Make Your Own Lane: Choose Who You Want To Work With

It is your choice if you want to handpick the kind of clients you want to work with, knowing that the project will add value to your experience, learning and earnings or be at the mercy of clients who would choose to work with you.

Take Control

What may apparently seem like a great project may actually turn miserable, time consuming that lead to huge waste of bandwidth and unnecessary stress in the following cases: 

If the project owner (The client) is in control of everything

Looking to pay cheap or pick your brain for free. 

Asking for samples to gauge your competence while you have dozens of client testimonials that speak volumes about your good work

Ask yourself

How can a pitch deck or presentation or business plan sample of Real Estate industry tell the prospect how good you can do something similar for a company that deals with dairy products in a different geography altogether?

Turn the table

Clients who genuinely want good work on professional terms are open to suggestions and will never compromise on quality of work.

I have worked with clients who did not have the budget or who could not afford to pay my charges end to end, so they got a small part done by me to suit their budget and also build the required relationship quotient for future needs.

Top Four Tips – Client / Project Evaluation Prior To Engagement

I Timelines

If someone is asking for a business plan within 24 hours, isn’t that a huge hint about the client’s sensibility and sensitivity quotient?

a)   He is not even bothered about how you will deliver it.

b)   He is expecting you, though unspoken, to abandon all work you are currently doing for other clients and prioritize his assignment

c)   Even worse, if he is willing to pay more for this turn around – He actually believes there are people who will commit the impossible for a few dollars. He probably does this based on this past interaction with other freelancers who were willing.

II Take Charge

Do not give the power in someone else’s hands – You not only refuse such assignments upfront, you rationalize your decision of doing so by educating the client about the probable consequences of a quick TAT: 

a)   The project will be under researched.

b)   It affects buyer’s credibility to deliver such below standard work to an intelligent target audience.

c)   The client needs to use his best people skills to negotiate timelines with his audience instead of trying to negotiate turn around time with you.

Client is likely to value your work and perspectives, if what you say actually activates his thinking cell about how his decision to insist on incredible TAT can affect his end business outcomes.

III Try Paid Sample

It will be misleading to proceed with this assumption that all buyers on freelancing portals are low paying clients. There are many who are just being cautious due to past experiences or lack of domain knowledge or judgment to assess the right freelancer for their work. As a precautionary measure, they can give you small assignment before they let you do the big project

Do not be in that race to test who charges the lowest fees.

Do propose to do a quick paid assignment to be on the same page regarding quality work, timelines, competence.

Ask yourself again

Why do they need samples of other business, if you are willing to give them a paid sample for their own business?

IV Bid or Pitch

Bids are for newbies – who are new to online income, new to freelancing portals and new to the whole concept of trading skills.

Once you have a rough idea of what niche skills you have, where it fits in best, who is willing to pay for that, you know where to pitch instead of being limited to freelancing portals. Pitch is the fastest way to build an enterprise of your own,

Freelance marketplaces is your practice pad, a starting point and that is it. It is not your end all future. It is just one of the avenues/ revenue streams/ income options.

Try twitter platform to pitch your skills and drop a comment about  your experience for peer support

***Click here to open your Payza account to receive your online income***

Sales Kit: 90 Percent People Hate Selling Because They Follow Up

Most of them out there with a sales career hate rejection and find the whole sales process extremely frustrating. They have their reasons:

ü  The anticipation a lead triggers in the sales cycle is that of revenue (Read commission) and if that does not materialize, the efforts go waste

ü  They cannot handle the price war with competition

ü  They are ill equipped to manage objections effectively

ü  It is time consuming and the gap is wide between lead and deal

And the reasons continue.

There is a whole crowd out there who firmly thinks, they can win the order only

ü  If their company agreed to give that discount

ü  If their product had that feature - that extra tray or pin or needle which competitor’s product had.

ü  If there was something extra or incentive for the client that is offered for free, along with every purchase.

ü  If there were enough positive reviews online

ü  If company image is gets better in the reputation scale

And the excuses continue.

Being in sales for a considerably long time across industries, the few simple acts that work for me are

           I.        Do not Sell, Just Pitch

ü  People love to buy however they hate to be sold. What is new about this? – Once you switch focus from product to people, you will automatically know whether to pitch or not.

ü  When you just pitch, you act as a facilitator, the torch bearer showing the path, not pushing them to walk on that road.

ü  How do you feel when the same person tells you the very same thing (to buy) every time he meets you – You feel great or guilty or disgusted? You take a call if you want your buyer to feel that way about you.

                II.        Establish the need

ü  Do this right the first time and do this with utmost honesty to build trust - You are done for the moment.

ü  You establish need not by providing a dozen answers but by asking the right questions.

ü  Your role is to just assist the buyer to think about the needs he is likely to have today, tomorrow and day after.

ü  You need not control the decision making process, you just have to influence their thinking patterns and horizon – Are they able to see that far where you know they will need what

             III.        Position your product/ service

ü  You offer your product or service as solution and leave it at that.

ü  Once you have appropriately established the need or critical pain points, step III is a natural drift and the most predictable conclusion to the first connect.

ü  In all probability the buyer will be eagerly waiting for the solution you have

               IV.        Do not follow up

ü  I know this last bit contradicts age old advice to follow up.

ü  The simple rationale is - the one whose need is more severe should ideally be the person/ entity to follow up.

ü  If you have established the need well in the first place, they will follow up and if you have not done step II right, your follow up will face a flat response.

Do you know your client enough to make the right pitch?

Freelancing Kit: On Skill Coaching

Those who buy my Beginner’s Guide to get started with their online income, get to see a few samples of my pitch and conversations with clients. I share many such samples even in my blogs.

One common observation is the dilemma the beginners face, regardless of their background and previous experience in identifying the skills they want to get started with. They take anywhere between 3 weeks to a few months to choose the skills they want to offer as services.

Apparently it looks like the problem is really with skill. 

Well, it is not.

Recently when a beginner proposed to assist me for free with project related research work for the presentations and plans that I do for my clients, I decided to write this blog to call out the potential risk of this approach. The 5 Cs

Confidentiality

It does not matter whether you sign the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) or just agree with client, purely based on trust to keep the data they share with you safe forever – this automatically nullifies any option to have a virtual team work for you. You most certainly cannot let anyone else work in the project unless you have sought prior permission from client.

Client

Let us assume my client agrees and allows me to outsource some part of the research or draft or plan to one of my virtual team members (In this case the Beginner) and I engage them for high level assistance. Let us also assume that the Beginner over a period of time gets a hang of it and learns the trick of the trade.

That still does not prepare beginners to survive and succeed in this world as though the basic skill is acquired, the fundamental skill still remains unlearned – the art and skill to source your own clients

Conviction

By working as an assistant to support another professional’s deliverable, the beginner is not communicating directly with client. By remaining in the background, he cannot build the required attitude to pitch, negotiate and transfer that conviction about their own expertise to a client.

Creativity

It is seriously not just about how well your write, research or create presentation, how well you follow instruction, how you hone your skills by supporting someone who is front ending the project, there is a lot of learning involved about how you begin to think regarding the entire project holistically, independently and creatively. There are slim chances of a beginner to learn any of these if they pick the easy route

Confidence

I am sorry to burst your bubble. Being an assistant to a pro only builds your confidence as project member not as a project leader. You will remain a doer and will take time to be a thinker.

The problem therefore is not in identifying the skill, but in identifying the right target market/ client to fit your skills as services.

The faster you interact with client, the better your learning. You want to support professionals for the exposure or experience is okay however the cost you are paying is much higher, than  you can imagine.

Next time you want to support a pro to learn, remember to call out a quote for that. Free can never be a business model. If you trade time, you better get paid for it.

The next problem the beginners face is how to set their rates?

Freelancer Kit: The Shortest Pitch Got Me Assignments For Over $1500

“I love the way this job challenges my thought process already. I want to do it”

That’s it. That was my pitch.

Shortest Pitch

I attached a sample deck Future of Work – 5 slides along with this pitch.

Prospect:

The buyer was a professional instructional designer from Australia who needed assistance with instructional design, research and writing for learning modules and e-books to assist diploma students.

Position:

When we think of position we usually mean pitch positioning. Here I tried to gauge the buyer’s position. She wrote a long, very long requirement / work scope including her need, expectations, timelines etc. She wanted to skip long recruitment process which hints at her urgency. 

I therefore kept my pitch as short as possible to save reading time and get to business. That is precisely what happened.

Here is the first conversation:

First Conversation

Profile and Portfolio:

I was new to the site with no profile or portfolio uploaded yet. I do not know how I skipped that or probably I wanted some time to choose my best work. When I coach individuals on alternative incomes this is the subject I dwell on most. 

You exist online because your profile exists. You are in business because you carry a portfolio.

Pay

It is not the best of pay however how can I forget the bonus?

Bonus

While I poured all my sweat into fulfilling someone else’s work goals, I accomplished three things:

 
A foothold in a new platform
I received feedback from an expert while I was trying to get a grip in a new market - Australia
I got acquainted to the Australian training model and can independently create a learning module

That is the avocado to your guacamole - The pitch. There isn't much else. 

The glowing feedback I got after those assignments is here

Are you ready with  your pitch? 

If you want to have a quick pitch dry run, write to me at advocating.outcomes@gmail.com to evaluate content and have a neutral perspective.

A Great Presentation Is Just A Great Story

Image Source: Office.com

In business meetings or the CEO’s cabin or in a training room or spiritual sessions – where you have a group of stakeholders or an intelligent audience or a bunch of amateur or spiritual seekers waiting to hear you – that initial part of your presentation governs the consequence. It has to be a great story – people need to hang on your every word. What can you say that can be so compelling? How can you hold on to that attention till the last minute, till the key message is delivered to them?  You have to work on different parts of that story and keep the end result in focus.

 1.     Curiosity approach

When you begin a story, your audience might not have slightest idea why you are talking about what you are talking. For example if you start by mentioning Sri Ramakrishna the nineteenth century saint and his nephew Shibu. One day Shibu said to the leaves that were rustling in the nearby trees: ‘Hush! Hush! I want to catch the grasshoppers.’ Will it make any sense?

That is perhaps the best interest element you can introduce in any presentations – an original story, a great thought and a lasting impact. As you are the only person aware what should be the key takeaway, your plot gets richer with more examples, may be more questions from audience.

2.     Frame the story

This is where your researched inputs will take a form that will help you connect with your audience. Whether you are talking about how technology evolved or someone’s garage company making millions or any rags to riches story or how a young lad caught grasshoppers trying to hush the leaves around – the story has to grow to a point where the audience will be eager to know – What is your point after all?

Shibu was four or five years old and when he saw lightning and heard the clouds, “There, uncle! They’re striking matches again.” He would say. What is so important about Shibu’s childish remarks and observations? It was one of Ramakrishna’s teachings ‘Try to become like a child ’, and he set Shibu’s example to drive a point.

3.     Plan your pitch

There is just one thing more important than how you deliver – how dramatic or how stylish or how convincing becomes relatively insignificant compared to what is it that you are trying to deliver – It is ‘what’ you want your audience to carry forward that determines the ‘how’. Does it help to memorize scripts – it depends how well you manage to sync with it. It might be awkward, if you are staring somewhere in the air trying to recall something you learnt by heart. Well, the heart was not there after all.

So what about our dear Shibu – The little boy truly believed that everything was filled with consciousness – So as we all grow up, with layers of experience and conditioning, that guileless faith is the first thing we lose. No wonder the saint wanted the world to become children again to restore that faith.

4.     Onstage

It is not the looks and the voice of the speaker that matters much. Feel free to work on them – they can be important to make an impression but it is the story that creates an impact. Never let lack of stage presence diffuse your enthusiasm or energy. If you have worked on the first three sections of the story, the response will definitely be positive.

The Tale and Tell technique never fails because you stir the mind in more ways than one. The seamless transition from the origin of the story to where it leads remains with the audience – even after the story is over. So find that one story, merge with all the big data analytics and draw those much needed insights and bring home the point you wanted to.

Reference:  Shibu's story is from 'In Search of Spiritual Values' by Swami Prabhananda