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Recipe for Great Content

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For several years now, the marketing gurus have been telling us that Content Marketing delievers results. Everything that you do to promote your business and your brand is useful, but Content marketing has emerged as an especially powerful strategy. But for the best Content marketing ROI, your content must address what matters to your audience–their pain points and priorities—and deliver what they value. Take care to produce content that brings these benefits to your intended audience:

  • Value: after reading or viewing your content, the Alternatively, your content may have helped them solve a problem.
  • Relevant: your content needs to relate to your audience’s life situation. Perhaps it helps them in their career, solves a relationship issue or serves to entertain them during a break. All three scenarios are perfect examples of content relevant to the person consuming it.
  • Consistent: publishing an award-winning newsletter of blog post post once and then never again does not constitute high-quality content marketing. Consistency  requires regular content of similarly high quality.

The guidelines above can help you develop a content marketing strategy that your current and potential customers will be drawn to. This is one of the most important aspects of Content Marketing—it’s all about your audience.

Furthermore, as you consider the platforms and delivery formats for your content, start by considering your audience. If social media will be used (and it most likely will be used), pay attention to the platforms that your target audience follows and trusts. Successful content provides value. In sum, you can better fulfill customer needs by understanding what they want from your business.

Updating existing content should be part of your content marketing strategy if your business has already started content marketing. Plus, updating existing content will benefit other aspects of your digital marketing strategy, including search engine optimization.

Keep your content engaging and easy to understand. If your Content Marketing Strategy includes longer blog posts, whitepapers or eBooks, they must be well presented and easy to read. Content that is hard to digest because it is challenging to understand rarely goes viral. Short sentences almost always beat long-winded explanations. If you offer video content, think about your presentation style and the technology used to record your content.

Content marketing is a great way to connect with current customer base and reach new ones. As with every form of digital marketing, a strategic approach is the most likely to succeed. Content marketing means being consistent, relevant to your audience, delivering value, most of all.

Evergage’s 2019 Trends in Personalization Survey Report found that 88 % of marketers felt personalization helped them deliver superior customer experiences, while 59 % felt it increased loyalty, and another 50 % saw a measurable ROI from personalization efforts.

Personalization doesn’t just mean dropping a customer’s name into an email. It means making your brand story come alive through relatable content and storytelling that connects on an emotional level, personalized to the customer’s current relationship with your brand.

In case you hadn’t noticed, customer-generated content carries great credibility and is a powerful for creating meaningful and influential content. Testimonials that feature your devoted customers can be used on your website. Positive online reviews are also very helpful, but the detailed and personalized stories presented in testimonials are known to surpass good reviews.

Your customers are sophisticated enough to realize that the goal of your marketing is to increase sales and leads; that knowledge can cause some to question the trustworthiness and authenticity of what you present. That potential for doubt is why successful Content Marketing Strategies include user-generated content to communicate first-person, relatable, credible experiences with your products and services.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: New Orleans, LA by way of New Bedford, MA chef Lagasse showcased his talents during Grand Cayman’s January 2018 Cayman Cookout, a premier culinary event.

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Do It Better: Perfecting the Customer Experience

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In today’s competitive business world to delight your customers, rather than simply satisfying them, is critical to the success of your venture. Customer delight is the new standard. To delight your customers means exceeding their expectations and creating a highly positive and memorable experience with your product or brand. Delight calls upon your entire team , customer-facing and back office, to smoothly collaborate to deliver timely, efficient and pleasant service to customers by focusing on their needs, challenges, questions and preferences.

Satisfied customers are good for your company, but delighted customers help you much more. Customers who carry the memory of their delightful experiences with your organization are more likely to become loyal customers and brand advocates who enthusiastically make referrals, give testimonials and reward your company with glowing online reviews. They become extensions of your marketing department.

When you accomplish this, you’ll build a strong relationship with your customers that makes them want to remain loyal brand advocates and promoters. Read on to better understand how your organization can achieve this level of service.

  1. Personalize every customer experience—Start at the top by addressing all customers and prospects by name in each marketing email. Furthermore, the product or service that you promote in those emails should be something that the recipients might possibly use. Obtain this information by resarching your customers. As always, knowing the customer is key.
  2. Quick response and follow-up—A critical aspect of solving problems for customers is responding to them ASAP — meaning, a big component of customer delight is the ability to be available and responsive whenever your customers reach out. Whether the issue is big or small, show your customers that you’re always prioritizing them by responding quickly.
  3. Resolve customer problems fast—The first and most important thing your organization needs to do is solve whatever problems your current and prospective customers are experiencing. Offering your customers a solution to a challenge they’re facing, or a way to achieve the goal they’re working towards, is what motivated them to do business with you — so don’t disappoint them. Offer your customers solutions that align with their individual wishes, needs, and preferences. The same goes for prospects and potential customers. Even though they aren’t paying customers just (yet), potential customers require you to solve their problems as well. not only should you solve customers’ problems in the short term, but you should think ahead for their future needs, too. Going beyond the immediate solution to provide information and ways to help your customers manage their challenges — and teach them to do so on their own, if and when possible — is how you can solve for the future, too.
  4. Help customers have the best experience possible—Make sure you understand why people are buying your product or service to determine how to help them succeed. When you truly understand what it is people need from a product or service like yours, you’ll be able to target those pain points and solve for them to exceed customer expectations. It can also be on a smaller scale, like the way you train your new employees to handle customer questions. Additionally, help customers succeed by providing them with the right educational resources so they know how to reach out to your service and support teams, get the help they want and need, or find answers to questions on their own.
  5. Listen to customer feedback—It doesn’t feel good to hear feedback that’s critical of your company, but if you’re serious about delivering the best possible customer service, you must face the unvarnished truth about how your product or service meets expectations, or doesn’t. You must learn what disappoints. Then you can fix it. Then you become more aware, smarter, faster and more successful. Your customers will tell you, one way or another. Listen to honest feedback, take chronic complainers ith a grain of salt.
  6. Loyal customers receive preferential treatment and perks —Loyal customers are the bedrock of your business and it would be inconsiderate and unwise to take them for granted. Keep their business by giving them VIP treatment and communicating to them that you understand and appreciate their business and also them, as individuals. Offer them perks such as discounts, service upgrades, speedy delivery, invitations to special in-store events and other benefits as appropriate. A strong customer loyalty program will make your customers feel appreciated while securing their future business. Did I mention that your loyal customers also make referrals?
  7. Surprise, delight and please —Enable your company to stand out from competitors, then you need to make a lasting impression on your customers. While your primary goal is to solve the customer’s problem, you can create a memorable experience by giving customers more than they ever anticipated. Customers expect to see their needs fulfilled, but are truly delighted when your team goes above and beyond in the customer experience.
  8. Easy to find company contact info—It’s so annoying to have to hunt down a company’s contact information. Customers should be able to get in contact with you easily. Even more importantly, they should have several avenues for reaching you, such as email address, telephone number and social media sites.
  9. Be enthusiastic—In every interaction with current and prospective customers, be sure that you (and your employees or anyone who represents you) displays a positive and welcoming demeanor that complements your brand. Always provide a real, warm, welcoming, helpful and personalized interaction that respects your customer’s time and leaves them happy, satisfied —and with a better understanding of the value of your product or service.
  10. Build a community—Humans are social beings and we enjoy the feeling of belonging to a community or group. Your community might be used as a resource for sharing useful information or act as a medium for users to submit customer reviews. No matter what your community’s function is, creating a space where customers can interact with one another and you and/or your employees adds value to the customer experience that your company provides and continue to delight these people.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Experience a luxury safari at Jao Camp in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

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Fix the Flaws in Your Tactical Plan

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Look at it this way—if every time you and your team develop goals for your organization all of the goals are achieved every time, take it as a sign that you should be more ambitious. Goals should challenge! Working toward goals should test you and make you grow.

But if the opposite happens and it becomes clear that your strategies and actions are not moving you toward success, you’ll need to stop and discuss. You must understand why things aren’t happening and decide what you can do about it. For sure, a change will have to be made, but how might you figure out what to change?

Today we’ll break down the elements of working toward goals — the actions taken, the strategies, which are pathways, and finally, the goals themselves. Our objective is to recognize what part of the plan is fatal and what is fixable. Spoiler alert–everything is connected. Each component of your plan must support, and be supported by, the other components.

Actions and strategy

It makes sense to start by examining actions—closer to ground level. Every action you or your team takes should be devised to align with and support a specific strategy. All actions should have a purpose that is readily identifiable as a cog in the wheel that carries out a strategy. So if the wheel stops turning, it will not be too difficult to pinpoint the problem and make whatever necessary adjustments.

You may also benefit from rethinking the metrics used to monitor the efficacy and progress of the actions. Are you tracking and measuring the right data? Does the data provide an accurate picture of how your action items contribute to reaching the goal? If not, reevaluate and substitute more meaningful metrics.

Strategies and customer priorities

What matters most is that customer preferences and priorities are tied to and reflected in your strategies. If you’ve analyzed your team’s performance and your actions are on target as regards the plan, then the problem may well lie in the strategy, the wrong path. Perhaps it’s no longer viable?

Or maybe you’ve overlooked other data that indicate customer needs and interests are evolving? If that’s the case, you’ll need to update to ensure that your strategies align with what matters most to customers. You may not need to revise your goals but rather, revise strategies.

Verify the alignment, or lack thereof, between your tactics and strategies. Remember that your actionable tasks are designed to further a certain strategy. It is therefore essential to confirm that you’re using the right tactics to impact the strategy.

SMART Goals

If you’ve taken a cold, hard look at both the strategic and the tactical plans without pinpointing an opportunity for making a timely and productive shift, then it’s time to reconsider your choice of goals.

The problem with your goal may be situational — i.e., what was a valid, realistic goal has lost its luster. The world has turned and now you need to play catch-up and align with the current environment and market. Or it could be that there’s nothing wrong with the goal itself; you just haven’t fully identified, defined and fleshed it out. Reality test your goals by asking yourself the following questions:

SPECIFIC: Specific means “Show a revenue increase of $X and growth in profit of Y% by the end of the current fiscal year,” and not “show an increase in revenue and growth by the end of the fiscal year.”

MEASURABLE: What are the metrics you’ll use to document your progress (and why are they relevant)?

ACHIEVABLE: Is your goal attainable and realistic both in the absolute sense and within the resources—-time, expertise, money—-you can devote to its achievement?

RELEVANT: Does your goal make sense? Does it align with your values and mission of your organization? Does it get your company closer to where you want it to be, in market penetration, referrals and repeat business, revenue earned, or profits made?

TIMELY: Is the time right to pursue and benefit from the attainment of this goal? Also, do you have a clear starting point and metrics targets or deadline date to assess the final result of your initiative?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: ©Winslow Townson, Associated Press. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the huddle at the December 17, 2017 game against the Steelers at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, PA

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Getting Started With Financial Projections

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Whether you are starting a new business, expanding or scaling an existing venture, or searching for investors, creating realistic financial projections is a vital component of the process. You’ll rely on those projections to make informed decisions as you execute the plans for your business. It’s imperative that you have a very good idea of the amount of money you’ll need to move forward with your intentions and how much money you can expect to earn as a result—-and also about when the expected revenues will arrive.

So, what is involved and where can you begin when your goal is to create financial projections for your business? The answer is—- surprise!—-do some homework first. Below are factors to research and help yourself create financial projections that help define the path to success that will work for your organization.

Your financial projections will be detailed in the basic financial documents—the Profit & Loss (Income) Statement, the Balance Sheet and the Cash-flow Statement. The Break-Even Statement will help you predict how much revenue the venture must generate to break even in terms of revenues versus expenses and when that’s likely to occur.

Something to keep in mind when you contemplate the need for financial projections is the distinction between projecting versus budgeting. Think of financial projections as a prediction, and budgeting as your plan. When you do a financial projection, you see what direction your business is headed in, based on past performance and other factors and use that to anticipate the future.

When you create a budget, you plan how you’re going to spend money based on what you expect your finances to look like in the future (your projections).

How big is your target market?

Start-up costs

This is the beginning in terms of your research and big question to answer. Understanding how to build a profitable business starts with determining the size and revenue (sales) potential of your market; if there aren’t enough buyers available, you’ll be unable to succeed. Most industry associations publish research regarding the size of their industry. Identifying three or four close competitors is also useful. Competition is a good sign, confirming that there is money to be made. You need to understand the annual sales volume expectations of your venture.

Expenses are much easier to predict than revenues. Start building your forecast model by outlining your fixed expenses, meaning rent, utilities and insurance. Next, consider the variable expenses, such as salaries, cost of goods sold (or the estimated value of the time it takes you to produce the service you offer). Business permits, required certifications and a marketing budget, for example, are other variable expenses to account for.

Also factor into your start-up costs your best estimate of site buildout and/or necessary equipment—coffee making machines, cash registers, computers, printers, online booking software, online payment or mobile payment plan, desks and chairs—in your financial projections.

Revenue projection

Thinking about how much revenue the venture will be able to generate, i.e., creating a sales forecast, attempts to predict what your monthly sales will be for up to 18 months after launching your business. Start-ups can make their predictions using industry trends, market analysis demonstrating the population of potential customers and consumer trends.

A pricing strategy is an integral component of a revenue projection. Research average industry pricing to ensure your prices are reasonable. Start by identifying the top players in your market. Then visit their locations or websites to determine how they price their products and services.

Cash-flow

A cash flow statement (or projection, for a new business) shows the flow of dollars moving in and out of the business. This is based on the sales forecast, your balance sheet and other assumptions you’ve used to create your expenses projection. If you are starting a new business and do not have these historical financial statements, you start by projecting a cash-flow statement broken down into 12 months.

Identify your assumptions

Any forecast requires you to make assumptions about possibilities that are outside of your control. The best way to manage these assumptions and avoid subconscious bias is by explicitly identifying and documenting them in writing.

The assumptions you should list include how much the market will grow or shrink, based on your research about the industry and local or national economy, changes in the number or activity of your principle competitors and/or technological advancements that will impact your business.

Break-even point

Together, your expenses budget and sales forecast paints a picture of your profitability. Your break-even projection is the date at which you believe your business will become profitable — when more money is earned than spent. Very few businesses are profitable in their first year. Most businesses take two to three years to become profitable. The Break-Even Statement will help you consider and plan for how long and how much revenue the venture must generate to break even in terms of revenues versus expenses and position the business for profitability. In other words, you’ll map out the scenario of pulling the business out of the red and into the black.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Optimize Social Media Campaigns

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When you’re on a mission to reach the target audience for your products and or services, develop and strengthen relationships with clients, make your case with prospects, or build and promote your brand, the most powerful tool at your disposal is, overall, social media. By using one (or more) of the several free platforms, Freelancers and others with a product or service to sell, or reputation to enhance, can easily broadcast relevant information and persuasive messages to those who might buy, or buy- in.

Utilizers of social media will also receive credible feedback from those who engage with your company (or you), delivered in unfiltered first-person comments (user-generated content) and the platform’s user activity metrics. That means you’ll get timely and accurate insights—-actionable intel—-that reveals what clients and prospects respond to or reject. That’s tremendously valuable information that can guides your marketing strategy and even the development of your product or service. Use social media to reach deep into your preferred client demographic to expand the reach and influence of a company, product or service launch or rebranding campaign, or support the pivot you’ve decided to execute.

However, for best results, you must consider the capabilities and user demographics of the platforms on which you post. To which platforms do your clients and prospects gravitate? Their age range is a reliable indicator.

Choose the platform

There are several options available and each has a particular style. The age range of your target market is a primary determinant of your chosen platform, as is the category of product or service that you’ll promote. Below is an overview of the most popular and how each might enable the marketing outreach that you need.

  • Facebook has 2+ billion active users and 79% of Americans age 18 – 49 are regular users. 58% of Americans age 50 – 64 are regular users. Ecommerce integretion allows you to sell your products and services directly from the platform which supports your do-it-now Call- to-Action. Moreover, the advertising feature is a reliable way to brings in more potential buyers.
  • Instagram has 1+ billion users and especially if your target audience skews younger and visuals are an important communication tool, this platform is where you want to be. 67% of young adults <30 years are regular users and nearly 50% of adults age 50 or younger are regular users. Tell your brand story, chock full of videos and photos, on this platform.
  • LinkedIn is B2B county. 37% of its 300+ million regular users are age 30-49 and 50% of those who earn $75,000/ year or more are regular users. Plus, 51% of regualr users have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. The platform provides your best opportunity to connect with business decision-makers who might green light the sale of your B2B products or services. Furthermore, LinkedIn features hundreds of industry-specific networking groups that members can join and trade information with colleagues based on their industry, job function or career interests.
  • Twitter is a real-time social media platform that functions like a global text messaging service. Come here to make big announcements on this platform—- your new venture, new service, the workshop you’ll teach, the panel you’ll moderate. Tweets can be maximum 280 characters, which will inspire you to craft a short, sharp , concise message that gets your point across. With about 330 million users worldwide, Twitter is much more about text than images. It’s biggest demographic consists of people between the ages of 18-29, with 38% of people in this cohort actively using the platform.
  • TikTok quickly became a social media juggernaut and its eye-candy 60 second videos became all the rage. Just walking down the street can cause you to witness a teen with a smartphone, recording a dance clip to upload to the platform. TikTok is a darling of B2C marketers, but B2B is figuring out the terrain. If your clients and prospects skew to age 35 or younger, TikTok videos are a useful way to run your brand awareness campaigns. The platform is also effective for building and solidifying a community of brand fans. The platform is too big to ignore. Globally, there are 1+ billion users monthly.
  • YouTube is arguably the best social media platform that exists. For one, 1.9 + billion people use YouTube on a regular basis and it is also the 2nd largest search engine, after Google. There is a downside, however— you’ll have to learn how to create videos and production can be costly if you want to make a video that stands out. You may want a more polished product than your point & shoot TikTok videos. So not only will you need good content, but you’ll also need an entire video setup with a camera, lighting, microphones and editing software. Option 2 is to hire a professional but, again, it will cost you. On the plus side, the video content can also be uploaded to your website and/or shared on other social media platforms and that will increase your reach. Whatever story you’d like to tell, podcast or webinar you host or guest on, or (recorded) online interview that you give should be posted here.

Brand is the focus

In your posts, write about your business and things that relate to it. Social media is a relatable and personal way to make you and your company visible to your target audience. Limit your posts, text and images, to your products and services and avoid personal and polite opinions (which can haunt you).

Original content

Every day, companies upload new content, trying to outdo their competitors and bring more attraction to their business. This can be anything from a picture to a (short) video to a podcast. There are countless ways to produce appealing content that’s relevant to your business. Making sure your page is filled with original writing and images will make you and your organization more recognizable and memorable.

Organic growth

It is far better to slowly gain an audience of visitors, followers and subscribers for your social media audience, instead of chasing hits and likes from those who have no interest whatsoever in doing business with you. Building a real community of loyal fans takes work and takes time (and I know from personal experience!). You will get discouraged when the numbers climb oh-so-slowly, but the more genuine your presence is online, the more attractive it is for real users to engage. With social media, slow and steady wins the race.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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6 Soft Skills You Need Now

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The behaviors known as soft skills continue to be highly valued in the workplace. Unlike technical, or “hard” skills, that encompass job functions, soft skills refer to the values and practices that shape your working style—-how you interact with clients and colleagues, how you manage your work and how you solve problems. Soft skills govern how you behave in different situations. They reveal who you are.

Technological innovations such as artificial intelligence and automation have made the execution of numerous mechanical or routine tasks faster, cheaper and more accurate and that saves time and money. However, the adoption of AI has contributed to the value of soft skills because the jobs that the machines cannot do are often dependent on soft skills.

Freelancers, who must present ourselves to prospective clients as not only possessing the hard skills required to get the job done, but also communicate that we’re good to work with—- resourceful, cooperative, dependable, pleasant—-are perhaps more explicitly in need of soft skills than are employees. It is now obvious that for Freelancers, soft skills such as emotional intelligence, adaptability, optimism, self-motivation and resilience are critical success factors. It is doubtful that you can build and sustain a successful venture without displaying your command of soft skills traits. Soft skills are also elements of your personal brand, BTW.

Of the many soft skills that Freelancers might cultivate, the following come to mind for me (and I’m sure that you, dear reader, can suggest several more):

  • Analytical ability
  • Creativity
  • Judgment
  • Communication
  • Organization
  • Teamwork

Analytical ability

Problem-solving starts with analyzing the issue you need to unravel, examine, evaluate and resolve. Looking beyond the surface to discover the root cause or motivators of the problem is usually necessary. Analyzing a dilemma can include a number of problem/solving skills, including:

  • Research
  • Forecasting
  • Historical analysis
  • Risk management

Creativity

The solution to a problem is not always obvious. Predicting what clients may want next is an ongoing puzzle. Out-of-the-box thinking and other points of view can be very beneficial as you search for a viable ideas and solutions.

  • Brainstorming
  • Editing
  • Design or presentation of products and services
  • Narratives

Judgment

Drawing from your life experiences is the most reliable way to develop good judgment because ideally, we learn from our experiences. As you navigate the personal and professional sectors of life, you’ll eventually learn how to consider the nature of a problem, understand what resources could be needed to bring about the solution and recognize what might go wrong along the way. The soft skills you’ll rely on will include:

  • Critical thinking
  • Decision-making
  • Collaboration

Communication

Communication is the foundation of problem- solving. Leaders (and managers) must be able to inspire, motivate, reassure, coach and constructively criticize. Being a good communicator also helps you to articulate your decisions and persuade your team to align and support your vision.

  • Active listening
  • Patience
  • Persuasion
  • Negotiation
  • Empathy
  • Building rapport
  • Public speaking
  • Body language
  • Verbal communication
  • Written communication

Organization

Once you’ve chosen a solution to a problem and communicated it to your team, you still have to create a process to carry out your plan. Organization skills help you implement the steps everyone needs to take, which can improve alignment and efficiency. Executing a strategy to achieve your solution requires a number of problem-solving, among them:

  • Prioritization
  • Initiative
  • Project management
  • Time management

Teamwork

Teamwork is essential to successfully collaborate with your colleagues. or your work partner or contact at a client’s firm. It’s necessary for brainstorming and exchanging ideas, delegating tasks and efficiently working toward a solution.

Even if your role is largely independent work, you still need teamwork to collaborate with colleagues in different departments and keep your goals on track. As a Freelancer, your role could involve interacting with multiple people. Make an effort to develop the skills that will make everyone want you on their team:

  • Collaboration
  • Delegation
  • Feedback, giving and receiving
  • Goal setting
  • Dependability
  • Prioritizing
  • Setting expectations
  • Assessing employee strengths and weaknesses
  • Setting expectations
  • Performance evaluation
  • Identifying outcomes
  • Trust
  • Respect

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Find Opportunity in Adversity: Surviving Inflation and Slowdowns

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It appears that Freelancers are having another moment although, as usual, it could be a mixed blessing. As we discovered when the coronavirus shutdown was waning and business began to slowly pick up, there are both roses and thorns to contend with. Still, economic fluctuations are nothing you haven’t seen before and you probably survived (but maybe not without suffering a few sleepless nights).

What distinguishes Freelancers and other independent business owners from employees is your plucky resilience and wily resourcefulness. Those traits are in your DNA and that’s why you struck out and created your own venture. However, you’re also a realist and well aware that neither boom times nor tough times last forever (although—surprise!—recessions and other economic downturns linger nearly twice as long as upswings).

Because a Freelancer’s income is often unpredictable you know that planning ahead with careful budgeting, sensible spending and, in flush times, building up savings to cushion cash-flow interruptions are absolute necessities. When either unexpected adversity or opportunity arises, you also know when it’s time to:

  • Assess what appears to be an opportunity or obstacle
  • Prepare to pivot, if it makes sense, to either expand into a new market or customer group or tweak a product or service to make it more appealing to what customers want now

Forward-thinking Freelancers also work hard to bring in multiple clients and develop additional revenue streams, so that there will be a way to cushion the shock of a lost client.

It is interesting that Inflation and the threat of recession have the potential to simultaneously add and delete clients on your roster. According to a June 2022 Wall Street Journal article big companies, including Twitter, real-estate brokerage firm Redfin and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have in recent weeks rescinded job offers made to candidates —-now that’s ugly. Google, Meta (Facebook), Oracle and Tesla have imposed hiring freezes that will be in effect through calendar year 2022.

Bloomberg News brings good news to Freelancers in its report of a survey conducted by gig work clearing house Fiverr. The survey showed that 78% of business leaders said they are more likely to hire Freelancers, rather than full-time employees, as long as economic conditions remain uncertain. Furthermore, economic uncertainty has motivated 85% of US companies to implement a hiring freeze during the current downturn and 78% plan to lay workers off, according to the Fiverr survey.

The current economic climate has Freelancers working in more than 80% of the companies represented by survey respondents, more than 1,000 owners of medium to large businesses. Those companies are currently hiring Freelance experts like you to get the work done and Fiverr reports that it has seen an increase in demand on its platform, especially from large businesses.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Gas pump prices in Hingham, MA (cheaper than Boston!)

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Freelancers Gotta Sell

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Selling is an important function in every industry however for some, the very thought of selling is intimidating and they shy away from it. Nevertheless, every business owner and Freelance consultant will benefit from becoming a competent sales professionals in tandem with their primary area of expertise because—-you went into business to sell your products and services! No matter what you pay an employee, s/he will never be a more passionate and knowledgeable sales person than the company founder or owner.

Selling can be learned like any other skill and just about everyone who tries will learn to become a competent and reasonably confident seller. Read on to get an easy-to-follow recipe that will result in successful sales for you.

Selling is asking questions

For sure, you need to get your prospective buyer talking because unless s/he approaches you directly, and even if that happens, you need to confirm that your product or service is the right solution for the problem and that the prospect intends to buy from you and soon. To do that, you must learn to ask a series purposeful questions. Primarily, your questions must make the prospective buyer feel comfortable telling you about his/ her need or problem and specify the desired outcome or objective that ideally will be achieved.

Successful sales professionals have discovered that open-ended questions are perhaps the most useful sales tool because they are conversation-starters that get the prospect talking about him/herself and what brought him/her to you. Good questions allow you to launch the sales process. They allow the prospective buyer to reveal the objective or outcome that s/he wants to achieve, the purpose of it all. You can come to understand the prospective buyer’s priorities, concerns, timetable and budget. You might also learn about unsuccessful trials with competitive products or services.

Selling is listening

The most important fact to understand about selling is that it’s not about you, the aspiring seller. The act of selling centers on the potential buyer, the prospective customer. Unless the buyer is extremely motivated, has an urgent need for a solution ASAP, you’ll need to persuade the prospective buyer that your product or service will fulfill his/her needs and should be purchased now (or in the near term).

In order to understand the problems and need of a prospective buyer, the aspiring seller (you, Freelancer friend) must listen carefully to the answers to the questions you’ve asked. This can only be done by spending the majority of the conversation listening rather than talking.

Expert salespeople are nearly always very good listeners. Experience has taught them that in order to sell, they must first understand the prospective buyer and personalize their sales pitch to align with the prospective buyer’s needs, objective, priorities, timeline and budget.

Recognizing window shoppers

These are people who are not serious about buying anything in the immediate future, if ever. They may be amusing and great to talk to, but they are not your friend. They are time-wasters and they cost you money by siphoning off your valuable time and energy to engage in a sales process that they will not complete.

These false prospects merely want to see what’s available, how it works and what it costs. They may not yet know what they need, if they need it, or what they can afford. They may have lots of questions and they may not be shy about taking up your valuable time to discuss a product or service that they will not buy anytime soon and if they do buy, they probably will not buy from you,

So how do you handle these people? You ask the right questions during your sales conversation. As you ask questions, be certain that one or two are designed to reveal if the prospective buyer needs/wants the product or service now, or sometime down the road. Asking direct, rather than open-ended, questions to discover when the product or service is needed is appropriate and an essential component of a successful sale. You must confirm the prospect’s motive and understand the urgency.

Uncovering and resolving objections

If a prospective buyer who appears to have a need to buy starts displaying pushback, this could signal that s/he is worried about whether the product or service is a good fit for his/ her needs. If a direct or speculative objection is made by your prospective buyer (“I heard this stuff doesn’t really work.”), I recommend you use a tactic that my colleagues in the sales department invented years ago. We called it Feel, Felt, Found.

  • I agree that there are some who’ve heard about our service but haven’t tried it themselves but they might feel that way.
  • Some of my best customers once felt the same way as you do now. They had doubts and questions.
  • But when they focused on the benefits they knew they could receive from the service, they found that what concerned them would not happen as long as they used the service according to our guidelines.

Confirmation and close

Once you’ve addressed the objection(s), confirm that the prospective buyer has dropped all doubts and now trusts your product or service (“Do you feel comfortable about using the service now, or do you need more information or maybe a demo, so you can see it in action?”). You cannot move forward with the sale until and unless you’ve resolved any objections and reassured your prospective buyer that your product or service is safe and effective. Once you’ve done that you’re able to either continue the sale, or invite the prospective buyer to fish or cut bait—-do the deal or look elsewhere.

Find the courage to ask for the sale! Get there by helping the prospective buyer envision the process by —tah- dah!—asking a few more questions as the sale draws to a successful close:

“Would you like to have the concierge service option, to make your life easier?”

“Do you like the blue or do you prefer the green?”

“Is the 20th of the month a good delivery date for your team, or will the 18th be more convenient?”

“Would you like to put this on a credit or debit card now, or do you prefer to write a check?”

“If you’ll be kind enough to sign in this line, we can seal the deal.”

After sale service

Avoid one-and-done syndrome and lay the groundwork for repeat business by extending customer service beyond the sale. Support the buyer who has now become your customer by answering questions or resolving problems that may occur after the sale. You want to take steps to make doing business with you a rewarding and pleasant experience. You want to be referred to your new customer’s friends and family. You want glowing online reviews and testimonials. You can use every sale to enhance your reputation and build your brand.  

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Annie Sahlin, photographer. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. Hopi Artist Elsie Talahytewa at the Santa Fe Indian Market in Santa Fe, NM, 1991 

Marketing , , , , , Leave a comment

7 Personal Brand Building Blocks

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OK, it’s like this—- if you’re not sure whether or not you have a personal brand and you don’t know what to make of it even if you do, you’ve come to the right place. Today, we’ll examine the business strategy known as the personal brand and talk about why you want to develop one for yourself. The short answer is, an effective personal brand is an excellent marketing tool.

Your personal brand helps you to clearly define your company and its purpose, describe the value you bring to clients, articulate what sets you apart from competitors and helps you to build and sustain a community of loyal clients who will be happy to give you repeat business and refer still more clients to you. A personal brand serves to establish you as a known quantity, familiar and trustworthy, a go-to expert in your field. Those with a respected personal brand have a high perceived value and that attracts clients. Are you ready to explore personal brand building blocks?

Authenticity

Your clients and prospects have no desire to interact with a focus-grouped and sanitized version of who and what you think they want to see. Clients and prospects would like to know you, i.e., the part of you that culturally accepted boundaries would incline you to share. It’s akin to being emotionally available.

It takes some courage. Sometimes it means you’ll take a public stand that may not be universally popular. If you can appropriately define your boundaries (something that also requires courage, along with self-awareness), the practice works for introverts and extroverts.

Visuals

 It will be to your advantage to maintain consistency in how you present your personal brand, to make it easy for you to be recognized. Develop a visual repertoire that represents you well and makes you and your company memorable in the best way. Create a look that epitomizes you and your company and include your branded elements of style in all visuals:

  • A logo that is used consistently in all media placements
  • Your profile photo that is used consistently in all media
  • Consistent cover and background images used in all media
  • Specific colors used in all media
  • Consistent style of dress when your photo is included in all media representations

Story

Your story can be quite simply, what motivated you to go into business as told through the experiences that brought you to where you are now. Storytelling is used as a marketing strategy and your personal brand is an integral component. Be sure to emphasize that it is the quality of your product or service, as well as the attention paid to the needs of clients, that guides your company. Your emphasis on the importance of meeting the needs of clients and exceeding their expectations on every metric is another must-do.

Expertise

Establishing yourself as an expert is the key component of being in business, even if you’re selling popcorn. Your expertise is the foundation of your reputation and the trust that clients, referral sources and prospects have for you. Showcase your expertise through content marketing, public speaking, interviews and direct interactions with colleagues, peers and prospective clients. 

Visibility

Half of life is about just showing up, as some very wise person said many years ago. Along with your regularly updated online presence, remember to seek out opportunities to appear in traditional print media outlets and to make personal appearances. If you are a decent writer, learn to repurpose your blog or newsletter posts by offering selected pieces to the editor of a media outlet that covers your business sector.

Whether IRL or virtually, attend three or four professional or business association meetings each year. It’s thrilling if you’re asked to be a headliner or a panelist, but just being in the crowd presents many advantages. You can network and meet people who you want to know. You might even meet a good prospect or referral source. You’ll grow and strengthen your professional network. You’ll enjoy the experiences.

Value

A key component of building a personal brand is first developing an understanding and awareness of what motivates clients to do business with you and then developing the ability to communicate it clearly and succinctly in your sales pitches and marketing materials. Work on all the ways you can express your value, the why of doing business with you. Maybe you’ll be able to distill your value proposition down to a single sentence that you can use when asked you to describe yourself and your venture. 

Relationships

Who you know and who knows you are important as you spread the good word about your personal brand. Through your relationships you will receive introductions to others and will expand your network and influence. The list of supporters, referral sources and clients that you accumulate will result in testimonials that speak directly to your character. People do business with people they know and like; they do even more business with people they know and trust.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Anna Wintour, “Nuclear Wintour, ” powerhouse Editor-in-Chief at Vogue Magazine (America) and Global Chief Content Officer at Conde Nast, arrives at the Chanel ready-to-wear collection fashion show in Paris on March 3, 2014.

Administrative , , , Leave a comment

Waiting For the Call—Is Time on Your Side?

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First, the email arrives and you’re elated. The conversation you had was on the level and the project you were told about is real. They’ve invited you in (virtually or in-person) to discuss how your services could be utilized to produce the deliverables and achieve must-do objectives. Step two, the interview goes well, from your perspective. You’re not naive, but you feel confident about the possibility of being offered the contract.

But a week slips by and then two-—crickets. Uh, oh, this doesn’t feel good! Why haven’t they gotten back?

Unfortunately, this is a fairly common occurrence. There are any number of perfectly understandable and valid reasons reasons that delay the follow-up after an interview. It’s nerve wracking for Freelancers, though, who are anxiously awaiting a status update. It’s something that can wake you up at night. The wall of silence leaves you to twist in the wind.

Well, take heart—silence doesn’t always signal rejection. Why don’t we talk about a game plan to help you survive post-interview silence when it happens to you? There are proactive questions you can ask that might make the interview team less likely to resort to a news blackout. There are coping strategies that can help you understand why this sometimes happens. Life is about managing expectations and you can train yourself to keep calm and carry on, confident that you’re still in the game and can still win this thing. Here are a few things that you can do:

Questions that encourage follow-up

Communicate to the interview team that you want follow-up and not silence by saying something like this to the interviewer, “In light of the candidates you’ve met with so far, do you see me moving forward in the selection process?” However, bear in mind that you could be the first of two or more Freelancers who’ve been invited to discuss the project. You could be a top candidate today but later get knocked down the list tomorrow by more experienced competitors who come along.

Another question you might ask the interviewer is, “When will you review and compare the candidates and make a recommendation to the the decision-maker?” Below are four common scenarios that might cause you to encounter post-interview silent treatment:

  • Interview recap

When you speak with more than one interviewer, they will need to conduct a candidate recap and debrief. Candidates may or may not be interviewed on the same days, which means that interviewers can’t share their feedback with each other on the same days either. Furthermore, every interviewer is not necessarily on time with providing feedback; it could take a few days to align interviewer calendars and schedule the debrief meeting.

The unexpected sometimes happens—-in the middle of the selection process, the decision-maker or one of the stakeholders might go off on vacation, depart on business travel, or come down with COVID. The selection process would be put on hold and the Freelancers get to wait and wonder what’s going on.

  • Project spec change

The desired outcomes or deliverables, time table or even the purpose might change, perhaps in response to economic fluctuations that impact the prospect’s business. Sometimes, unfortunately, your hoped-for project may be put on hold or even canceled due to the changing economy or business needs. This scenario can happen fairly often, as there are fluctuations and uncertainty in the economy that could impact revenue. Companies may reevaluate what they need and cut budgets.

  • Making an offer

The decision-maker could be discussing how to finalize an offer to someone — but maybe not with you. If you’re not the number one choice, you may be number two and will need to wait, in silence. However, should the top candidate reject the offer, the second round pick usually gets the prize!

  • Ghosting

If you’re getting silence from your interview contact no matter how often you reach out, you are being ghosted and it’s probably for one of the above reasons. Ghosting is selfish and cowardly, unprofessional and unacceptable. It hurts. Remind yourself that it says more about the interviewer than it does about you. They did you a favor, you don’t want to work for such people anyway. Apply elsewhere.

On the other hand, If the interviewer stays in touch, it’s guaranteed that you’re in the top two or three. If you’re told something like, “We’ll have some decisions made next week” and the debrief time frame has passed, either the decision-maker has not made the decision, or s/he offered the assignment to another candidate and they’re waiting for a response before rejecting you (because you are the second choice).

Silence can speak louder than words. When interviewing for a project assignment, be bold enough to ask questions to obtain information on where you are in the selection process. If you were invited to interview but ultimately didn’t get the assignment, that means your resume demonstrates your experience and your interview skills are solid, but you weren’t the top candidate. The rejection may have nothing to do with you , it may be more about interviewer preference for a certain educational degree or certification, a specific competency, or a competing candidate’s superior interviewing skill.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: “Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”