someone reaches out to you, they’ve already weeded out a good number of other options. You only have to align your business with the remaining 30%.

That 30% should only be questions that are custom to that specific client or situation.

Step 2: Tell the lead the next steps.

Secondly, tell your prospect what to do with your proposal.

How many proposals do you hand out? Plenty. It’s a part of what we do as a business.

We understand what a proposal is, what it represents, how it falls into the grand scheme of things, and what to do with it.

Most clients don’t. Especially small businesses and non-profits who are looking for help with their website that they never touch.

At the end of your proposals, are you telling the lead what to do next and what to expect next?

Tell them that they need to sign the proposal by a certain date, get you the initial deposit and once that’s complete that you’ll schedule with them a kickoff meeting.

If you don’t, then they may know that the need to sign it, but then what. Maybe they like you, want to go with you, but since you didn’t tell them what to do, they slightly confused about what’s next, maybe waiting around for you to followup, and while that happens someone else comes along and tells them what to do and they go with them.

All the while you are wondering why the prospect hasn’t returned your email about the proposal.

Step 3: Pay attention.

This is simple. Just pay attention to what sticking points a prospect has.

Learn what they struggle with as you communicate via email, through Skype and on the phone.

As you pay attention and learn what prospects have issues with and ask you time and time again, put that learned materials back into Step 1.

Educate them earlier on in the process to anticipate their questions rather than be responsive.

The less time, work, and thinking you have your prospect do, the more likely they’ll see the value in your service and sign on that dotted line.

See how sales is always a learning and iterative process? Start with step 1 through 3 and then repeat again.

As you get better and better with listening, communicating and education, your sales cycle will decrease.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

If you are struggling with the content on your website, today we are going to fix that and get you on the right path.

Just like yesterday’s show which is [What makes a great case study?](https://rezzz.com/ask/great-case-study), this show is all about the reader too.

Before jumping into today’s show, I want you to load up Twitter.

Type in @rezzz and then put in your website URL and hit enter.

I’ll tell you in a just minute why, but what else do you have to lose? It’s a free shout-out to your website right?

It was back in 2014 when the light clicked for me.

I was going through a re-branding effort. See up until then I had created my own logos, either a friend or myself would design my website, and I wrote all my own content based on what I had in my own head.

Sure I was doing just fine with my business then, but I felt as if I could do better. Not just in business, but as a personal brand.

See I was very technical, but what I was hearing from clients was that I was able to translate the geek speak, the techno mumbo jumbo into plain english.

I hung my hat on that for years because it was something that I learned how to do very early on in my career. In fact the trick was to to put myself into a position where I had to explain the tech to my Grandma.

And so when I started down the road of re-branding, which let’s be honest, it was a branding effort, my branding expert, [Megan Gray](https://houseofgrays.com) said during her consultation session with me “This makes total sense, so why isn’t that done on your website?”

I paused, and didn’t have an answer for her.

## Write about the benefits, not the features

See I had nothing but features all over my website. Things like “custom plugin development, security scans, monitoring, ecommerce strategy.”

While all these things had value, they didn’t speak to the potential client, they spoke about what I do.

Megan and I went through all the content on my website services page and rewrote all the things.

Turing things from “custom plugin development” into “Have an idea for your website? Let’s talk about that”

Turning things like “ecommerce strategy” into “Get 2 times more buyers through your checkout process with simple tweaks.”

Did Megan have some secret sauce or recipe to do this?

Not really, but what she was able to do with me during our session was to reframe my thinking to be “you” focused, rather than “I” focused.

## Always keep your client in mind when talking about your services

Think about it when you shop, do you care how the TV was made or how the car maker used the latest and greatest technology?

No, you care if the TV has the best view angles because your couch will be sitting on an angle to the tv.

You care that that car gets great gas mileage because you are driving a lot and don’t want to spend every other day filling the tank.

Address your clients’ concerns, pique their interest, and speak to the benefits.

See that URL you tweeted a few minutes ago, what I’m going to do is reply back with a few “you” focused benefits based on your existing feature driven content.

I’m doing this to help reframe your mindset to spark the interest your potential clients have when reading your website because you’ve spoken directly to their end results.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

It’s one thing to have a portfolio, it’s another thing to have an effective one that contains case studies to help covert those shoppers into buyers.

I was speaking with some Feast members, and then again over the weekend when I was emailing my cousin’s friend who was looking for a job. They asked me about what goes into a great case study. In all the conversations we dove pretty deep into what makes a great case study with examples, workshopped some, and even outlined some initial ones.

The one thing that all these conversations had throughout was to keep in mind that it is all about the reader.

Write so your ideal customer can relate to the case study

If you have an ideal client in mind, then your case studies should only be about those types of clients.

The reason for this is that you want the reader to identify with you and trust that you can solve their problem.

The goal of a good case study is:

• Show that you understand the industry
• Show that you know the problems of that industry
• You can solve those problems with specific results

Writing the case studies specifically to your ideal client will highlight all these.

Write a beginning, middle, and end

A great case study will tell a story. A great story has 3 parts, the beginning, middle, and end.

You want to share why the client came to you in the first place. Who they are and what their goals is the start of that story.

The middle part of the story is all about highlighting their problems and building the solution to reach the goals.

The end are the specific set of results of the project. Including real numbers is almost critical. It’s not always easy to get, but these numbers help in the first impressions of your case study when someone is glancing through.

Include before and after pictures, charts, graphs, points within a timeline of certain milestones.

All these help in crafting your case study.

Make the case study easy to follow and followup

Remember that it’s easy to write in long paragraphs but these will be read online and most people just scan things online.

Break up the case study with your photos and pull quotes from the client.

You can appeal to the masses if you have video or audio in a podcast form as well. But you’ll want to make sure that the client is comfortable in these mediums before making the attempt.

After you show the end results, make it super simple for the reader to contact you. Give a specific call to action that’s related to what they just read.

Don’t assume that they’ll go searching for how to contact you. Make the decision for them.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist.
-------------------

Imposter syndrome is a real thing. As a freelancer, as an introvert, and just working with smart people every single day, it can be an overwhelming feeling to get past that you don't know enough.

Today's show will share you my story and what I look to when I have this feeling. In the freelance world, we can't let ourselves stop us.

This question came by way of Instagram and with respect to the person who DM’d me, they will remain anonymous. However, I will say that this person was one year into their freelance business.

So they admittedly hadn’t been doing it very long, but felt that most times they feel that they don’t know enough about business and development as they should.

Imposter Syndrome is real

I want to share with you a story.

It was Friday if my first week at a consultant firm and we had an all hands meeting at a global telecommunications company that we were being billed out to.

I was just hired as a senior developer in a team of 14 people. Our team and a few of them, making it about 20 people in the room sat around a large conference room table. We went around the room and talked about the things that we did during the week, what was up for the next week.

Since it was my very first week, I barely had my laptop setup properly. Not to mention, all through the week people would talk to me like I knew exactly what everything was; all the terminology, server environments and people.

During the entire week, I felt that 1. I was supposed to ramp up quickly to hit the ground running and 2. I was supposed to know a lot more than I did.

Oh, and did I mention, up until this job I was a Java developer and this position required me to know .NET. For those of you non-developers out there, that’s like having to drive a manual or stick shift car when all you’ve ever driven is automatic.

As each person rattled off their stuff and it got closer and closer to my turn, I got more anxious and just wanted to almost crawl slowly under the table in hopes that they would skip over me.

As the VP of Online Services got to me he said “Welcome to the team Jason. We are excited to join us. I’ve heard from Christina and Joe that you know your stuff. Totally get that you are a Java guy and have never touched .NET before, but that’s ok, we want your experience and knowledge. The syntax will come. Get yourself settled in and let’s chat next week.”


And he moved on to the next person.

How to deal with imposter syndrome

All that anxiety. All that worry. All that self-deprecation and  thinking all week was for nothing.

Of course I had to learn .NET, but I wasn’t there for the .NET skills. I was bringing my experience and knowledge to the table. I was brought to this project because I was an expert that the project needed.

I would’ve never called myself an expert then, but I was. I had experience that no one else had. I had ability that no one had. I brought to the project an expertise that they couldn’t find elsewhere. That’s an expert.

When you start having those feelings of self-doubt, those classic imposter syndrome thoughts, remember that you were hired already for your expertise.

You are in the sales conversation because that lead wants to work with you.

You have knowledge that the other side of the table doesn’t.

You have ability that the other side of the table doesn’t.

You are the expert. Remember that!

Don’t let someone, especially yourself, step all over that and get in your way.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. 
-------------------

As a freelancer, business owner, consultant, sometimes the productivity and motivation isn't there when we need it.

Today I’m going to share with you 4 tips to increase productivity and motivation.

I was asked this on Instagram and got such an awesome response from it, I thought that I’d share this here with you as well.

By the way, if we aren’t connected on Instagram, let’s do that - I’m rezzz20 and when you follow me, drop me a DM and say “hi”

We all battle it from time to time. Sometimes we just don’t feel up to it today. That the motivation just isn’t there and we’ve gotta try and push through.

Sometimes the motivation is there, but wonder if we are working on the right thing at the right time.

The worse case scenario is that the lack of motivation leads to the lack of productivity. 

Well thanks to Gabs for the question over there on the gram, I want to share with you 4 tips to increase your productivity and motivation.

• Know the 3 things you need to do each day, the day before
• Love what you do
• Celebrate the small wins
• Reward your hard work

Let’s talk productivity first

Know the 3 things you need to do each day, the day before.

Before you cut out for the day, make a quick list. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just write down the 3 things that you need to accomplish tomorrow.

Having this front and center will drive you and keep you on course no matter what tries to derail you tomorrow.

Often you’ll look at this list quickly as soon as you sit down in the morning and bang out 1 or 2 of these things before you do anything else because your mind is fresh and focused on what’s important.

The second tip for you bridges the gap between productivity and motivation and that is love what you do.

Plain and simple, if you don’t love what you do, or at the bare minimum like it, you won’t be productive or motivated to do the work.

Stay motivated

In episode 104, I shared with you this idea of gamification and how our brains are hard wired to be motivated when there’s a game to be played or a streak to be kept alive as a motivational tactic.

Instead, today I want to tell you to celebrate the small wins.

This is celebrating small wins with your clients, colleagues, partner, or anyone else that you are working with.

If you get a RT from an influencer and get a bunch of traffic from it, celebrate that in some small way.

To go along with this is to reward your hard work.

This is more of an internal thing either with yourself or your team.

Something like treating yourself to a nice steak dinner with your spouse, or if you are into Lego, getting yourself that new Voltron set.

Maybe that’s something I’ll do when this podcast hits 25,000 downloads.

It’s critical as entrepreneurs and business owners, no matter what you do, to take a break, clear your head and allow yourself some breathing room.

That breathing room will inevitably turn into more productive days ahead.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. 
-------------------

Nothing can waste your time more than jumping at an opportunity you get for a freelance project through a someone you know. I’ve been there and going to share with you what to do.

Let me paint the picture for you.

You get this quick, short email that says:

It’s awesome that Ref was touting your wares right? I mean, Ref knows you, likes you, and trusts you enough to put his reputation on the line and suggest someone to work with you.

Sounds awesome, right? Well…It’s not all awesome.

Why a referral can be bad

Here’s the thing, you have a ton of things going on today and tomorrow with limited time for a call. You have a sales process that everyone goes through too.

You have an intake form or project brief that you have all leads fill out prior to jumping on a call.

But your friend set the expectations with Joe that you’ll be calling to talk to Joe. Ref has you potentially walking into a buzzsaw.

Did Ref properly vet Joe? Probably not. But you want to do right by Ref and Joe. And not set the tone that you are someone who is a flake.

You almost feel bad if you don’t call Joe outright.

Well I want to stop you right there. Don’t call Joe.

Handling the lead

If Joe wasn’t attached to the email, then ask your friend for Joe’s email address.

Then what I want you to do is to send Joe a simple email stating what your process is and a link to your project brief form.

Explain to him that the form is there to get in his words what the project is about and why the project is important to him. Also share that this form helps to make the call as productive as possible.

This will reset the expectation that Joe has and if it’s something that is pressing, there is no doubt that Joe may just get his call today or tomorrow. Only this time it’ll be on your schedule.

Handling the referral source

To handle the referral source is usually the step that’s often overlooked. The reason it’s overlooked is because you don’t want to burn a bridge, hurt a friendship, or just simply ignore the step altogether and hope for the best the next time.

Shoot the referral source an email, a quick one in fact.

• Thank them for the referral
• Share with them a glimpse into how best to refer someone to you
• Highlight who your ideal client is, how you help and ultimately the benefits of working with you.

Then the next time that source sends you a referral, It’ll be a better referral.

-------------------
👉 For full show notes and to build out your own custom Ask Rezzz playlist. 
-------------------

I've had this feeling so many times I lost count.

If you haven't had any objections to your pricing, then as I shared in episode 60, I’m going to tell you the very same thing my mentor told me to do on the very next prospect, and that’s to double it.

If you have had some pushback on your pricing, it means that they don't understand the value of their investment. There is a disconnect between your "thing" and your price that you have yet to make it a clear no-brainer for them to sign up with you.

How you close that gap is based on

* Showing a track record, better known as testimonials or case studies, of proven success
* Having problem you are solving for them to be painful
* A short timeline to the proven results

When I started out freelancing, I always thought that signing $20,000+ contracts was the path to success.

I soon realized that those big projects took way too long to prove results. Sometimes 4-5 months!

Resulting in my profits 💸 flying right out the window and not necessarily unhappy clients, but testimonials became tough because they hadn't had the promised success yet.

So I developed a process to

• Get results quicker
• To dig deep on the problem to make sure I was solving a big pain point
• To get testimonials and case studies from my clients.

The start of this was to look at the solution I was providing and carve a slice of that out that I could deliver quickly and effectively, then sell that.

The price that I would sell this for would be anchored to the pain point of my clients.

By understanding their pain point and knowing what’s most important to them as a successful result our engagement, I can position my service in a way that makes the return on their investment 2x, 3x, even 10 times.

You can do this too

• Write down the last 5 projects that were successful for you
• What quick wins, the results that happened in a short period of time, did you get for your clients? (Think increase in revenue or savings in time)
• Could it be replicated and sold as a standalone service?
• What is the very next step to find your next client?

As you do this, you'll find that "all the things" become so much easier and the chasing of projects stops just due to the nature of it.

Set aside 1 hour this week and do Step 1. Then reply back and let me know how you did. If you've already figure it out, I want to know too.

-------------------
For full show notes, your own customized Ask Rezzz playlist, and bonus material, head on over here for it all.
-------------------

However, I’ve never once used one. Mainly because I never wanted to build my business on rented land. And in episode 95 where I answer the question “How viable is it to find a job as a front-end web developer as a freelancer in the current market” I shared that I didn’t like the idea that there was someone else’s hand in the sales process.

Places like Upwork and Fiverr have been very successful for people. I’ve spoken to and are friends with many of them. But they will say that it’s getting harder and harder to succeed in those places.

See here’s the thing about job boards, they have algorithms just like Facebook, just like Google, and just like any other website out there that makes money.

They will push the best, most “relevant winners” in front of users.

As I mentioned, I have many friends that use and are on these platforms. I’ve also heard from many people DMing me and in Feast telling me that the boards aren’t working like they once have for them.

That the projects and leads are drying up.

Does that mean that they aren’t reliable? No, because they are for some. But it does tell a story that using job boards to get prospects and leads into your business should be another stream into your business. Not the only stream.

This is the classic “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” scenario.

When you diversify your marketing channels, and this is what a job board should be, you’ll be able to notice trends and be able to help flatline the peaks and valleys. 

When a stream starts to lag or dries up completely, you have other established avenues to pick up that slack.

This is true of job boards, social media, or content marketing. All of these avenues have peaks and valleys and could dry up your leads.

To definitively say whether job boards are reliable or not is not the right question to be asking here.

The question you should ask yourself is “which sales avenue am I going to focus on today?”

This is going to be a pretty simple answer today.

It’s not easy to do, but taking vacations and being able to step away from the freelance business for a day or a week can be scary.

From about 2004 to 2011 I didn’t take any days off.

There was no vacation, no hotel plans, no cruises, no car rentals, nothing that resembled any sort of pleasurable trip because I wanted to get away.

When was the last vacation you had? Maybe even years at some point where you didn’t get a break?

So why is that?

Big excuses is why!

• Too much work
• No time, I'll look into next year
• How will the business be when I get back?
• Will there be a business left?
• So how do you step away?

Communication and planning!

1. Communicate with your clients as early as possible.

The earlier on, the better. Timelines, sales, and delivery may all need to be figured out. And the more time you have to plan all that out the better.

2. Give yourself a buffer before going away.

If you are taking a week off, don’t work yourself to the bone the week prior to going away. When you do that, you won’t give your brain a chance to wind down. It’ll be 2 or 3 days into your vacation before your brain stops doing all the behind-the-scenes thinking around all the work that was just completed.

If you are going away on the 14th for a week. Then plan all you need to do for the vacation and tell yourself that you are going away on the 7th. Giving you a full week buffer prior to vacation.

Then from the 7th to the 14th, you do the every day tasks you need to just as if it were a normal week.

3. Plan for the unexpected.

In other words, should something happen with a client that is an emergency, put in place a process by which that client can get the help they need.

If you have a helpdesk system, have a process by which your client can put in a specific subject line to an email that then gets forwarded to someone who can handle the request.

Make sure they are aware of what sort of issues you could be filtering their way and make it super simple for them get access to all the things they would need to resolve said issue.

Now go ahead, take that vacation. Force yourself, like my wife did to me, because you do deserve it.

Today I’m going to share with you 3 tools that I’ve found extremely helpful, useful, and are making my life and business better.

These aren't your run of the mill tools that you hear everywhere (at least not yet - or at least I hadn't ;) )

Bonjoro, Undraw, and Hey Meta.

Review of Bonjoro

The first is bonjoro.com. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure where I heard of this tool, but in using it, I’ve grown to love the company as well.

Full disclosure, I am an affiliate so if you want to check out Bonjoro and would like to buy me a beer, please click the link.

But to be perfectly honest, this app was a part of this list prior to me being an affiliate anyway.

Bonjoro is an app that you can tie into your own systems and send a personalized video to. So for example, when you get a new customer or even someone filing out your contact form, this app will ping you to record a video on your phone.

I’ve used this for a number of things and if you have attended one of my Live Q & As or newly signed up to my newsletter, you’ll have received one from me.

I’ve had conversations with folks and learned more about who they are and how I can help just by initiating the conversation with these videos.

The metrics are awesome! Seeing when someone opens your video, or clicks on the call-to-action is great, but getting replies is the best.

If you can compare email metrics to Bonjoro’s, Bonjoro’s knock email out of the park. Open rates around 70%, click through rates around 30%, you can’t come close to that with email.

It helps you in your onboarding and introducing folks to your business in a very personal way.

Plus, the folks there are awesome and super helpful with anything you need. And they take photos of themselves in bear suits, so what’s more fun than that?

Review of Undraw

The second tool I want to share with you is undraw.co.

If you are looking for illustrations to help brighten your content or social media, then check out undraw.co.

This isn’t just your average stock/illustrations website. They are continuously adding new illustrations every week around the types of images you need. Images like “clients”, “mindset”, “workout”, “analysis”, “mail sent” and close to 300 more.

The best part of this site is you can change the color scheme of them to match your brand.

That’s game changer right there!

With one click of the mouse, all the illustrations are now using your color scheme!

Review of Hey Meta

The final tool I want to mention is heymeta.com

Ever want to know how your website or new blog post will look inside a text or Slack or the various social media platforms?

Goto heymeta.com, put in your URL and hit enter.

It’ll show you how it’ll look, but if you don’t like the way it looks, you can change it on-the-fly.

When you do that, you’ll be able to type in your title, description and new image that you want to use and generate the meta tags right there to put into your website.

Simple, effective, and ensures that your new page will look good in the platform that you are sharing it.

Main Takeaways

• Looks for tools that make your life easier but solve one this at a time
• Keep in mind how your website will look and on point with your brand
• Connection with people in the real world will always be most effective than automated communication
• Do something that delights people
• Simple tools produce exceptional results

Important Mentions in this Episode

• Bonjoro
• Undraw.co
• Hey Meta