Ask Rezzz

I’m going to get up on my soapbox here for a minute, so if you don’t want to hear it, scroll down a little bit.

Over the past decade, I’ve run into many leads and clients that have had terrible experiences from flakey freelancers who have either disappeared, communicated poorly, didn’t deliver a project, or just didn’t set the expectations the client had.

If you are a freelancer in business, please, please, do right by your clients. Be honest and don’t get in over your head.

If you find yourself in a sticky spot, there’s nothing that communicating to the client can’t fix.

If you are a freelancer and asking questions like “how come clients don’t respect my value?” or “how do I charge more than bottom dollar hourly rates?” The big reason is that of these flakey freelancers who don’t do right by their clients and then those clients are jaded and don’t want to be burned again.

If nothing else is taken from this, please communicate clearly and often with your clients so that it raises the bar for all of us in the services based industry.

Rant over!

This is actually an easier answer than you may think.

Be empathetic

Tell them that you are very sorry and can appreciate their apprehension based on their past experience. I’m sure you’ve had bad experiences in the past with either a product or service, right?

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and support them. Don’t be confrontational.

Don’t throw anyone under the bus.

You only know one side of that story and you have no knowledge of the situation. However, you can call upon your own experiences of bad service in the past and how that made you feel.

You have your guard up and don’t want to be burned again, and that is exactly how they feel too.

Reflect the conversation back to how they found you

Once you are able to put your arm around them, next reference back to how they found you.

If it’s a referral, that’s great, because referencing the person’s name you pull that trust factor back into the conversation.

If it’s by some other means, say an article or podcast you were in, mention that big takeaway. No doubt it’s the reason why they wanted to get you to work with them in the first place.

Give them confidence

Tying in that takeaway, ensure them that they won’t find themselves in a similar place again because of how you run your business.

Share with them some behind the scenes workflows and processes if you need to.

But what you want to do is instill confidence quickly that you’ve got things under control.

By talking through these 3 points, you’ll find that most of that initial baggage the lead has, will be put aside. What you want to keep in mind though as you work together is that baggage is not gone.

They will be on the watch for the signals of getting burned again, so you need to be as well so that the trust you’ve developed and earned doesn’t chip away.

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You may have been in those projects when all is well and the correspondence is good going back and forth and then crickets.

Radio silence from the client.

You’ve sent a few emails that have gone unanswered. Maybe even a few calls have gone unreturned.

What do you do next?

There are a few things, but first, keep in mind that no matter how good the relationship is remember that you really don’t know the full story of your client.

So before your brain starts jumping to conclusions, be empathetic first and foremost.

## Are you ok?

First, you want to make contact, probably via email with a simple “Are you ok?” type of email.

Something simple, like:

> I haven’t heard from you in a while. I called X times and sent emails on A, B, and C but haven’t heard back. I just wanted to make sure everything is ok? Please let me know so I know everything is good or if there’s anything that I can help with.

## A nudge to move forward

After having sent that and then a couple of days go by and you still haven’t heard back.

> I know things come up unexpectedly. I just wanted to see what your thoughts were about X so that we can move forward with Y. If priorities have shifted, that’s ok too. We are at a standstill and the project is in jeopardy of missing the scheduled date of completion.

## Final call

If there still is no response, there’s a good chance it’s been a month or more since you last heard from them at this point.

It’s time to close the project and move forward.

> I haven’t heard from you since X. I’ve sent Y emails and called Z times. As per our agreement, I’ll be putting your project on hold. When you are ready, I can re-schedule your project. Re-scheduling the project involves 1, 2, and 3. Please pay your remaining balance by .

Sending an invoice will certainly awaken a sleeping client one way or another. You may not get the payment, but you’ll certainly get some sort of response good, bad, or otherwise.

Item of note here is that if you don’t have a “ghosting clause” in your agreement, here’s the time to put one in.

You don’t want projects to linger on for months, maybe years even.

This is a simple paragraph in your contract that states what happens if they are unresponsive. Put strict parameters around what "unresponsive" means and the consequences of this. State what has to happen for the project to be re-scheduled to be worked on and any penalty fees that may or may not apply.

Clients aren’t bad. They don’t go into projects with the intention of ghosting, but when it does happen, you’ll be happy that you have that clause in place.

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Last week I recorded an episode of Live in the Feast with Andrew Askins. He’s a co-founder of Krit, a company that helps non-technical founders build their idea into a product.

Andrew asked this great question and I thought I’d share it here since one the episode won’t be released for another few weeks. And two, after last week’s series on being better at sales, this fits in perfectly.

For a little bit of context to how Andrew asked me this, we were talking about crafting our messaging around the company by who we serve, why they should care, and how they benefit from it.

As we were chatting we both agreed that the messaging is marketing. It’s who we target because it’s who we know we can serve n the most successful way.

But shockingly, that isn’t always who we work with.

When you specialize your business, you may be afraid of “the money being left on the table” when in actuality, you repel the bad clients and attract those people that can resonate with who you are.

So as a lead comes to the business, and maybe they aren’t the WooCommerce business, or they aren’t using Drip for them email marketing platform. Maybe they are using Teachable and ConvertKit, but all the other signals I have for taking on a project align.

We gel from a personality perspective. I can totally support their business and what they stand for. They respect my expertise and value my input.

Well, I’m going to try and close them. I may put some constraints around the project, but I’m going to close them.

There isn’t any reason not to. It’s these types of clients that have allowed me to grow my business over the past decade.

I work with non-profits, e-commerce, service-based, coaches, memberships, and digital product based businesses.

If I took a hard line approach with everyone coming in and didn’t expand my horizons as a business, I wouldn’t be in business today.

How I determine they are a fit

This is the time though I really have learned to listen to my gut on things. I also lean heavily on being able to read that person and making sure that we can work together well.

If anything my gut tells me or something is off, then I don’t push them towards the proposal stage.

I try and help them the best way possible and more often than not, will refer them to someone who can help them.

I go into every sales call with the intention of having that other person leave with value and in a better place than before we started it.

Letting go of the notion that every sales call needs to be closed is freeing and confidence building.

No one on the planet has a 100% close rate.

I’d much rather accept that, then be helpful and honest with the other person so that we both leave the conversation feeling good.

You may approach sales differently, maybe you want to close every deal. Maybe you feel you have to just to keep the lights on.

Well, that’s where the desperation comes into play, that’s where you lose your position as the expert and that’s where you become awkward around questions of budget and timelines.

When you let go of the thinking of having to close every deal, you’ll find yourself able to more productive sales calls and land more clients because you aren’t any of the things I just mentioned.

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This is the classic chicken or the egg scenario. Doing these 3 things will raise the bar immediately and have you stand out from the other 3 vendors your lead is talking with.

For the context of this episode, this is for those that are just starting out, maybe still full-time and looking to go freelance.

This could also be for those trying a new service or piece to their business. Maybe even niching down or specializing your business to where you haven’t had any experience in before.

So many of you in this area find yourself in a chicken or the egg scenario, where you talk about how you have no case studies or portfolio pieces. You don’t have experience because you haven’t done this type of work before.

You find yourself paralyzed because of it. You don’t move forward with anything because you get stuck.

I want to share with you 3 tips that don’t require anything other than a conversation with a client or lead when you don’t have the experience.

Find out why they are talking to you

Unless they are a friend of yours or existing client, there’s some reason for why you are talking with them.

Maybe it was a bad previous engagement.

Maybe someone referred you.

Maybe they found you online and liked what you do, but they are unsure if you can help them because of the business they have.

Whatever it is, find out. Because that will give you a quick insight into what is attractive about you to them.

Simply ask “How did you find out about me?” before starting in on the conversation. Or if during the course of the conversation they seem unsure if you can help, ask “There are a lot of choices out there, and I respect that, may I ask you why you are talking with me about your project?”

Set up the clarity for the lead, make sure they are clear of the problem

Making sure that the lead is fully engaged and clear on what problem they want solving.

Echo back what they are asking you for. State everything that you hear back to them to make sure that there is clarity on what’s being asked for and the goals they want to achieve.

If there’s some level of contention about the project based on a previously bad engagement, be empathetic but state how you work and the benefits to the client of the  way you work.

After briefly giving them insight, ask them if that process makes sense to them. Ask them if it aligns with their thinking and the goals that why are looking to achieve.

Get them focused back onto your conversation with them, not thinking about the bad experience they had.

Empathize with them and offer a lower risk opportunity to work together

If there’s still some level of skepticism due to lack of experience, offer them a lower risk opportunity to work together on.

I’m not suggesting discounting your services!

I’m suggesting offering them a phased project, where the initial engagement is a smaller win, lower cost, and quicker timeline.

Then when that engagement is a success (notice I didn’t say “if it’s a success) you talk again about moving forward with a larger piece of the project.

Most of your leads and clients come from word of mouth. Especially when starting out. If you are engaged in conversation, often times they haven’t even looked at a portfolio yet.

There’s a trust factor by proxy since they came to you from someone else that they trust.

You don’t need those portfolio pieces or full website with all the logos and badges.

You simply need to have a conversation that’s focused and has the objective of solving the problem the lead or client has.

That will prove to them that you are thinking strategically and pragmatically about solving their problem when others are stumbling or just trying to close the sale.

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In episode A207 - How to overcome objections in sales, you briefly learned about leaning into what they want and then directing them down the right path.

Leaning in, or being empathetic during a sales process is really about giving the lead what they want.

Whether they want the lowest cost, the best value, to comparison shop, etc, it’s in your best interest to give them what they want.

When you think about sales, instead of thinking about closing every deal, think about how to have them leave your conversation in a better place.

You aren’t going to convince anyone they need you. They have to realize that themselves.

If they feel they need something that you don’t have or do, the best thing to do is to put them on the path to getting that.

One of my favorite quotes is from Pippin Williamson founder of Sandhills Development.

If it’s hard to have a conversation with someone and suggest a course of action, how do you think a project will be working together?

Ever have a lead say “I don’t need the strategy, can you just write the code” or “Can you just design the logo without the full brand?”

The answer is simple.

“I will design you a logo, but how will you know it’ll be effective for the brand.”

“I can certainly write the code, but how will that code fit with the rest of the application and do what you need it to do.”

“Is that what you want?”

Lean in to what they want.

Explain that the strategy and process is all a part of the code or design. Without it, it’s just a visual element.

Without your process, you have no way of knowing with confidence that the solution you are providing will be successful.

This lead is often a price buyer, maybe a touch of the “know-it-all” buyer as well.

Explain that the price is the same with or without the strategy. Encourage them that there are other low cost options out there for them to use.

It’s like building a house without a blueprint. It may stand, be a 3 bedroom house. But you were expecting it to withstand a hurricane and be 5 bedroom house.

What they are looking for is your value, but for cheap and that just isn’t possible.

Let them go and come back.

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RFPs, or Request for Proposals, is something as a freelancer or consultant you should stay away from. An RFP is a document that talks about a project and asks you to write a proposal on how to solve it.

In the previous two episodes you learned to protect your sales process, and ultimately your business, by only pushing value buyers and those that give you a firm “yes” at the end of the sales call to the proposal stage.

RFPs are the complete opposite of this.

In short, responding to an RFP, have you reading through a document explaining the project from the perspective of the company and then drafting up a proposal with your time estimates, milestones, due dates, company history, and questions you have to bid on the project.

Then that company shows all the responses and selects what they feel is the best option.

If you are responding to RFPs, this is the epitome of the proposal writing business.

If a buyer presents to you an RFP, full stop. Protect your time! Protect your profits!

Simply say “Before we get into this - It’s not your policy to do speculative work.”

Because that’s what an RFP is, speculative.

You are speculating on the project based on what is in that document. You have no customer input, surveys, data or your own research to help you build a proper solution to the problem.

How to speak with a lead that insists on responding to an RFP?

Ask them if they are a gambler?

“How important is this project to you?”

“What is it worth to you to solve the problem?”

These are appropriate questions to ask the lead that insists on the RFP process.

The lead has to be a gambler, otherwise, they wouldn’t be hanging themselves out there asking companies to build and present solutions without any conversations and research into the problem, for free.

These 2 questions, refocuses the conversation you are having for the lead to get clarity around the project and what they are asking you to do.

You can further pursue it by elegantly and tactfully asking if the other companies pitching: 

• Have these companies interviewed customers
• Have these companies interviewed sales to see what the challenges are

“Chances are that you are going to say no. And since you are asking people for free work, they are just going to come up with answers on their own. They might hit it, but they might not. That’s why I asked if you are a gambler or not.”

Explain why you do what you do

Take some time and explain why your process is important to them and solving their specific problem.

This is where that clarity can hit them like a ton of bricks. Because here you can emphasize that you can give them a cookie cutter solution, but what happens when that doesn’t work.

They will have to then go back to whoever approved the bid and backtrack.

Explain to them that without your process, what they are asking is for companies to answer from a 1000 miles away, not an inch close and from all angles.

The best thing that they are going to come up with is superficial because that’s how deep they are able to go. There are no reference points to what is going to be the most effective solution to help them get sales, build a brand, code an application, etc.

The lead and committee are making a decision purely on a gut feeling without a true understanding of what’s going to work.

This is where you share the things you need to understand what the key metrics and goals for success are.

What are the trigger points for the customers to buy-in?

That the only way to know is to talk with you, your team, and potential customers.

Then it’s a matter of summing up and echoing back everything the lead said to you and leave them thinking about their process.

“So as much as you would like to work with them on this $X project, I can’t from this point of view. I can’t tell you with confidence it would work.”

Then sit in that silence.

In this short statement, you echo back what they say it’s worth it to them to solve this problem.

You are also planting the seed that if the other companies are not asking these things, then maybe they aren’t as good as they say they are.

Keep in mind, you are not in the business to write proposals. You are in the business to solve problems successfully for your clients and in turn make money and profits from that.

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The most important piece of your sales process is to overcome objections and direct the lead down the appropriate path they want to be on.

If you haven’t already done so, go back and listen to How to get better at sales?, where you will learn the first 2 steps to getting better at sales.

• Learn from every sales call
• Identify the type of buyer you are talking with

By the end of this episode, you will learn the most important piece of sales. That is how to overcome any objection to the 5 buyer types we identified in the last episode.

Once you key in on identifying which type you are speaking to, you want to embrace them.

Lean in to what they want and give them exactly what they ask for.

STEP 3 - Put the buyer on the right path

With any of them, you don't want to waste your time in writing a proposal unless you get a firm "yes" from the at the end of the call. 

You aren't in business to write proposals. If they balk at the time and cost investment and still ask for a proposal, tell them that "this is the proposal, nothing will be different in the document."

You aren't in the proposal writing business. 

There's no reason to waste time on writing up an in-depth proposal on something that's never going to happen. 

Explain to them that the proposal is a formality to get the ball rolling on the project together. If what they hear on this call doesn't make sense to them to move forward, nothing will change in the document.

When you identify the type of buyer, there's a different path you want to direct them to.

• Price buyer --> referral
• Value buyer --> a firm "yes" to move forward
• "Know-it-all" buyer --> empathy first, with a path of clarity for why they are talking with you
• "Wishy-washy" buyer --> add value and let them go and come back
• "Go between" buyer --> explain the process, but then full stop until ALL decision makers on the call

STEP 4 - Overcome Objections

To help you identify which buyer a lead depends on the objections they have. 

As you have your next sales call, or if you've recorded the calls in the past, listen very closely. 

Break out a piece of paper and write down any of the objections you hear from the lead.

Statements like:

• "that seems like I a lot of money for this"
• "this should be simple"
• “This sounds great, but I have to talk with so-and-so first"
• "I'm not sure"
• "I had this other person and it didn't work out"
• "I'm talking with a few other vendors"
• "I have someone else who can do this work but wanted to see what else is out there"

I can go on, but I think you get the point. Not every objection is in the form of confrontation or conflict, like “you are too much money.” Statements like “I’m not sure” or “this should be simple” are objections that are telling of who they are.

Write them all down and work through them where next to each objection, you put the type of buyer you think they are. Practice this on each call you have and you'll start getting better at identifying the type of buyer.

Once you can identify the type of lead, you can then use that as a trigger to push that buyer towards the appropriate path.

Only pushing value buyers and those that give you a firm “yes” to move forward, to the proposal writing stage. 

Two things happen immediately with this. 

1. The feeling of not closing enough deals starts to go away. 
2. You start to identify the buyer type earlier in the process so that you don't even get on the phone with them.

Do this on your very next sales call. As you push the various types down the appropriate path, you’ll maintain your position as the expert and that feeling of getting lots of people on the phone but not closing enough will go away.

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"I'm an introvert and I don't like sales" -- "How do I close more deals?" -- "How do I get better at sales?" By the end of this episode you’ll know the 3 steps to do just that.

"I get a lot of folks on the phone, but think I should be closing more." 

This is something that I hear quite often and it’s the wrong statement to be making.

You want your sales process to eliminate leads from becoming clients. 

You want each stage of your sales to be a locked gate. Keeping out the leads that shouldn’t be your clients and only letting through those leads that you really should be working with.

Getting better at sales is difficult, but not impossible.

It requires practice.

It requires close attention to details.

It also requires you to accept that this is the most business-y part of your business. Which means, you have to build up a bit of a thick skin here. Don’t take rejection personally, instead learn from it and adjust.

There are 2 things that helped me get better at sales.

• Knowing the type of buyer I'm talking with
• Being able to answer objections

STEP 1 - Learn from every sales call

Being present during a sales call is a must. You have to be in the moment, listen to everything being said and concentrate on closing the deal, not learning about the interaction.

Though, that’s the only way to learn and get better at sales. Is to be able to listen to and see patterns in your process to improve.

The ideal thing to do is to record the call so that you can listen back to it later with your learning ears on.

If you can't, or the lead objects to it for some reason, then be in the moment, but as you take notes, be mindful of objections being said and write them down among your sales notes.

The most important thing to sales is being able to answer objections, so take note of them.

STEP 2 - What type of buyer are you talking with?

Understand the type of buyer you are talking with. In the services business, there are 5 types of buyers:

• Are they a price buyer and want to just get the lowest price they can?
• Are the a value buyer and want quality and price isn't a concern?
• Are they the "know-it-all" buyer that feel they know how to do your job?
• Are they the "wishy-washy" buyer that really doesn't know what they want?
• Are they the "go-between" buyer that say they are a decision maker, but not really?

One lead can be a mix of these but identifying which one they are as early as possible will help you in figuring out how to handle them and where to lead them.

Tomorrow we’ll go into how to overcome objections in sales.

Each of the different types will have different objections. The fun part is that objections don’t always come in the form of conflict or trying to corner you to do something you don’t.

We’ll dive deep on this important piece to the puzzle tomorrow so that in the next sales call you have, you’ll be better prepared to not just overcome them, but maintain your position as the expert in the conversation.

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Finally it’s landed. The #Gutepocalypse! 

I say that in jest because this has been the biggest anticipated release since Star Wars Phantom Menace.

WordPress 5.0 is what I’m referencing here, and before you tune out because you aren’t in the WordPress space, I encourage you to stay tuned because this is not about that as much as it’s about technology and your clients.

When Apple released the iPhone back in 2007, most people with a Motorola Razor said “that is huge and what would I even do with that?”

When Amazon released the Echo in 2015 and I bought it, my wife said, “what’s the point of this thing? There’s no way I’m ever going to talk to this.” Now she’s using it all day and much more than I ever have.

In case you aren’t in the WordPress space, 5.0 is the release of Gutenberg. It’s the brand new default editor for WordPress, which has the whole place in an uproar. It’s been this way for a couple of years to be honest.

Some people hate it, some people love it - both have very valid reasons. When asked, I usually respond with indifference.

I truly am indifferent of an opinion to any change in technology, especially when it comes to my business, mainly because it’s nothing I have control over. 

Whether or not I like the change that’s coming, it’s coming. So no use distracting myself with the drama surrounding it. It’s a matter of figuring out if the change in that technology still aligns with the need of my clients.

See I’ve always lived by the rule, business should drive the technology and not the other way around.

Does change affect business, sure, I’m not denying that at all. But I’m saying that when using technology for our clients, we ultimately have little to no say in the direction of that technology.

Companies have their own agenda and purpose. We have to serve our clients the best way we know how. We have to solve our clients’ problems. 

Our clients come to us for our experience and expertise on how to solve their problems.

That’s what we should worry about most.

Not whether there’s a UI change. 

Not whether there’s a leadership change.

I’ve been a web developer since 1998. During that time, I’ve developed in Frontpage, Homesite, Java, PHP, TCL, VB, COM, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, and countless platforms like Magento,  BigCommerce, WordPress and others.

These are all tools to solve a particular problem at the time. 

I encourage you to look at technology as a tool in your tool belt. If that tool no longer serves it’s purpose in solving the problem the best way and there is a better one, time to move on.

If you resist any change for the sake of staying put, you aren’t serving anyone, your client or yourself in a good way.

Avani Miryala is a UX designer who specialized in the Cryptocurrency space. She’s the host of Beyond the Status Quo podcast.

In this episode we discuss the reasons why finding your freelance niche can increase your revenue, strengthen your relationships with clients and create a smoother funnel for recurring business.

We connected on Instagram and when she told me the name of her podcast and invited me to come on, I had no choice. It was a no brainer. If anything, I had to be a part of anything named Beyond the Status Quo.

In this episode, I had a chance to talk about the how to find your niche.

In case you don’t want to read the rest of this, you can check out the full episode for all the details.

In the episode, I shared a variety of things including:

• Strategies for finding your freelance niche and methods for developing your specialty 
• How to introduce your niche to your network and the price tag that comes along with it
• Best practices for circumventing negative emotions attached to client and revenue ‘FOMO’

Specifically I talk about tips for gracefully declining work that does not fall under your scope of work.

I think that this is an important part of the process. Once you figure out what niche to go for, it’s a matter of not falling back into bad habits.

Once you draw that line in the sand for your business, anyone that’s defined as not a great client should be referred elsewhere.

Definitely go check it out.

If you have a chance too, check out a few of the other episodes as well.

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