Features are okay. Benefits are better. But, solutions sell.

All companies have problems. Sometimes they’re big. Other times they’re small. Usually, companies within industry niches have the same kinds of problems. If you can identify those problems and find an authentic solution to them you’re well on your way.

So, how and where do you start to scope out some problems? Industry association sites are a good place to start. Check out their articles, news, trends and other information they may have to offer. Odds are you’ll spot some common woes.

Often, business club and association sites will carry a membership roster. Follow some member links and check out their sites. Naturally, Google can be a great help in finding suspects for your detective work.

Many of my readers are web and communication designers. Let’s say you’re one of those. You might find that company sites are having a hard time converting visitors into buyers. They might need a better landing page and stronger call to action. Maybe there’s a lot of “me too” marketing going on with everybody saying the same thing. You just found yourself a differentiation problem.

On the heels of industry associations sites, networking offers some good opportunities. The trick here is to attend networking events that your suspects and prospects are also likely to attend. If you’re a designer, going to a design-oriented event is nice to chum around with your peers, but you’re not as likely to meet potential clients. But, going to an American Marketing Association meeting might be the ticket. Let’s say you’re a photographer. An ASMP meeting is nice, but an Art Directors’ Club or an AIGA meeting would be a better choice for meeting image buyers.

When you go to an event or meeting, listen more than you talk. That’s important. Pose some open-ended questions, not the closed variety that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” For more on how to fire up a conversation and avoid being a wallflower, check Marketing Mentor’s site and blog. Ilise and Peleg have some great advice.

Another inroad is conducting a survey. SurveyMonkey.com is a good one for this. You might also consider running a poll on your site or a fax-back snail mailed version. You can gather some good information from a well thought out survey. Plus, you can offer the results in the form of a white paper or report that can be downloaded from your site in return for the recipient’s email address.

You might consider offering a complimentary consultation for a well qualified prospect. This is a form of consultative selling and it’s a great sales method for service-oriented businesses. It doesn’t make sense to do this for every suspect that comes along because you’ll be investing some time.

Do some background research to scope out the problem. Get a good handle on the company and its marketing/business environment. Develop some workable solutions and make your presentation. If the problem-at-hand is one you’ve successfully solved before, you might be able to simply work it into a conversation or email. The trick is to not show your hand. Whet their appetite for your solution, but don’t give it all away. Perhaps demonstrate your expertise with a written or verbal case study highlighting how you solved a similar problem.

At the end of the day, people ... your prospects ... don’t want to be sold. They want answers. They want solutions. Finding those workable, suitable solutions to common target industry problems can help make you the hero or heroine who saves the day and is worth every penny of your fee.

Networking With Blue Skin

Boy, time flies when you’re freezing in South Florida. This is supposed to be the subtropics. Something’s gone horribly wrong. It’s been cold. Like 40ºF cold. Yesterday, it topped out at around 60º. Yeah, it’s better than 2º, but it’s still dang cold. One tends to get used to 80º and sunny skies right quick. Okay, enough with the blue-skin ramblings.

I attended a local Chamber of Commerce meeting last week. It went better than expected and I had the opportunity to meet some great people. I also got the word out to some friends and family types [again] that I’m still alive and reasonably well (People tend to forget if you don't keep in touch). Both of those activities landed a couple of meetings and one probable gig. So, it’s time to roll up the ‘ole sleeves and start drafting a proposal.

I also broke out my copy of Marketing Mentors’ book, The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing. Ilise Benun and Peleg Top did a great job writing this excellent almanac of all things business for the creative entrepreneur. It covers all the nitty gritty from determining your market to how to find prospects and clients, what to charge and how to craft a winning proposal. Sure, I write about marketing and self promotion, but that certainly doesn’t mean I know it all or don’t forget things here and there. So, I keep a shelf of books, articles and white papers for reference.

Speaking of networking, one little ditty I came across is Networking for Professionals. I’m just starting to poke around to see what they’re all about. I found them via a link on the South Florida Business Journal site. NFP holds regular face time networking events and I’m planning to go. Individual memberships are $20 per month in NY, NJ and CT and $10 per month in GA, AZ and IL. If I’m understanding things correctly, memberships out of those areas are free. Free is good. They might be something for you to check into.

Here are some great tips from Marketing Mentor, Ilise Benun

Here are some great tips from Marketing Mentor, Ilise Benun. She and Peleg Top will be sharing more at the upcoming Creative Freelancer Conference in August. See my previous post for more info.

8 Tips for Creative Soloprenuers
Brought to you by Ilise Benun and the Creative Freelancer Conference
August 27-29, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago
www.CreativeFreelancerConference.com


Look Closely and You’ll Find Your Market
When building your market, don’t start from scratch if you can avoid it. The foundation of your business should be rooted strongly in something you know well and in which you already have some expertise. Even if you’re just starting out, you’ve got a history. Past employment experience, a recent pro bono or side project, or even a hobby can be used as a diving board.

If you’re making the transition from corporate work, it’s important to build on that investment, even if you are sick of the field you are coming from. It will be much easier to leverage the relationships and the knowledge you already have than trying to do everything at once. Starting a business and approaching a new market simultaneously is double the work. Once you have a business under way, then you can move toward new markets.

Cherry Picking The Best Prospects
One of the benefits of being a freelancer is that you don’t need hundreds of clients. You can afford to target your market very specifically. If your market is non-profit organizations, you don’t have to reach out to thousands of them. Instead, you can choose the ten or twenty-five or fifty you want to work with and pursue only them.

Always keep your eyes open for the choice prospects whose names you come across online and in magazine articles. Then, take a moment to write them a letter, send them an e-mail or just pick up the phone and call to introduce yourself. This is a cold call, yes, but what makes this kind of cold call instantly warm is your genuine interest in this company.

Plus, it’s very flattering to your prospect to hear that you are calling because you have chosen them based on what you’ve seen and what you have to offer. If there really is a fit that you can describe clearly, they just might agree to meet with you. And that may well develop into a lucrative and productive working relationship, either now or later.


How to Get Out of a Conversation
Some people have no trouble getting into conversations; it’s getting out of them that presents the problem. So if you don’t start conversations for fear of not being able to stop them, here are 3 strategies to experiment with:

Get a refill. If there’s food or drink involved in the event, you can always say, “I think I need a refill.” Or you can smile and say, “Excuse me. I need another one of those Swedish meatballs.”
Involve another person. Introduce another person into the conversation. Then say, “Excuse me while I let you two get to know each other.”

Stand up. Sometimes you don’t have to say anything. Just stand up! Your conversation partner is likely to take the nonverbal cue.

How to rate your prospects
Not all prospects are equal. Some are better than others. Some are worth more effort than others. But how to keep track of it all when the phone is ringing and the email is piling up?
The first thing to determine a rating for each prospect. For example:

“C” = prospects with a casual interest
“B” = prospects with a qualified need and a possible project
“A” = qualified prospects with an actual project
“A+” = prospects who have given you a verbal commitment but haven’t yet signed on

Once you know where all your prospects stand on this scale, you can then determine the best way to contact each (and the proper frequency for each prospect). A creative solopreneur typically pursues a “C” opportunity three or four times in the course of one month. A “B” lead is worth a few more tries (and for a bit longer). While an “A” opportunity deserves more persistence for a longer period of time.

Be sensitive to each situation, and temper your persistence with your gut feeling. If the prospect in question travels a lot, or is an extremely busy executive, it’s unlikely she will drop what she’s doing when you call, but she still may want you to stay in touch.

What is Your Money Mentality?
Are you one of those freelancers who is detail-oriented about words or images, but fuzzy when it comes to money?

Do you know how much income you need to generate in order to pay your bills every month, or do you just cross your fingers and hope enough money comes in?

For many creative types, dealing with money is an obstacle to doing business. “I’m bad with numbers,” is a common refrain and, frankly, a common excuse used to neglect essential business tasks like billing.

One fundamental aspect of the financial end of running a design business is the mental attitude you bring to the process. Which of these statements is most familiar to you:

“I can’t stand dealing with money.”
or
“This financial thing is a challenge, but I’m going to learn it and make it work for me.”

How about these:

“I can’t afford to spend money on marketing.”
Or
“What do I need to do in order to afford the marketing I know I need to grow my business?”

It’s up to you. You can choose between an open or closed mentality. Open is better and will facilitate the growth of your business. With this positive mental attitude as a foundation, you can begin planning a business that will support you, your goals, and your future.

Why You Must Not Reveal Your Hourly Rate
In order to run a healthy and profitable business, you must know how long it takes you to do various tasks and projects. In essence, you must know your expenses, and time is a major expense. (That’s why it’s essential to track your time.)

However, your hourly rate is not your price.

It’s one of the building blocks of your price, so you need to know what it is, but use it only for internal purposes. Use your hourly rate to determine what to charge for a project, but never reveal that hourly rate in a proposal or in conversations with your client. Not only is it none of their business, it also wouldn’t mean anything to them. An hourly rate is only relevant in relation to how long a project takes, and they have no idea how long your design process takes. By talking about your hourly rate, you open the door to their assumptions.

So when a client asks you how long a project will take, never say, “This will take X hours.” The only thing they need to know about time is when they can expect to receive the deliverable.

Instead, you say, “Let me check what we have on the schedule, and I’ll get back to you with a time frame. In the meantime, let me know your deadline and I will do my best to accommodate it.”

Use Your Web Site to Weed Out Tire-Kickers
As a freelancer, you don’t have a lot of time to spare. So you don’t want to waste your time with prospects who can’t afford you. But how do you know that before talking to them?

Your web site can serve as a filter.

Post a form on your web site that prospects fill out if they want an estimate or proposal. The serious prospects will take the time to fill out your form. Tire-kickers and those shopping for price will not.

The form, once filled out, also will give structure to the request, help to focus your potential client and put in one place all (or most) of the information you need to get started preparing a proposal.

Beyond that, this structure also gives your prospect a sense of how you work and some of the requirements of working with you. It’s part of your positioning as a professional.

Here are some of the questions you should include on your web site’s proposal request form:

How did you hear of us?
Briefly describe your company.
What is your immediate need?
Do you have a budget?
What is your deadline?
How and when is it best to contact you?

How to Deal With Scope Creep
Scope creep – when uncontrolled changes affect the scope of a project – can be the bane of a freelancer’s existence. If you don’t address it with a client, you easily could squander all your profit on a job.

Scope creep sets in when a project is not well-defined, well-planned or well-managed, or when there is a change in direction. If this happens early in a project, it may be a sign that you didn’t ask enough questions at the outset, or that you underestimated the project.

When this happens, above all, don’t procrastinate. The most important aspect of managing scope creep is communication. As soon as you see that a project is veering off course and that you will be spending more time or more money, you must advise your client immediately and decide together how to handle it.

If, for example, in a status meeting or phone call, it becomes obvious that what you are being asked to do is outside the scope of the project, say so right away: “That is outside the scope of the project as we outlined it in the proposal, so we’ll need to review that and possibly revise the pricing. Are you aware of that?” Then, initiate a “change order” to document the changes.

It’s also a good idea to include a reference to scope creep in your contract so there are no surprises. A simple paragraph that outlines the process if scope creep starts to happen will plant the necessary seed so that you can bring it up much more easily later.