I had lunch today with a guy looking to jump ship and freelance to the shores of independence. Stop me if you've heard this before: "I'm not an account rep. I love working with people, but I'm not the big sales guy who's going to be landing clients. How do I do it?"
His concern is the lack of a thing I call: successmanship. Don't confuse it with "gift of gab", because this rabbit hole runs much deeper. I already have a grandiose Hail Mary one-stop-shop solution, but I'll return to that at the end. As I pointed out in a previous article, one of the most overlooked sad facts of freelancing is the day you throw your name on that shingle, you now wear every hat of a traditional agency, and you better make them all look good. You want to be a freelance marketer? Your first job is to prove you can market yourself. In a perfect world, the quality of your work turns will turn into an endless stream of positive word-of-mouth and you'll be carried into retirement on the shoulders of your admiring client base. Back here on Earth, we all need help.
The tried and true paths
I know people who've tried the direct mail route, the PR route, and cold calling, and all met with varying degrees of failure. Direct mail gets a glance and 99% of it becomes recycling. PR is good, but again, no guarantee of hitting your bullseye target and generating a real lead, and cold calling is a form of torture for most people. I'll be addressing the need for a good elevator pitch in a future entry, but for now, I'm just going to address the tongue-tied horror that befalls the best of us when trying to pan for gold in a disinterested, faceless caller. Cold calling is essentially telemarketing. All pitch. No foreplay. You hate doing it, and they hate hearing it. Time to get out there for a more organic conversation.
Networking schmetworking
You can certainly find your share of "networking groups" through LinkedIn, but the non-obvious downside is you're mostly meeting and greeting with, that's right, other people looking for clients and not actual clients. Picture a real world model of a sex chat room (is anyone a girl here?) That being said, I think they're a good thing if for nothing else than blunt honest discussions with your peers about their experience finding and schmoozing clients. I look at a networking deal as an opportunity to learn a lot and earn even less.
Dealing with dry-mouthed forked-tongue syndrome
There are plenty of books on the art of schmoozing, none of which I've read, so none of which I can recommend. What I can say is that conversing is easy, schmoozing is hard. Most people have a hard time shoe-horning an agenda into an otherwise well-meaning conversation without being tongue-tied and derailed by their awkward discomfort and guilt. You can quiet the pain of these artificial discussions by lowering your expectations. Lose the stressed-out attitude that every conversation needs to end with a signature on the dotted line. You'll live longer. You have to remember, everyone you meet is potentially three people away from someone you want to know, so don't focus on big wigs, and don't cram a hard pitch into every conversation. Leave off with a "I'd like to talk to you again some time". Meet everyone you can. It's the little people that can more influential than you know. There is a good article here on additional techniques.
How would Ghandi schmooze?
It's likely he would just be nice. It all comes down to finding out how you might be able to help someone with their needs by being an observant listener, being nice, and being helpful. This could even take the form of advising someone that they don't need your services at that time. If you remember my previous article about the benefits of giving away the cow's milk for free, you'll know how well being helpful without the expectation of a reward can work to your benefit. This kind of transparent honesty builds a trust that will carry your good reputation into the future. You're showing people how smart you are without telling them how smart you are. They'll figure out how they can best use you.
And without further ado; the solution to our woes
If you're a new business developer, drop me a line. Here's my elevator pitch.
You work for an agency creating new client leads. It takes time and effort and expense, and not every client is going to fit your agency's needs. I propose recooperating some of your expense by proposing to these clients that although your agency is not the appropriate fit for their needs, having a pool of trusted and recommended freelancers on call is one way to keep the relationship alive. It shows your interest in their needs, and the goodwill generated may one day be returned when their business has grown to a level more lucrative to your firm. And the best part? It wouldn't be inappropirate to collect a referal fee from your freelancer.
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