Podcast 22: Drumming up business
March 9th, 2010
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Crunch MD and Freelance Advisor supporter Darren Fell talks about the steps freelancers should take to ensure a sustained supply of business.
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Transcript
Andy: This is Freelance Advisor. Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 22 of Freelance Advisor and today I am talking to Darren Fell about drumming up business.
Hello everyone I am with Darren Fell and today we are going to talk about how freelancers should go about drumming up business, marketing, and getting started. Darren actually one of the first things that I wanted talk about, because I know we’re going to cover personal branding in another show, so we’ll sort of leave that aside for today. What are some of the things a brand new freelancer should do to drum business? Because in my day, it would have been to go straight to an agency, I’m just wondering if that’s changed. I mean I was freelancing in the 90s.
Darren Fell: Yes, it’s changed a bit out there. The personal brand that we’re going to talk about next episode is all about having your own website. Having a reasonable website, not going overboard with it, making sure you’re set up online so people can easily find you, Linkedin all of that. So anyway, we’ll cover that next.
But the world has changed out there. And what the point of this podcast is, is to instil in you freelancers out there, is to get your sales hat on. You’ve got to get into sales mode to bring in business because this is the life blood of a business. And if you don’t bring in the sales or don’t at least dedicate some time out of your day or out of your week to sell, you aren’t going to make the business work. And you’ll be back as – sorry to be impolite, a wage slave, working full-time for somebody and maybe not enjoying it as much as this great life of being a freelancer.
Andy: Now it’s interesting actually because I remember when I was a freelancer and I am not a sales person and I survived really because of the agency I was working through. But I get the impression that things are little bit different today. What would you say to all those people out there, who are just not salesy, but yet they’ve got to sell themselves?
Darren Fell: Yes, that’s an interesting one because I suppose I am salesy and my job over all the past businesses that I’ve set up has been turning maybe non-salesy people with enthusiasm into sales people. And anybody, I can promise you, can be a sales person. You’ve just got to get the psyche right. Don’t think “I hate sales people and I wouldn’t dream – I don’t want to be a sales person.” You’ve got to be a sales person. Everybody is selling all of the time. So one of the first things I do, if they’re really not getting it is, I want you to go away and read a really good sales book.
Now back in my original days of Pure 360.com, I had been a strategic sales person for cold internet, doing long sales cycle, multi-million pound hosting deals across Europe. And I started up here and I’d forgotten – and it’s amazing, I’d actually forgotten the basics of selling.
And I know that sounds silly because in that world, back in the height of the dot-com boom, it was all hoity-toity and wining and dining and “Yes, of course you need 100,000 co-location spots in Berlin and Hamburg and Zurich and Paris” and all of those points. But the life of a freelancer is selling consultancy, often programming skills, graphic design or it could be building things. Say, even if you’re a tradesman listening, you’re offering a great skill. So that’s the core offering.
Andy: So could you recommend any good books then Darren?
Darren Fell: Yes. The one I always recommend is Richard Denny’s ‘Selling to Win’ book. It is the most basic of basic sales books out there. And if you’re still not feeling the salesy feel, a few minutes into this podcast, then get into the feeling. This book – just get it from Amazon. It’s next to nothing. Let’s have a look, it’s £9.99. It’s the best tenner you have ever spent in terms of knowing how to generate or learning how to generate business. And it starts off right from the beginning.
Andy: Actually you’re not an affiliate are you for this book? (Laughter) Maybe you should be.
Darren Fell: No. I should be actually. I have bought so many copies for sales people, it’s amazing and now in Crunch, all of the sales people are given this book. But just to give you a starting point. And everything I’ve instilled, I’ve almost got it in my psyche in every business I set up and of course when I am helping other entrepreneurs and other freelancers, I follow the same process when I do the seminars. And there’s going to be a lot of seminars going on this year in 2010, Drumming up Business; Sales Tactics for Freelancers, where I spend far, far more time with 50, 60, 80 people in a room really, really helping them.
But you start off with sheer simplicity. Tell everybody about what you do.
Andy: This is more along the lines of networking isn’t it?
Darren Fell: Sort of, sort of. But I know it sounds strange. The newsagent, mum, dad, aunty, nan, sisters, brothers, friends. They may look at you a little bit oddly when you start going, “Look I’m a podcasting expert I’ve got this great new business. We record people and it creates another marketing channel for them” or “I’ve just set up a graphic design business, I’m fed up of working for the agency I’ve been working for, for 15 years and this is what I do.” And I can honestly say – that’s the first point that Richard Denny will come out with. It works. I have had some fantastic leads from mum. Mum has turned in to be my – well mums are always very supportive of sons.
Andy: What, your mum?
Darren Fell: My mum has literally – she will tell people, back in the email marketing days, what I did then and that person’s said, “Oh Lynn’s son’s doing so-and-so” and maybe their son is actually a marketer for a big dot.com site. So I’ve got emails through from these people. So yes, “I’ve heard from my mum who spoke to your mum, that you do email marketing. I’ve looked at your site and it looks fantastic, can you tell me more about it.” And we’ve gone on to demo the product, quote and win the service.
So I can honestly say, just always be in a sales mode. Every single time you’re out talking to people. It doesn’t have to come across as “Oh my God I’m a sales person, I’m selling now.” No you’re not, you’re just enthusiastic and passionate about what you do. And that overrides anything coming across as salesy. Like a double glazing sales person comes across very scripted and very robotic like. This is not what it’s about. You are a freelancer for your own business so you can come across with a passion. You believe passionately in your skills. You can do a brilliant job. Far better than agencies for a tenth of the price.
Andy: I think enthusiasm is the key though. You mentioned enthusiasm. And I think in my mind, if you’re enthusiastic enough about what you do, that carries so much weight. Because it’s infectious isn’t it? Enthusiasm is infectious. If you’re just talking to someone about something that you do and they can see that you’re enthusiastic about it. They’re probably going to want to do business with you.
Darren Fell: Yes absolutely. So just carry on that note, I do talk to lots of people and you know; I’m not going to lean over on a train and go, “Do you know what I do?” But if you strike up conversation and you’re getting on with people, why not drop it in. “This is what I do, here’s my card.” That’s that persistent – and you go back to that word you use, networking. It is effectively networking but you’re marketing yourself everywhere you possibly can.
Andy: What about established freelancers. Is there a difference there in way that they should approach, perhaps if they want to increase sales or get more clients? Is there a difference in their approach, different perhaps to how a new freelancer would approach it?
Darren Fell: Well I think the classic is, and I brought this up right at the beginning. And this is what I see with brilliant freelancers out there. They are so good at what they do, they know they’re good at what they do. That’s all they want to do. They don’t want to sell really if they can help it. It’s a bane, it’s a pain. So what I see is maybe the initial perfect time management skills of, “Yes, I’m going to spend two hours a day calling up people.” It doesn’t have to cold calling, it can be friends of friends of friends; other people you’ve worked with in the past and keep calling.
So you see that two hours a day or the one day a week or the two days a week, specifically for selling get encroached by work, which is absolutely brilliant. But what that freelancer completely forgets about is that it’s so enjoyable, I’ve got all this work on, suddenly it dries up. And so the other thing I was going to mention here is about control and management of your sales contacts.
Andy: Yes, I was going to ask about software actually. Is there good software to use?
Darren Fell: Yes, absolutely. There’s stacks and stacks of stuff out there. I started off with Act. It’s a really painful, sorry Sage, painful application but for a one person business it does the job. There is an online version which is better.
Andy: I used to use Act as well.
Darren Fell: Now Highrise which is one of the Basecamp offerings.
Andy: Yes.
Darren Fell: I’ve not used it.
Andy: I’ve heard good reports about it.
Darren Fell: Yes, I don’t know if you can actually put the figures in. But what you’ve got to do is every opportunity, record it. Keep on top of it. Put the amount in. When is that likely to drop? This is sales terminology. When are you going to close that deal? And always be very conservative on it because it never drops when you think it’s going to drop. So maybe add ten days, maybe add a month to it.
And then with the right piece of software, you can look at your year and go “Oh my God, that doesn’t even pay for the mortgage in June, July and August. What do I need to do to actually get business closed there or close business before hand?” So you actually can ride yourself through those months. And in fact if you do a really good job, you can do what the ultimate, which us freelancers like to do, is like “I’m going to go on a month’s holiday or six weeks holiday.” I mean how beautiful is that?
But you’ve got to manage the pipeline and have all that business dropping. But see it and application’s are brilliant out there. Have a look, I mean I haven’t done research. At Crunch we’ve moved over to one I always wanted back at Pure, but was unaffordable. I’ve now got a really good price for it per user is Sales Force. And a freelancer can get Sales Force it’s anything up to £65 a month. It’s a lot of money, but you can get reductions for it if you get more users on it. And it’s the ultimate package. But in reality for a one person business, you don’t need anything as comprehensive as that. That’s required for a bigger sales team like at Crunch.
Andy: So Act might be enough?
Darren Fell: I think Act or Highrise, as long as it’s got the ability to record it. Me as a sales person, you think you could hold a lot of these figures in your head. I’m going to close £2,000 of business, next month I’m going to do four the following month. Keep on top of it, because the other thing to go on to the next point is to keep touch points. And I’m using other salesy…
Andy: What’s a touch point?
Darren Fell: Well I think that’s the right thing, that’s a thing that I’d come up with as a sales person. Is, I need to keep in front of that customer. So if that business is likely to drop in four months. I want to have made sure I’ve had a good enough reason to talk to that customer in between. So it could be I’ve got in the press. It may have been I swam on Christmas Day in the sea “Look at me” but it’s humorous, it’s business.
It’s any reason – and again this is where you don’t want to come across too salesy, these touch points are “I’m still here, don’t forget about me” because this is the classic where freelancers are so busy and they go “Yes I got that business in August.” And they finally get to August 1st, “Right I’m here Mr Customer ready to do it.” “Oh I’m really sorry Dave, someone else gave me a call and I really forgot about what we’d spoken about” and you are absolutely kicking yourself.
Andy: You’ve got to remain in their psyche haven’t you?
Darren Fell: Exactly.
Andy: You’ve got to remain in their consciousness. Keep in touch.
Darren Fell: Yes.
Andy: I find Christmas is always a good way to do that.
Darren Fell: Christmas cards?
Andy: No, just after Christmas. I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year, just emailing you to see how things are going.
Darren Fell: Yes of course you can.
Andy: Or Easter. Any excuse.
Darren Fell: Of course you can. But I think that is the thing I use because it is less obvious. They know what you’re doing but if there is a reason to mention something or it’s something in the Tech Press that they might be interested in.
Andy: Yes, I saw this and thought of you.
Darren Fell: Yes, so the other thing of course you find with sales people naturally is they want to find out more about you. It’s a personal sale. Don’t just think you’re just selling a skill and that skill is being bought. If you’re very technical, try and get as personal as you can. Like, “Oh you’ve got children, brilliant, yes my children are in at that school as well” or “Your wife does kick boxing, yes so does mine, yes I have to be really nice to her every evening.” (Laughter)
And you just get in on a personal level and that’s the first thing I do. Then that allows you more – the touch points, before the deal actually drops. “Yes, this happened, how’s it all going with you.” Because otherwise with your – I’m sure you’ve got loads of other ways of keeping in touch with them.
Andy: Oh there’s millions.
Darren Fell: Otherwise it’s just once a year isn’t it? “How was your Christmas?” (Laughter)
Andy: Yes, “How was your Spring?” So Darren you conveniently avoided answering the question about agencies there. What’s your view on agencies?
Darren Fell: I did actually didn’t I? I’m sorry about that. Agencies – I suppose I conveniently avoided agencies because I believe the sale can be done directly and you can build up a far better relationship with customers. The trouble with agencies is that it falls into contracting mode. You just go there, you do the job and you leave. You’re not invited to any of the parties often. You’re not invited to Christmas party often. I know this is different, so that falls for me into the world of contracting and that’s a perfectly acceptable world. But I think all of us would love to actually build up our own Client base that will come back again and again and use us.
So agencies have a perfect place out there. If that’s what you would like to do, is go contracting at locations or working from home through an agency, it’s perfectly fine. In which case, you need to go into sales mode for the agencies and get yourself near perfect for them to sell you. Obviously, they’re going to take big cut out of your hourly daily rate, which is probably why I was avoiding it, because I like being direct to the customer, but it certainly has its place out there.
But when you go into the agencies, you have to make sure the CV is a killer CV, it really is well prepared. When you go into see them, it’s always worth going to see these guys. Make sure you’re smart. (Laughter) I’ve heard so many stories of freelancers, maybe in the summer, you’re in a torn t-shirt with your ripped jeans on. You know, life’s great, but they’re not going to think much of you because they won’t want to send you to Clients. So it’s probably a whole discussion in its own right about using agencies.
But if it really is the mode you want to go down, make sure you’ve got the tools right and that’s the killer CV and make sure you’re very presentable and carry yourself well. And there are probably plenty of books out there that can help you with one. I think ‘Contractor Calculators’, Dave Chaplin’s book really speaks about that, that’s very specific about contracting and how to win agencies over. So, very big place in the selling aspect for your career.
But you could actually balance it out. Have some agencies working for you on your behalf and once you’ve done a good job of selling into them and make sure you still spend time selling and getting your own direct customer base. The other thing why I am slightly anti-agency sometimes is that you are completely dependent on them.
Andy: Yes, I remember back in the 90s, I got all my work through agencies. And occasionally I would meet contractors who would talk to me and I would talk to them and they’d say, “Well I don’t always use an agency, sometimes I go direct.” And I was always so jealous of them. I remember once meeting a guy who developed some software. And I thought “Oh that’s so cool developing your own software” and I always wanted to go there. So there is a sort of a pull sometimes when you’re using an agency to try and go a bit more freelance if possible.
Darren Fell: Absolutely, absolutely. Definitely if you can balance it up. Which is really why I avoided almost at the beginning, you’ve got to get that balance out there. The day an age out there, effectively these contracting agencies are recruiters. The recruiters are getting thinned down. They are not bringing in as much money. When your key recruiter has been absolutely fantastic for you, selling you into all these places decides – or gets sacked. What do you do then? So you’ve got to really balance this out with getting your own direct business.
And that’s why I come back to the core purpose of this podcast is to instill in you, get your sales mode on, get your sales hat on and make sure you do it every single week or for a few hours every day.
Andy: Okay brilliant. Just quickly then at the end, is there much point in analysing your competition as a freelancer?
Darren Fell: Absolutely. Now I think for bigger businesses, you know like Pure and Crunch, you spend endless amounts of time whilst you’re doing the business plan, while you’re checking out talking to mystery shopping. And I don’t think there’s any harm in actually doing the same with other freelancers out there.
I’m helping a tree surgeon at the moment and he’s “How do I brand myself, how do I market – how do I win this business out there?” And I am saying, “Right, analyse the competition. I’ve actually got two quotes for you because I’m obviously a perfect customer. I’ve got a tree in the garden that needs a lot of help. Here’s the quote, go and look at their website. Where do you come up on Google? How good is their site? Does it convey things? How good are they on the phone? When they come round, how personal is it? Is the quote professional? Does the quote come back fast?”
And actually on that note, this is obviously completely unscripted podcast, but the quote and proposals is incredibly important. And probably may fit into personal brand as well. But anytime someone wants something from you like that, that is the biggest buying signal ever. Produce the quote as quickly as you can – the proposal. Don’t go into in-depth, do a light proposal, three to five pages, but get it is back fast. It is the momentum that also can carry a sale through.
Andy: Yes.
Darren Fell: So anyway, that’s a tiny point. But I think competition is really, really important. But often competition isn’t competition. So down here at Brighton, I would recommend if you’re in the text scene or the media scene, go down to Brighton Farm. Every Wednesday go for beers in the pub. What better place to chat to people? And some freelancers have got it initially wrong when they come and they’re like “I’m an excellent PHP programmer.” I don’t want to go and mix with them, they’re my competition. There may be very, very few who may think that but you go in and mix with that community, get on with them.
Suddenly they realise you’re brilliant and “Look Dave I’m over loaded. I’m overloaded with all this work can you take this piece off me?” You do once piece of work for him, brilliant that’s fantastic, he knows he can trust you. So you end up creating network there. So that’s probably a whole other podcast on selling.
Andy: Yes.
Darren Fell: Is just getting out there, finding the groups, the communities that you can mix in with. Go for beers with them. Those networking things don’t have to be the glass of wine stiffly held, like “Hello what do you do then?” (Laughter) And walking away with a load of cards that you do nothing with. Network away, just try and get out there every evening.
Andy: It’s also to do with building relationships isn’t it?
Darren Fell: Yes.
Andy: Now Darren a huge area that we haven’t really spoken about it is online networking, social media, Facebook and Twitter, what are your views on that? How should they best be used for a freelancer?
Darren Fell: I think it’s difficult really. You can get sucked into that world. I have found that I personally haven’t. A lot of my competition probably have and spend so much time on Twitter. Be really, really careful with it. Yes you can find business, but it can just drag you in. And suddenly you look at the clock and it is 5 o’clock and you realise you missed your two hours of calling people about selling. So social networking is good. For example, Twitter, if you want to have something continually going out there and you’ve got some good points to make. A lot of people don’t like it, but how about chucking those hints or tips in a database in ‘HootSuite’ so it doesn’t suck up your time.
Facebook, brilliant. Get any bit of news you’ve got or great piece of work you’ve done, get it up there. LinkedIn is obviously on the professional side.
Andy: Yes I was going to mention LinkedIn actually because I’ve got a piece of work that’s happening next week that came via LinkedIn. Just completely out of the blue.
Darren Fell: Fantastic. That’s brilliant.
Andy: I’ve had generally pretty good results with social media and networking.
Darren Fell: Have you?
Andy: I mean I use Twitter. I have an app on my iPhone called ‘Tweety’ and whenever anything interesting happens, I will tweet that out and sometimes those things are do with business. I might be just about to go and see a Client about such and such or just recorded such and such a podcast.
Darren Fell: Yes, absolutely brilliant.
Andy: And that does help community because you get followers and then you get DM’d – Direct Messages on Twitter. And it’s all to do with building relationships with people and just swapping information and building relationships. And I feel that the more relationships you have, whether online or offline, the healthier your business and you are going to be. That’s my view.
Darren Fell: That’s a really good view. I think the important thing is not to get sucked in. If I had a sales person in the team who was just focusing a lot of Twitter and social media, I would be a little concerned. I think what you’re talking about is just making the most of it on every positive thing you’re doing and that I think is fantastic. There is no issue with that.
I was just saying at the beginning, be very careful for being sucked in because it’s just another channel. It’s not the channel. If anything should come across on this call – a lot of people don’t like having spoken conversations they try and do it on email. Do try and do things on the phone. It’s immediate, it’s personal and if you can sense from the other person that it’s not kind of the right time or it’s not working then, “I’ll speak to you at another point it’s not a problem.”
But yes, invest time in the phone is the key point. Social networking brilliant, but don’t take too much time on it. I think balance is the key there.
Andy: Okay just quickly before we go Darren, thanks so much. But just quickly before we go tell us a bit about these seminars that you’re doing.
Darren Fell: Yes it’s following National Freelancers Day back on the 23rd November when we gathered in The Eagle pub on Gloucester Road. Is it Gloucester Road or Gloucester Street in the Lanes? Probably Street. And the function room had a capacity of 60. I didn’t expect hardly anybody to turn up, but it was utterly packed. People were on the stairs, they couldn’t fit into the room. People were downstairs; they couldn’t fit on the stairs. And the key thing that came out of that was “Can you help us in some key areas? Can we do this again?”
And Drumming Up Business; Sales Tactics for Freelancers is what came out of it, so I am going to do seminars for New Media Knowledge, the University of Westminster and various other places if they’ll have me. If I’ll have me, if I’ll be useful and spend an hour and a half, interacting, so telling them my story of how I sell, how I sold, what you need to put together and letting everybody really interact. So I am hoping that will be really useful for the community out there.
Andy: Fantastic. So we’ll make sure that we put a link in the show that it’s to that. So Darren Fell of Crunch.co.uk thank you so much indeed.
Darren Fell: Great, thanks Andy.
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