3 Ways You Can Seal the Deal with Freelance Clients
When clients who are looking to hire freelancers begin their search, their main priority is not to get the cheapest rate, but rather how they can get the best results, on time and of course, at a reasonable price.
As for hiring a remote freelancer, clients tend to be extremely risk averse if the freelancer isn’t physically sitting right next to them, meaning, they’re very reluctant from the start especially as hiring freelancers can be pretty new for them.
In this episode of ‘Raising the Bar’, Matthew Mottola, author of The Human Cloud, goes deep into the minds of both your existing and potential clients to reveal three practical ways you can close the deal with your pipeline clients and turn them into new business.
Watch the full episode below!
Let’s get started by better understanding the mindset of clients.
1. Clients are Risk Averse
For many clients, hiring a freelancer can be something that’s completely foreign to them so there’s certainly a lot of hesitation involved when seeking remote talent. Will you be able to deliver their project in time and on their ideal budget? Those are some factors that can make your client step back.
2. Clients Don’t Know How to Hire You
Believe it or not, clients don’t actually know how to hire you, as in they’re not always aware of the skills that are required to complete the job and most likely, they don’t know the average price of the project. That’s where you can come in and own the engagement and take the lead on the project and you can do so by showing off your value.
3. Clients Don’t Want to Manage You
Clients absolutely do not want to have to manage you, because that’s something they can have an agency do for them. They want YOU to be independent and deliver your offer the way you proposed to them at first.
So as for next steps, what can you do in order to close the deal with these clients and gain more business? Let’s break down your business approach into three stages: pre-client, during-client and post-client.
1. Have a Pre-Set Form
The pre stage is everything that’s going on before clients even reach out to you so what you need to do is make it super easy for them to find you and your qualifications. Have some sort of form for clients to choose which offering they want to buy either on your website or social media profile and get them to buy your services and include a meeting link in that form so they can book a chat with you right away.
2. Prepare Excellent Questions for a Call
While you’re having the first phone call with the potential client, which is the during-client stage, make sure to prepare ahead of time a list of really good questions for them. The conversation should be very natural, but one of the best questions to ask if how you’re going to be measured along with what’s important to them, why do they need you and what are their alternatives. In addition, you should only be talking for about 30-40% of the time, and the rest should be them answering your open-ended questions.
3. Send a Proposal
Now that you had an excellent conversation with them, let’s move on to the post-client stage, which is you sending over an invoice template or a full project proposal/statement of work that clearly lists and states all the things you can deliver to your client. That way, your client can see exactly what they are buying from you in one place.
Bottom Line
To summarize, it’s important that you keep in mind that clients are extremely busy most of the time who are already hesitant about hiring you because they don’t know what exactly there are looking for and they certainly don’t want to manage you. However, you can mitigate all that when you streamline your pre, during and post process, specifically making it super easy for them to know what they are buying from you, conduct a great call with excellent questions, and then immediately follow up with either an invoice or proposal.
Good luck!
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