Freelancers: Need a Recommendation? Just ask!

When you are in sales, your job is part selling, part marketing. I find that like all things in life, it’s a matter of balance. Too much of either activity will disrupt the cycle of your business and lead to times of feast, where you have so much business you get sick, to famine, where you have so little business that you are sick with worry.

You are not only marketing your widget or widget concept, however, but you are also marketing yourself. When your clients buy from your company through you, they are also buying your services as their sales rep. They are not only taking a chance on your widget (or widget concept) but also taking a chance on you, that you are going to take care of them as the face of the company and their policies.

So you wouldn’t have come to the sales call without any sales materials about your widget/widget concept, would you? Of course not. But I would bet that many of you don’t have any sales materials about yourself.

One of the best things you can do to market yourself is to get recommendations and referrals from your current and past clients. These are the R&Rs of a sales professional.

I am a freelancer, so I am usually selling my services and myself. I do this directly through my website and my network of connections. I am also on a website called Elance.com. Elance is a website that connects people who need writers to writers who need people who want to hire them.

Elance.com understands this concept of R&R; that’s why they always ask for feedback from the client after the completion of a job. The purpose of this is so that people who want to hire you but are hesitating because they don’t know you are likely to go ahead when they see all the positive feedback from your past clients.

However, I was just an ordinary sinner until recently. My ratings on Elance.com notwithstanding, I didn’t have any recommendations and referrals until a couple of months ago.

I had a broker contact me who has a stable of talent that she then connects with people who need occasional help. It’s just like Elance.com but instead of a website it’s a well-connected woman. Part of what she wanted before she would hire me were recommendations from current clients.

Her request suddenly made me acutely aware of the fact that I didn’t have any. Yeesh! I saw it as a great opportunity to remedy this shortcoming in my marketing strategy.

So when you need a recommendation from a client, what do you do? Simply put: ask. That list is so short that I didn’t even put it in a bulleted format. If I did, it would look like this:

How to get a Recommendation or Referral from a client:

• Ask

Looks stupid, right?

It is so simple it is stupid, however. Most clients that you work with on a regular basis don’t mind writing a recommendation for you. Likewise, they don’t mind referring you to their colleagues or someone who might need your services also.

Here is an example of the email you can use to ask for a recommendation from a client:

“Hi, [client name],

As we approach our [x] year anniversary, would you please give me a recommendation that I can use for prospective clients? I have attached a document that gives you ideas on what to say to make it easier for you. If you could put your comments in a Word doc on your letterhead, it would help me as I try to grow my business.

Also, would it be okay to list your corporate contact information if they wanted to contact you? I doubt many will, but I want to make sure it’s okay with you before I list it.”

You can easily modify this for a referral as well. Instead of asking for corporate contact information just ask them to forward your information to two or three people who might benefit from your widget. If you prefer to do the contacting, ask instead for the referral’s contact information directly and for your client to let them know you are going to call. The point of your client’s call is to turn a cold call into a warm call. And if not warm, then at least tepid.

The only objection you may get, and one that I got from one of my clients was that they were slammed with work. I had a solution for that as you can see in my example email. I gave them copy points. Almost all of them used these, too. It just goes to show you that if you lead a horse to water, you can make it easy for them to use the accolades that you have prewritten for them to praise your work.

Wait,what? Well, you get the point!

In drafting these points, consider what a future client may want to know about you. Here are some examples of what I sent my clients:

• Terri delivers on the project by the deadline every time.
• She is easy to work with and makes my job easier.
• When she works with my clients directly for interviews or on projects, I am confident that she will represent my company well and reflect well on my brand.
• I appreciate that she considers my audience in her copy so that it sends the right message to the right people I am trying to reach
• Terri provides a quality service at a price that fits my budget.
• I never feel as though I didn’t get a great value for my investment.

You get the idea. These are all true by the way. If you don’t believe me just ask my mom.

The R&Rs, recommendations and referrals are also a great way to gauge your performance. The fact that your clients are willing to write one for you shows you that the account is in good shape.

Radio silence is also telling…but at least you can address it before the situation gets any worse!

Sales is part selling, part marketing. This is true for both your widgets and your services as a sales rep. R&Rs are a great marketing tool for marketing yourself, so be sure that you have these important tools to keep your business growing by employing the ultra-complicated strategy of asking for them. Doing so will ensure that you always have a seat at the feast of new opportunities, instead of scrambling for crumbs during a sales famine.

What strategy or suggestions do you have for how to get your R&Rs in order? Please share your insight in the comments below.

Terri Lively is a career marketing professional that has unique experience in the areas of messaging and client relations. Terri helps her clients break through the clutter by injecting a bit of humor into the business world. For the past 15 years, she helps her clients create marketing materials that effectively communicate their message and get results, across all types of media. More about Terri can be discovered atwww.terrilively.com.

 

How to Raise Your Freelance Rates…and Deal with the Losses!

By Terri Lively

Today I was told that my freelance rates were too steep for a project. Rats! The facts are that my rates are steep and I am worth every penny. I say this (and put it in bold) because It’s important to believe that you are worth it if you want to charge a higher rate.

But daily affirmation aside, this client doesn’t think my rate is worth it. This is not an uncommon problem today for freelancers. So today’s topic is how to keep pushing your rates.

An excellent writer, Heather Waugh, sent me this article yesterday. It’s about how Freelancers Don’t Understand What They’re Worth. Check out this infographic:

Source: Community.copypress.com

So how do you raise your rates? I have some tips that might help:

1. Figure out your hourly rate…and stick to it.  All of us have an hourly rate with which we are comfortable. You need to figure out what it’s worth to sell your time to somebody else’s project. If the rate is too low, why not keep your time and spend it on the latest great American novel you are writing in your spare (read: unbooked) time?
2. Use the hourly rate to guide your proposals. I use my hourly rate as the base for all my quotes. I prefer to give project bids over hourly bids because I never want to get into an argument that what took me three hours should only have taken two. Or worse, what took 30 minutes should only be charged 30 minutes instead of the full hour. So using that rate, I come up with a price that includes likely revisions, image searches, posting charges, etc.
3. Google it. Sometimes I get a request for a new type of project, something I haven’t written before or that forays into a new area for me. Then I rely on Google to guide my bid. I type in a full sentence like, “What should I charge to write a 60,000 word novel?” and voila! I get about 10 sources that will give me ranges.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for more. This is the toughest tip that has the most repercussions. If you ask for more, you might get rejected.  But if you don’t ask for more, freelancing stays a hobby instead of your profession. So ask for more. Fearlessly.
5. Renegotiate. Clearly you wanted the work or you wouldn’t have bid on it in the first place. But please, resist the impulse to say, “Just kidding!” and jump back to your cheaper rate. Instead go back with a question, like “Did you have a budget in mind?” If you are lucky enough to get a number back, go back to tip one and make sure that it’s worth it and try again with a lower but higher than before number. It’s all about pushing the needle up, after all.

So how did I respond to the client today that said my rates were too steep? I did the only sensible thing I could. I tried to renegotiate at a lower rate with my question, “did you have a budget in mind?” And then I kicked myself for asking for so much. Sigh. I suppose that the concepts are always easier to talk about than to live.

So clearly, not getting what you are worth is a trend. But is it a trend that will change? Probably not if other writers do what I did and assert themselves as being worth more and then immediately crumble when they get rejected at their higher rate.

So what do you do to raise your rates? I’d be interested to hear your suggestions in the comments below.

If you Freelance, You Must Elance

Many writers are artists, content to starve and struggle while they write the great American novel. I say, “More power to them” while simultaneously saying, “No thank you” as it pertains to my own career. Luckily for people like me, there are resources that can help you be a creative artist without all the starving and angst.

I decided a while ago that I was ready to get serious about my career. No longer was I content to submit essays to contests and hope for the best. No, I had decided that if I was going to be hired as a writer, I’d best get my shingle hung. So at that time I had two options: Elance or Odesk.

I chose Elance. Why? Simple, I went in alphabetical order. But clever decision-making process aside, I am happy that I did. This site is a great way to get experience in writing professionally by connecting you with people who want to hire professional writers. Personally, I have made several connections along the way and learned a lot about the business of writing.  You won’t have the same arduous decision-making process that I did, however, as the two sites have merged.

You should become a premium member. It’s a cheap investment and makes a big difference in where your proposals are listed. But if you really don’t want to invest any money per month, you can set up a free profile.

Elance.com makes it easy to hang your writer’s shingle. When I say easy, I don’t mean that it isn’t time-consuming or that it doesn’t take a certain amount of discipline. I just mean that they outline the process for you pretty well of what your shingle should include if you want their clients to hire you. Here is where you can find mine.

Here’s what your Elance Profile should include:

• A photo that you have verified. This lets people know you are who you say you are. It’s a little bit of a bizarre process where someone calls you on Skype that you can’t see and says, “Okay, thanks.”

• Put up your education and have it verified. This again just assures people that are hiring you that you are who you say you are.

• A complete profile. Yes, it takes a while and in my case, I wasn’t entirely organized for making an online profile. But I did it and it’s important to both Elance rankings and clients’ perception of you.

• Take the skills tests. I’m not gonna lie…the tests are not easy. In fact, I failed the Native English Speaker’s test – and it’s the only language I speak! I also just reviewed my profile and saw that I could definitely use a few more tests.

• Put up samples. The portfolio gives you a chance to show off what you can do. Don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of stuff here at first. Just put up what you think best represents your work.

Once you have a profile complete, skills tests taken, and everything else, you are ready to start applying for jobs.

The great thing about Elance, beside the fact that it is a huge contributor to the growth of my business over the past year, is that you can pick and choose what type of project that you want to pursue and more importantly, what you would rather not.

For example, I get a lot of blogging work (because these days, who doesn’t?). So when I go out on Elance, I never apply for blogging work. Besides way too many writers are willing to write 1000 words for $2 in some other country, so blogging isn’t exactly a money-maker. Instead I choose to pursue projects in fiction and children’s writing. As a result, I was contracted to write several projects of both. I look at it as a way to get paid to learn to write a certain style, which in my case is how to write a book.

Check out Elance.com. If you want to be a freelancer, it’s a great way to connect with people who want to hire freelancers. Is it going to derail your efforts to be a struggling (read: starving) artist? Probably. But is it going to help you earn money doing what you love to do best all while working on your writing skills? Absolutely.