The very heart of any digital consultancy or freelancing business is the sales you bring in. You will literally live or die by this.

Sales tactics for the digital freelancer

Digital veteran Darren Fell, founder of Pure360.com, freelance advice site FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk and the ground breaking online Accountancy service Crunch.co.uk tells his story of how to sell and really make your business.

If business is slow or you are starting out, attend this interactive lecture and you will leave with fire in your belly.

Event Detail:

• When: March 10th 2010, 2010 18:30 – 20:30
• Where: Westminster Business School
• Location: 35 Marylebone Road, room M228, London, NW1 5LS
• Price: free event (55 places) (sponsored by Crunch.co.uk)

The course will cover…

Do you actually like selling? Do you follow a structured approach to bringing in business?

For some, this is easy, for others this is the hardest part. Bringing in business successfully and following a structured approached will be the difference between a fantastic career or one that is just too painful and very poor!

Darren Fell will guide you through his story from corporate sales in a pan-euro position to his first startup, Pure360.com. Setup on a shoestring and existing on a fierce cash burn rate Darren was forced to sell fast or face personal bankruptcy.

A lot of the tips are common sense however this course will give you the structure to sell well, actually enjoy the process and ensure you create the perfect pipeline!

The seminar will deliver:

• Sales basics, getting the word out there
• Managing the contacts and the actions – picking the right software
• Reasons to stay in touch – keeping up the momentum of the sale
• The importance of the pipeline – ensuring you never end up with a sales black hole
• Closing business – how to close effectively

The seminar will also comprise of an interactive question and answer session to learn from your selling woes and hear Darren’s solution.

Darren helps many other entrepreneurs for free and is passionate about the flourishing freelancing space. He helps people to start-up on their own by teaching them sales tactics to drum up business and ways to ensure continued success. He also speaks at seminars to help freelancers and micro-businesses really make their companies work; ultimately helping them to fulfil their dreams and avoid being stuck in jobs they dislike.

Register here

It’s the start of a new year and a new decade and like many self-employed people you’ve probably been thinking about how to have a good year despite the sluggish economy.

The one thing you must do this year for your work to take off…

I’ve been advising people for 5 years on how to make their own business work and whether they’re a freelancer, consultant, coach, speaker, or internet entrepreneur, I’ve discovered one defining factor that consistently separates those that succeed from those that struggle.

The factor I’m talking about isn’t having a fancy website, or masses of web traffic, or the smartest marketing, or even the best sales skills. It’s something more fundamental than that. The distinguishing trait of those whose businesses really take off is that they sell the right thing – they have a killer offer.

Until you’ve got a killer offer – something a lot of people really want – all the marketing in the world won’t help you. So how do you create one?

Three keys to building your killer offer

• It must be based on something you love doing. Firstly, it takes a lot of time and effort to build a successful business so you have got to choose something that you will enjoy working on and will hold your interest. It just won’t work otherwise. Secondly, if you build a business around the things you love doing a lot, you’ll already have a competitive advantage. It’s hard to compete with someone who loves what they do. You’ll be happier too and as recent research shows, happiness leads to success.
• It must be something you have real talent for – but understand that most people’s idea of talent is far too narrow. Your greatest talents might be things that never show up on a CV: the ability to connect with almost anyone, your endless supply of creative ideas, an obsession with getting the details of a project just right. Focus on those things that come easily to you. As marketing guru Seth Godin says, do what you’re best in the world at, quit everything else.
• Your offer must meet a pressing need – it should solve a problem or address a pain that lots of people have. When you work out what this is, you’ll find you connect directly with the people you want to work with and dramatically reduce the time to win business. To find the pain you address, think about this: What’s the biggest concern for the people you work with right now that you can help with? What do they wake up in the morning stressing about? What often irritates or frustrates people in the area you work in? Once you know what it is, you can start to speak directly to what is at the forefront of your prospects’ minds. Get all this right and you’ll find you gather momentum quickly – you’ll generate word of mouth referrals and attract more and more business. You’ll be doing work you enjoy and you should find you can raise your prices too!

Want to find your own killer offer?

This January I am leading a small group of people step by step through a process to find their killer offer and tell the world about it. It’s packed with tools, tricks and blueprints to show you how to finally get paid well to do the work you love doing – whether you’re just starting out in business or you’ve been self employed a while and would like to get better results with less struggle.

Learn more about the programme here

John Williams is author of Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love & get paid for it to be published by Pearson in June 2010. He is a former Senior Managing Consultant at Deloitte and has consulted independently to the BBC, Siemens and Accenture.

Why effective Personal Branding is critical to your success as a freelancer

In a world of virtual networking, both social and business, the perception the world already has of you begins way before any physical communication. Via all online mediums, including your personal website, Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, Twitter messages and now Google Buzz, the world has enough information to, rightly or wrongly, form an impression of you. That impression could make or break your ability to create a successful professional career as a freelancer. With access to personal data never being easier the freelancer must be more conscious then most to ensure that their personal brand is effectively supported online at all times.

There are many different facets to personal branding but the one key theme that I communicate to my clients as critical is that your online and physical appearance, communication and actions must clearly represent the values that you want the world (and potential employers) to see. It is of no use calling potential clients and telling them how professional and effective you are if your online identity shows otherwise, either through communication with friends or photos of events that are best kept private. What also must not be forgotten is that physical presence is critical when pitching and presenting for new business and to not support your claim of being the utmost professional with an appropriate physical appearance is an inexcusable error.

The management guru Tom Peters wrote an article in Fast Company Magazine back in December 2007 titled “the brand called you”. This article explained that the major purpose of branding is to distinguish you from the rest of the herd based on your skills, abilities and experience. Tom Peters suggested focusing on the following key areas when attempting to identify your own personal brand.

• What qualities or characteristics make you distinct from your competitors or colleagues?
• What do you do that adds remarkable and distinguishable value?
• What do you want to be famous for?

Defining your personal brand is only the start of the process to achieve an effective personal brand. You next have to market your brand, from a physical and online perspective and learn how to sell your brand – not only verbally but also through your everyday actions. Something else extremely critical to the success of personal branding is the ability to accept that you are a brand and to be able to change your approach to your professional career. If you don’t value brand ‘you’ then no one else will – then what is the basis for anyone to want to employ you? I’ll be addressing personal branding further next month but in the meantime see if you can get started on distinguishing what makes you the freelancer everyone should hire.

By Daryl Close, business success consultant and coach

Do you your online presence professional? Or do you let it all hang out and let your clients decide what to make of it? What tips would you offer?

Add your comments below…

Courageous conversations

How to say what you mean and get what you want

But as a freelancer you’re on your own when it comes to dealing with issues and problems. If and when they need sorting out you’re the one who has to do it and (you know what I’m going to say here, don’t you?) the longer you avoid dealing with things, the worse they get. Not that I’m suggesting you leap on every issue as soon as things run less than smoothly, but  sometime or other you’ll have to do something about those situations that lurk like a worsening toothache.

Don’t just sit there – do something!

The way round  all these concerns lies in improving your ability to undertake courageous conversations – those in which open and positive communication is used to create constructive solutions to difficult issues within the context of a strong and trusting relationship.

Sound great, doesn’t it? And so easy! So why don’t we do it?

Mainly because as well as those fears mentioned above we are held back simply by the terror of jumping off the diving board and getting on with it. Hence the name “courageous conversations” – we need to be brave and fearless if we want results.

Conversations for any situation

In essence, they all share a common basis: they’re causing you tension, that tension is leading to you to feel resentment and possible irrationality, and you want them to change their behaviour.

Rules of engagement

1. Positive intent This means that you have to embark upon the conversation intending to achive a mutually beneficial, positive outcome i.e. a win/win situation where you may get the other party to agree to making some changes, but you co-create the outcome and they don’t lose face or feel diminished or bullied.
2. Outcome You must be clear about exactly how you want their behaviour to change. It’s no good saying “I’d like you to pay your invoices more promptly”. If they never pay anyone within six months, “more promptly” for them might mean four months whereas what you want is payment within 30 days. So be specific.
3. Perspective This is perhaps the most important area of all and reflects the fact that whatever you believe the issue is you are only seeing it from your perspective – the other person may not see it as an issue of any significance whatsoever – and, of course, you may not be seeing the bigger picture.

Candid, challenging and courageous

Conducting the conversation itself involves following a few straightforward rules:

• Forewarn the person that you want to talk to them about the issue. (e.g. I’d like to come and see you on Thursday  to discuss how to improve the timing problem we keep having around your invoice payments”).
• Start the conversation by stating what you believe the issue is and the impact you feel it is having on you and your relationship with them. Be assertive and clear – if not, you risk losing momentum from the start.
• Tell them why the situation matters to you and what you feel are the implications if it is not sorted out.
• Ask them to acknowledge that they’ve understood what you’ve said and for their perspective on the situation. Listen carefully, asking for elaboration or clarification if necessary.
• Tell them what outcome you would like to see, then ask them to suggest a solution that would address your concerns.
• Discuss their proposals using lots of questions and reflecting back what they agree to so you are both clear about what is involved.
• Ask them for their commitment to making the change and stipulate a timescale. Agree with them how you will both know when the change has been made.

By Dianne Bown-Wilson

Image by eye2eye

There is that well known phrase in the sales industry ABC – Always be Closing and whilst I’m not into the ’selling double glazing’ approach we can learn something from their proactive way of getting results. Let’s look at a simple sales formula for calls/meetings to get us started:

1. Introduction & Hook

2. Probe

1. Level One – asking questions that will help you establish what they are looking for e.g type of project, skills required, time scales (facts)
2. Level Two – is the need analysis step, in otherwords why they need a freelancer, so use open questions e.g what impact does this project have? what are the consequences of not starting on time? what value will a freelancer add? (Once you know this information you can use it to sell it back to them in the next stage…

3. Match

4. Confirm

5. Close

This is an easy sales process to learn – Intro, probe, match, confirm, close and if you start using it today I guarantee you will see improved results.

Happy Selling!

Please share how you get on using this by posting your stories and if you would like to learn how to use this practically join us for our workshop on Thursday 12th November at the The Werks, Hove:

Freelance Training: Improving your Sales Hit Rate

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For one week I stopped spending my time posting articles and got back in touch with my clients using the telephone. Yes that dusty thing that we only pick up if it rings or if (God forbid) our Internet is down. I was amazed at the results not just from a business perspective from how I felt having made personal connections with my clients. I too had fallen into the habit of doing business by email, trying to resolve conflict by email or just generally being lazy by answering questions that would have been quicker for me to pick up the phone and answer. Why? I just got into the habit of doing it that way.

When I used to work in Sales, there was no internet and we had to send literature to clients by fax. This of course meant us leaving our desk and standing by the fax machine which if we were seen to be there too much meant a reprimand from our manager. Why? We were selling by fax which has of course now turned into selling by email. Clients will email us questions, they will email us objections and sometimes they might not reply at all which we guess to mean that they aren’t interested or have gone else where with their business.

We need to start picking up the phone again. We can’t build rapport over email, we can’t sell ourselves effectively on an email and we can’t build trust with a client over email. It amazes me when I work with organisations how much internal conflict is cause by mis reading the words or tonality of an email or how much time is wasted by people emailing each other who sit two desks away – to build relationships takes time and to do this takes effort – close down your computer and pick up the phone.

Scarily enough social media has now brought about another way of doing business. Except it isn’t selling and the secret rules of some of these sites such as Twitter is that you do anything but sell or talk about what you do because this puts people off and is bad ‘etiquette’. Now I’m not one of these people who is against such sites as I love Twitter and keeping in touch via Linked In, I just think we need to remember how powerful the phone is and how much of the rapport we lose via posts, blogs and tweets.

Look at your client list today.

• Who can you call and have a chat with?
• Who haven’t you spoken to in a while?
• Who didn’t respond to some of your emails?

To find more about how to sell YOU, come along to our next workshop Selling YOU workshop.

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

image by ~seb

Manage your environment

Influence the time you are called

What are your 3 key messages?

Build rapport with the interviewer

Stand up

Use a mirror

Research the company

Save questions about package or working conditions to the face to face interview

Tell them something personal

End on a positive

If you want to find out about our personal 1:1 Telephone Interview training or Voice Coaching please contact Hannah at training@freelanceadvisor.co.uk.

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

image by splorp

Maybe these high performers knew that time was precious and so getting back on the phones was the best remedy rather than wallowing or bringing down others with them. I believe the key to being a consistent high performer is how you deal with the lows and how you build upon the ups.

Recently I interview 30 top performers in various sales roles for research for my book Fight Back! When presented with set-backs or challenges they all seemed to respond in a similar way using some or all of the steps below:

1. Keep your thinking and your energy directed to future goals and how you are going to achieve them. Break goals down into smaller targets that can be achieved in one afternoon. The small taste of success will help you get back into ‘the flow’ of being at your best.

2. Soon after the set-back has occurred spend at least an hour on a part of your job you really enjoy and that energises you. By doing something that plays to your natural strengths and that you can loose yourself in will help re-adjust the mental and emotional reaction to what has happened.

3. Kick the ’self-doubt gremlin’ into touch. You know him/her that annoying voice that starts making you doubt whether you are actually suited to the job you are in or the decison to go freelancing or even attributing previous success to luck! Instead focus your thoughts back to the times you have been really successful and how you felt and what you did well. High performers have minimal self doubt – kick your gremlin into touch!

4. Resilient people have varied ways of managing the emotional reaction to change, problems or challenges. Whether it is taking the positives, learning from the experience, spending time with people that make them laugh or a hobby – they have a route to channel negative emotions. Do not store yours up – find a way of handling them and moving on – FAST! Fight Back!

5. Some people were quite practiced at the steps above and even had a conscious strategy for ‘bouncing back’ that they could teach others. If you don’t bounce back quickly you need to start adopting some of these steps, if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got!

If you would like to learn how to put these steps into practice there are loads of tips, exercises and stories in my book Fight Back! (See below for details).

Finally I will leave you with a quote from Helen Keller:

“When one door closes, another door opens, however we can spend so much time looking at the closed door that we don’t see the one that has opened for us.”

Hannah’s book is available to order online via Paypal.

Fight Back (Paperback) £8.99
Fight Back (e-book version) £4.99

Without a sale we’re not in business and ongoing sales will spur the business to grow. Emma Jones offers five steps on how to make a sale and keep the cash flowing.

Step 1: Prepare

Before making a first approach to the potential client, carry out a search so you’re happy you have the right person, their correct name, and possibly a news item highlighting their demand eg a first note may be ‘Dear Andrew, having seen you quoted in a recent article in ABC press, I understand you are looking to move to new office premises. I am writing to introduce you to my interiors company ….’

Step 2: Present

This applies whether it be sending a first email (as above), distributing flyers or making a call to a prospect. Present the benefits of buying you and your product/service. How will it make the client’s life easier/who else has bought/what does it cost/who can they call if interested. These are all useful points to cover in a first approach.

Step 3: Persist

Saying that, unless your potential customer has an immediate need for what you offer on the day on which you make the approach, then it’s likely you’ll present yourself and then have to spend a bit of time following up. Submit the proposal, follow-up with a delicate prompt a week later and, if still no response, keep in regular contact with friendly emails and calls along the lines of ‘Hi, just like to keep you updated on what’s happening here .. would love to do business with you when you’re ready..’

Step 4: Perform

Perform to a high level so reality meets expectation. Along the way, check the new client is happy with the service they’re receiving.

Step 5: Promote

A growing roster of quality clients will give others the confidence to trade with you. Promote new sales and client wins; through a press release, via testimonials on the site, or social media such as Twitter.

Taking these steps can be eased by using software such as Salesforce.com which keeps track of sales leads and the business development pipeline. Or, do what I do, which is to use an excel spreadsheet and a handwritten list that’s regularly updated and always carried with me!

Emma Jones is Founder of Enterprise Nation and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up’

Enterprise Nation is racing to follow every home business on Twitter by Home Enterprise Day on Friday 20th November at www.twitter.com/e_nation

Freelance Training:

Selling YOU – 1 day Training Workshops

It’s a tough climate out there. If you are looking for a permanent job then you are up against lots of candidates who are all fighting for the same job. If you are freelance/contract then you have to ensure your skills are leading edge, have the confidence to hit the ground running as well as prove why you are better than your competition.

Whether you have just started looking for work or you have been out of work for while this new workshop from Freelance Training will help you get back on track, brush up your interview technique and help you stand out. In short, we will help you reduce the time it takes you to find the right role.

What will we cover?

Research also indicates that what you say in an interview is only 7% of the impact you will make with a whopping 93% being based on how you say it (appearance, voice & body language). This is why it is critical that you invest in not just your CV or further training to enhance your ‘ technical skills’ but you take our Interview MOT workshop and get some personal feedback on your presentation style as well as practical techniques to ensure you stand out.

If you are a freelancer, contractor or sole trader you will also benefit from this workshop because every sales call you make you are being interviewed by your prospective client.

To find more about how to sell YOU, come along to our next workshop Selling YOU workshop.

Still skeptical? Take our quiz:

1. Are you always successful at interviews, do you always get the job?
2. Do you dress depending on the culture of the organisation you are seeing?
3. Do you research their ‘pain points’?
4. Can you adjust your communication style to the interviewer e.g introvert or extrovert?
5. Do you know why you are unique?
6. Do you know how to control your nerves and appear confident in all circumstances?

Go to events for details or view on Upcoming.

Have you signed up for our Launch Party?

image: While-U-Wait by habeebee

Freelance Training:

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

Whether you are looking for your first freelance job or have been in the market a while you will know how important it is to be able to promote your services to ensure you aren’t out of work for long.

Whether you have sales experience or not, things are different now. Why? Because you are the product. You are selling YOU. Easy right? Think again, even the most experienced sales person who can sell snow to the Eskimos finds selling themselves a challenge and sometimes even embarrassing.

Time to get over it quickly or look for another career, because being a freelancer the only person who is going to sell you, is you. Even if you have agencies representing you, the way you sell yourself to them is important and don’t forget agencies just want to close the deal so you will be up against plenty of other candidates too.

How to Sell You?

Here at Freelance Training our one-day training workshop run by experienced sales professionals will give you the skills needed to help you improve your sales hit rate and most importantly remain positive no matter what.

What will we cover?

• A simple and easy sales process for meetings and cold calling
• Ethical Selling
• Preparation – setting yourself up for success
• Why You – how to show you are different from your competition
• Confidence – feel the fear and believe in yourself
• The absolute Must Do’s and Must not Do’s of selling

How?

To see dates or to book please see our events pages:

• Selling You – Brighton – September 4th : More info – Register
• Selling You – Manchester – October 2nd : More info – Register

Freelance Training:

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

In my last article I talked about the importance of first impressions and I got some interesting feedback. I decided to then go and do my own research to see if there was still any truth in it.

Ever wondered why you didn’t get that job? Perhaps you were told that someone came along with more experience than you or maybe you didn’t get any feedback at all. The truth is out. In recent research with leading I.T Recruitment agencies in the UK we found that when asked if they thought their clients gave them the truthful answer as to why candidates didn’t get the job and they answered 99% no.

Recruiters rated ‘Personal Presentation’ (appearance, confidence, communication skills) as the second most popular reason for unsuccessful interviewees but rarely do we get that feedback do we? It takes someone very brave who isn’t in fear of political correctness to be honest with you. Take being PC out of it, we don’t typically find giving personal feedback comfortable, it’s a bit like telling someone at a party that they have spinach in their teeth. We would rather walk away.

Why? Because we don’t like to judge do we? Well actually we do and it is the natural instinct we were born with, to make quick, snap decisions based on first impressions. Psychologists say this reflex thought process comes from the days of cavemen, when we had to make quick decisions coming out of caves as to whether we were going to get eaten or not by woolly mammoths. Using all of our senses, to literally feel, taste and smell danger.

Ok so this instinct has become less over time because there aren’t any mammoths but also because we are taught to keep an open mind and not to trust our first impressions.   However if we are really being honest we would say that actually we are a good judge of character and those first impressions are generally right.

So how do we control our first impressions and ensure we get assessed on our experience not whether our face fits?

Clue: The answer lies not in what we say, but how we say it.

Want to know more?

Attend Freelance Training’s Launch Party on the 16/7 at the Werks in Hove where we will be covering some tips on how to manage your personal impact so if you haven’t, sign up today.

Image by Jim Frazier

To find more about how to sell YOU, come along to our next workshop Selling YOU workshop.

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

Freelance Training Launch Party 16th July

If the beer and nibbles don’t entice you then come to hear us share with you the key secrets for successful freelancing and some practical tips that you can use to help you win more business and be more profitable.

Hannah Keep and Daryl Close our two expert Trainers will be leading the event with our special guest Dan Bowyer, the mastermind behind The Engine Room an I.T training and Support Company, who will be giving us an insightful 10 minutes entitled ‘I.T Sucks’.

Plus 3 lucky winners will be given a copy of Hannah’s new book Fight Back!, a key survival guide for dealing with the ups and downs of not just freelancing but life in general.

If you would like us to cover any specific topics of interest at the event please post a comment and we will do our best to deliver.

Live up North? Never fear, our ‘other home’ is in Manchester and the plan is to launch there and start running events.

If you would be interested in coming, please email training@freelanceadvisor.co.uk or add yourself to the Upcoming event page.

See you there!

Image by Whatknot

Freelance Training:

Selling YOU – 1 day Training Workshops

How did you decide what to wear today?

Did you base your decision on what was clean, comfortable or whether you were seeing a client?

If you were seeing a client did you tailor your appearance to their industry or just put on your lucky ‘selling suit’?

We know from studies in the 70s that first impressions are made within the first 40 seconds of meeting and are often hard to change once made – more recently we’ve found that senior business leaders will make a similar snap decision in under 10 seconds so you have even less time to make a good impression!

If this is the case why are we still spending most of our time on our pitch, our product or our PowerPoint presentation?

In the first 4 minutes up to 40 sub-conscious decisions can be made based on our appearance, voice tonality and what we say. People think they know how old we are, how intelligent we are, if they can trust us and if our product is any good. Sometimes this is before we have even said hello!

Someone came in recently to talk to me about his copy writing services. He came in wearing jeans, a slightly creased shirt and his shoes needed a polish. Do you think I bought from him?

No. I made the decision in the first few seconds that I wasn’t interested because the first impression I got was ‘untidy’. His image didn’t project ‘attention to detail’ (like his proof reading services!) and above all he hadn’t bothered to look at what my company does before he came to see me. If he had done his preparation, he would have realised that we specialise in Personal Presentation skills training and so to influence me he would have needed to make more of an effort e.g. put on a suit.

Similarly if I’m going to see a Banker in the City I would wear a pinstripe trouser suit but wear something more modern if seeing an advertising agency. The point is people buy people. People buy from people that are like them – that is the principle of rapport.

So do you dress depending on what meeting you are going to?

Do you think this is important or a load of rubbish?

Perhaps you don’t make judgements on first impression?

Please post your comments below.

Hannah Keep is Director of Freelance Training and ready to answer your questions and comments

Image by Zach_ManchesterUK

To find more about how to sell YOU, come along to our next workshop Selling YOU workshop.

Selling YOU – Training Workshop

As freelancers we know you have absolute passion and pride in your skill set. We know it takes a lot of confidence to break out on your own. We also know that it takes more than just talent to succeed in this tough and competitive economic climate.

How well you sell, market and manage your product, product YOU, is critical. Great if those skills come naturally to you. Not so good if the thought of cold calling brings you out in a cold sweat or the thought of creating a business strategy gives you a headache.

So why provide training for freelancers? We realise that when it comes to training your first thought would be to spend any spare cash and time on enhancing your specialised skill set. However you would be missing out on releasing your true business potential if you don’t invest effectively in the most powerful tool you have – YOU. Freelancing success is not achieved by only being skilled in your area of expertise – you must be able to run your practice as a business otherwise you will not survive and thrive.

Our mission is to provide you with cost effective, practical & extremely effective training workshops in all areas of business from Sales, to Business Management and Financial Planning to P.R with the sole aim of helping you win more business and to ensure your freelancing practice goes from strength to strength over the long term.

Think for a moment. How is your business going? What would help you to become more successful? Do you know what is missing?

Image by Pink Sherbet Photography

Freelance Training:

Selling YOU – Training Workshop