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What the Elevator Pitch Must Do in 2022  

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Yet another pandemic-era reboot that everyone who earns a living would be wise to make is how you introduce your professional self to prospective clients, a potential new employer, or your colleagues and peers. In-person meetings and events are reappearing and your clients are returning to the office, maybe reluctantly and just a couple of days a week. There are advantages to getting back into the swing of things, but your face2face interaction skills may have become a little rusty from lack of use.

I recently attended a virtual meeting of about 15 people and since we didn’t really know each other, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say a little something about our professional background and current role—- in other words, everyone gave an Elevator Pitch. Most of us were a little flabby because that muscle hadn’t been flexed in many months.

But hitting the restart button and expecting your 2-fer Elevator Pitch/ self-introduction to slide off your tongue the way it did in January 2020 is magical thinking. Navigating life and business in the New Normal requires a skill set update.

Remember that the purpose of an Elevator Pitch is to facilitate the growth of your network and your business. In a good Elevator Pitch, you persuasively communicate your value proposition and help prospects understand what you can do for them. A well- worded pitch will express the purpose and usefulness of your business and make clear what sets it apart from alternatives offered by competitors.

Craft your Elevator Pitch to:

1). Capture the attention of prospects and entice them to devote valuable time to listening to you tell them why your product or service might interest them.

2). Help prospects see a possible role for your product or service in their organization.

The prospect

In-depth and continuously updated knowledge of your target customer groups is a given, so you’ll know who you’re selling to. What do you offer that they might need and value? How can your product or service help them to either achieve objectives or solve/ avoid problems? What might your prospects find worrisome in 2022 and how have they managed that challenge so far?

Taking a few moments to think about these questions will help steer your pitch in the right direction and lead to what you’d like prospects to remember about you and your business. The goal is to make your pitch powerful yet succinct, clearly articulating why prospective customers should choose you.

Your value

What are the unique attributes and selling points of your product or service? Understanding the value you deliver will bring to the forefront talking points that prospects want to hear. Keep your customers, competencies and your competitors in mind as you develop your value proposition. Your task is to recognize and articulate what differentiates your company and how you are uniquely positioned to more effectively, quickly, or inexpensively solve problems and help customers achieve objectives, as compared to the competition.

BTW, your main competitor is inertia. Doing nothing is a popular “solution” because it’s easy and people think they’re saving money. Can your pitch motivate listeners to become customers? Assess the response your pitch receives from different customer groups and make adjustments where necessary.

How you say it

Experts recommend that you limit your Elevator Pitch to about 30 seconds and 75 words. Ideally, your little story will be clear, concise and compelling. Fine tune the wording to ensure that you express your company’s (and your own) unique value proposition in uncomplicated language that resonates. The ideal pitch will also be adaptable and easily made longer or shorter to fit different contexts.

Do it well and you’ll make a memorable first impression on a potential client (or new employer). A good Elevator Pitch in your back pocket makes it easier to start conversations off on the right foot, with the ultimate goal of discovering or creating opportunities. The process needed to create your pitch will take not only time, but also face2face experiences before you get it the way you need it.

In 2022 and beyond, all sales and marketing messages must be digestible in mere seconds if you intend to hold a listener’s attention. Clearly and concisely roll out a maximum of three or four selling points known to intrigue prospective customers and become persuasive and memorable takeaways.

  • What you do

Identify the need for your product. Encourage your listener to become interested in your products and services. Show that there is demand for what you provide.

  • For whom you do it

Describe your product-market fit with a powerful sound-bite that sums up in a sentence or two the customers you usually work with and why they do business with you.

  • The value delivered

The listener is more likely to trust your solution when it’s presented as an easy-to-picture remedy that gets the job done. After you establish the need, briefly explain how or why your solution works, based on real-life examples.

When and where to pitch

To more consistently recognize circumstances when it would be appropriate to present your elevator pitch, train yourself to be hyper-aware of your surroundings and the people you meet. Opportunities to deliver your Elevator Pitch don’t always occur where and when we might expect. Do not overlook casual settings as places to meet and interact with potential customers or employers. A wedding you attend, a running group or book club you join, a summer holiday barbecue, or chatting in line at the grocery store can lead to a door-opening, satisfying or lucrative discovery.

Follow-up

Conclude your Elevator Pitch with a call-to-action when the listener shows an active interest in the use and outcomes of your products or services. Ask for a card and offer yours, so that everyone’s website and social media sites can be viewed. Better still, offer to send the link to a newsletter, podcast, blog post or other source that addresses the topic or questions that were raised. You’re looking to establish legitimacy and expertise, build a relationship that leads to trust and rake in some billable hours.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Associated Press President John F. Kennedy visited Tirana, Albania while on a state visit to Europe June 23 – July 2, 1963.

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The Story of Your Presentation

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Human beings love a good story. Almost any topic will do. If the teller of the story communicates well, s/he will find an attentive audience, eager to be informed or entertained, shocked, surprised, moved by sentimental emotion and perhaps stirred to action. Our attraction to stories fuels our appetite for movies, plays and television shows.

Throughout history our leaders—kings, generals, politicians— have often been masterful storytellers. Thousands of years after the lives of game-changing leaders such as the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar and the Athenian statesman Pericles, we are still in awe of their bold, insightful and inspiring speeches. In fact, we consider exceptional public speaking ability—-storytelling—-to be a sign of capable leadership and a brand-enhancing skill. The ability to tell a story well, if only simply, is a proficiency that Freelancers and business leaders would be wise to develop.

The secret to becoming an effective public speaker is understanding the subtle but profound differences between delivering a presentation and telling a story. Maintaining awareness of those distinctions as you prepare to address your audience will help you connect with them and make them inclined to feel that your talk was relevant and memorable. Your audience may even be inspired to take action (if that is your purpose). Almost anyone can give a presentation but the most effective communicators are also storytellers and that’s what we’ll learn to do today.

Stories humanize and energize

Bullet points and logic are how you present facts and give a recognizable beginning, middle and end timeline arc to a presentation. A story is a connected series of events told in words and/or pictures. A story has a theme, attention-grabbing moments, a challenge, heroes, villains and a resolution. The content of a presentation, no matter how ably delivered is, sadly, often forgotten. The memory of a good story, however, can be long-lasting.

To be blunt, most business presentations are torture and we all know it. They rely heavily on slides filled with bullet points and numbers that make our eyes glaze over. The presenter reads the slides. The effect is brain-numbing.

The problem is that business executives don’t get that delivering a presentation is not only public speaking, but also a performance. A truly skilled speaker is also a storyteller and is not shy about looking to the entertainment world to level up public speaking skills.

To inject meaning and energy into your presentation, you must reveal to the audience its underlying message—-the story—-that the bullet points and numbers exist to communicate. In many cases, the story behind those terse statements you’ve bulleted (ouch!) and the intimidating Excel spreadsheet of numbers you copy/pasted to create your slides can be translated into a story that your audience wants to hear in three or four sentences, tops.

Telling that story is worth the effort. Telling the story is why you’ve been invited to speak. No one needs you to read slides to them, we can do that on our own. To become a first class public speaker, focus on crafting and communicating the story behind the slides, in words and pictures.

Every picture sells the story

Researchers have found that listeners typically remember about 10% of the points made in a talk if the information is presented with words alone but when images accompany words, listeners will retain 65% of the information. Therefore, including a selection of images to visually communicate pivotal aspects of your story is a must-do.

Directors of the television, plays and movies that we watch first read the script to find the story line they’ll tell. Next, they identify action and other key scenes and then they literally sketch those scenes on paper, mount them onto what are called storyboards and document the scenes they plan to show in the performance. You can do something similar as you prepare for your next talk. Public speaking pros who know there is a story to tell make sure to think through the elements of their content and put together an engrossing narrative to communicate that story.

  • Review the information that is necessary to share with the audience.
  • Decide what information should be included on the slides, as a bare bones framework of the story.
  • Choose images — graphs, charts, other images—- that visually communicate the story.
  • Write story notes, the narrative that will become your script, to link and integrate the three components of your talk. Edit well and get very familiar with your talking points.

Practice makes perfect

Most business execs merely page through their slides and pass it off as a presentation rehearsal. It’s common and I’ve often done it, but it’s not enough. Real storytellers rehearse out loud. They practice vocal delivery and experiment to find the right tone of voice, figure out the timing of pauses and modulate the pace of their speech, all to perfect the delivery and power of their story. They want the audience at the edge of their seats, anticipating what will happen next. Block out three days and devote at least two hours a day to rehearsing.

Finally, public speaking pros who appreciate the difference between a rote presentation and a riveting story will also conduct a walk-through rehearsal at the venue and will rehearse while using the delivery platform of their talk. If you’ll stand in front of an audience, rehearse standing up and anticipate your approach to audience eye contact. If you’ll deliver the talk virtually, rehearse sitting down and figure out how to position your device and the lighting. Public speaking stars are usually made and not born!

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Kenneth Branagh (center) as Henry V (September 16, 1386 – August 31, 1422, monarch of England 1413-1422). Branagh directed and starred in the 1989 film based on the Shakespeare play written circa 1599.

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Build the Best Sales Funnel

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Shall we start with the most obvious question—- what is a sales funnel and why do you need one? Also known as the marketing funnel, it is the process a business uses to make its products, services and even the entity itself known to and trusted by potential customers. The purpose of the sales/ marketing funnel is to generate sales. To that end, the funnel process is built on a strategy designed to convert browsers into buyers.

The funnel can operate simultaneously on your website and social media platforms. It’s seeded with relevant and tempting information known as content that beckons to site browsers and convincingly demonstrates the efficacy and dependability of your organization and its products and services.

The content offered should become increasingly more specific and compelling so that browsers, who as they linger may be considered legitimate prospects, can deepen their understanding of your products and services. Content presented in the sales funnel should illustrate how your product or service can deliver solutions and help users (customers) achieve objectives. Using inbound and outbound marketing techniques will help you to more quickly build an efficient and successful sales funnel that delivers paying customers, the lifeblood of a business.

Inbound marketing

Reaching out to prospects and customers by creating and disseminating content they will likely value and trust is the purpose of inbound marketing. The strategy employs blog posts, social media posts, infographics, e-books, case studies, webinars, email updates and other information that will attract, educate and persuade prospects to take a chance on you. When inbound marketing functions well, your company will become visible to those interested in the topics the content addresses and some will be persuaded to investigate your products and/or services further and ultimately become customers.

Inbound marketing centers largely around prospects who’ve self-selected, opted-in, and for that reason the ROI is much higher than outbound marketing ROI. Inbound marketing tactics are usually either no-cost or low-cost to launch and maintain. The biggest cost of developing inbound marketing content is your time (and it’s worth money!).

The downside of inbound marketing is that it often operates at a snail’s pace. It can take months or years to build a robust email list of viable prospects who have the money and motive to do business with you and/ or make referrals. But you can grow your prospect outreach much faster when you pair inbound marketing with outbound marketing tactics.

Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing reaches out to the general public. It’s unsolicited, not highly targeted. Advertising of all types, cold calling and telemarketing, cold email campaigns (maybe you bought a list?), pay-per-click ads and public relations (earned media) that might result in quotes of yours or an article that you’ve written being published.

Winning or receiving a nomination for an award presented by a business or professional association, speaking or conducting a skills development workshop at a business or professional association, or becoming a sponsor of a popular local charity are also potentially effective public relations moves that often serve as components of an outbound marketing strategy. Writing a (probably self-published) book is another excellent outbound marketing tactic, one that confers great credibility.

OK. So now that you understand the recipe you can bake your (funnel!) cake. See directions below.

TOFU: Top of Funnel

  • Purpose: Name recognition

Social media posts, PR earned media

  • Purpose: Educate

Blog posts, infographics, newsletter, your published articles

Winning or receiving a nomination for a business award, teaching a class in your field of expertise at a college or business incubator, speaking engagements

MOFU: Middle of Funnel

  • Purpose: Evaluate

Podcast, webinar (i.e. videos), e-book

At this stage, collect a name and email address to facilitate follow-up, know who’s checking you out and build your email list.

BOFU: Bottom of Funnel

  • Purpose: Action/ decision

Customer testimonials, case studies, your book

Here’s the money shot. You’ve got a fish on the line and you want to reel it in. Time is money. Depending on what you’re selling, you might cross the finish line by offering a short free trial (maybe 7-14 days), a discount (maybe 10%), a free premium post-sale service upgrade for a couple of months—- what customer hot buttons can you speak to? A really good case study can also be helpful at this stage, to help the prospect envision more realistically how the product or service will deliver immediate and sustained benefits. A phone or video call is in order and a face2face meeting is even better. You’re ready to seal the deal!

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Brock Clay March 23, 2022 funnel cloud over Moscow, MS

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Course Correction: Tacking Through Headwinds

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When you decide to become a Freelance consultant or business owner, your mission is to build and launch a successful and sustainable entity. To that end, there will be Important Things you must do very well and a corresponding list of Big Mistakes you must avoid and summarily correct if you fall into the trap. Our old friend the SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) reminds us that when leading a venture there’s always something to analyze, fix, capitalize on, or avoid. Below is a list of usual suspects that can tank a business. Be on guard!

Failure to understand the customer

Apologies for hammering this topic in nearly every post, but it’s impossible to overstate the fact. If you plan to become self-employed or open a business (and you must make a plan, even if it’s an outline scrawled on a cocktail napkin), you must be assured that you:

1). Have an accurate description and understanding of the customer segments you expect to buy from you and

2). Verify that your choice of prospective customers has a need, if not compelling reasons, to buy your product or service at a volume that will sustain your venture. In short, you’ll need a critical mass of paying customers.

Failure to research the marketplace

First thing you do is research the chosen industry and confirm that your sector is on an upward slope because under no circumstances do you want to enter a shrinking market. Also, search for announcements of new products and services that will soon be released, to verify that a competitor will not make your product or service obsolete. Furthermore, search for updates that may reveal potential new customer groups for you, or shifting demand for current products and services. In other words, customer loyalty can wax or wane, new iterations and uses of what’s available can develop and nothing is static and forever.

Failure to choose a good business model

Create your roadmap for customer acquisition and achieving profitability. Included in your assessment will be how you’ll source, create and bring your goods or services to customers. Decide also the payment methods you’ll accept and when payment will be made (billing after the product or service has been delivered to the customer or payment when the goods are ordered?).

Failure to develop a coherent marketing strategy

It will be tremendously helpful to create a multi-prong marketing strategy in which you’ll outline basic promotional goals for what you’re selling—-sales/marketing funnel, newsletter, blog, social media, branding, PR, website messages. All paths must travel in the same direction. All elements , text and images, must advance and support the same story.

Failure to create an effective customer acquisition and retention strategy

Identifying the customer groups that you’ve confirmed are a natural fit for your products and services is only half the story (sorry!). You then need a plan to reach out to them— that’s what your marketing and brand appeal exist to do. The value of your products and services, plus the efficiency of how you deliver to the customer, along with your diligent quality control, customer service and post-sale support impact customer retention and referrals.

Failure to anticipate required cash-flow

Posts on March 15 and April 19 addressed pricing and cash-flow, as regular readers will recall. The objective is to lay the groundwork for generating sufficient revenue to pay expenses, pay employees, pay yourself and reinvest in the business. Timing is everything and money must be available when you need it most. If there are gaps, corrective action should be taken immediately.

If invoicing is how you generate revenue, take steps to invoice on time. Insert on every invoice a polite phrase to indicate that payment is due upon its receipt. Give yourself an infusion of cash by asking for 15-20 % up front on projects where you anticipate billing $1000 or more. Worse case scenario, you’ll have to take an under-the radar unglamorous part-time job or get lucky and score an adjunct teaching gig at a local college or business incubator (BTW, I’ve done all of the above).

Failure to price appropriately

Pricing is an integral component of the marketing strategy but it often gets treated as an afterthought. Your revenue projections will underperform if you don’t price appropriately. Prices must support profitability as well as be perceived as reasonable to prospective customers. They must reflect your brand, whether luxury/premium, mid-market or discount. Think carefully about the message that your prices send to prospective customers.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: On the rocks, aftermath of a nor’easter at Lewis Wharf in Boston Harbor, October 17, 2019

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The Rise of Soft Skills

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In locations such as Davos, Switzerland and Sun Valley, Idaho, billionaire business leaders gather to attend conferences where they participate in important conversations. Many discussions, so I’ve read, focus on leveraging ground-breaking technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and 5G data networks, plus minimizing carbon footprints and, always, maximizing profits. However, the unexpected arrival of the coronavirus and our responses to it not only preempted those momentous conversations, but also pushed to the forefront trends that not long ago were only distant drumbeats.

You may recall that telecommuting, now rebranded as Work From Home, began slowly about 20 years ago and existed mostly in the high tech space. The much more recent phenomenon known as the Great Resignation has seen 38 million+ workers quit their jobs since 2021 and skimmed 4.4 million employees from the U.S. workforce in February 2022 (most switched employers). Meanwhile, yet another trend has been slowly building in professional development and leadership circles since about the 1980s, the importance of traits and competencies known as soft skills.

The WFH and Great Resignation disruptions have left managers struggling to simultaneously retain talent and lure employees back to the office. According to a survey by Glassdoor, what can be summed up as a toxic work culture (mostly insufficient pay, limited chance of advancement and lousy bosses) is fueling both occurrences. Workers are mounting a spirited pushback and the bosses can’t help but notice. They know it’s time for a workplace culture reboot. Bring on the soft skills.

Like wisps of fog slipping in at daybreak, talk of the traits and competencies known as soft skills slipped onto the radar screens of business thought leaders with little fanfare. Soft skills can perhaps be best defined as empathy, or Emotional Intelligence (E.Q.), the ability to understand and acknowledge the feelings of another.

In your personal and professional spheres, it is now of paramount importance that you commit to understanding the perspectives of others and figure out how to acknowledge and accommodate their values, priorities and experiences. Soft skills traits and competencies—-work ethic, communication, problem-solving, adaptability, delegating, resilience, analytical and motivational ability, collaborating and decision-making—-will put you on the path to achieving that goal.

In our New Normal business environment empathy, that is, E.Q., can bring a competitive advantage to your organization. When you think about it, the ability to see the world from the viewpoint of others has always been among the most valuable resources in your your business toolbox. Let’s consider how empathy will cause you to act with compassion and strengthen your relationships with clients and colleagues and become a foundational element of business growth.

Build trust, inspire loyalty

Soft skills will play a central role in your ability to attract and retain clients and receive referrals and recommendations. The purpose and benefits of your products and services, their environmental and social impact and your diversity, equity and inclusion advocacy are factors to consider within your Freelance consulting practice. How you integrate these messages into your various communications formats, including website text, social media posts, blog and/ or newsletter, marketing emails, images, packaging, shipping and strategic partnership choices and demonstrate your relatability, reliability, authenticity and expertise will add (or subtract) clients from your roster.

Use your communication soft skills, in particular asking questions and active listening, to discover what your top clients feel is important to them now and assess how their perspectives and priorities may have changed since 1Q 2020. Soulaima Gourani, co-founder and CEO of Happioh, a Silicon Valley software company and author of Take Control of Your Career (2016), suggests that a good way to cultivate self-awareness, a component of empathy and other soft skills, is to invite feedback from your clients. Gourani says, “Feedback is not easy to a lot of people and it is an essential component of change. You have blind spots and it is like ‘you’ve got broccoli in your teeth …’ You need people to tell you that, because you can’t see it.”

It’s probably safe to assume that in these turbulent, war-torn, inflationary times, reliability, expertise, transparency and efficiency are at top-of-mind for clients and prospects. Support your clients with follow-up, creativity, training and encouragement—- humanist behaviors that sustain healthy relationships.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Fred Rogers (1928 – 2003), creator of the children’s television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, poses with the Neighborhood Train. The series aired on PBS 1963-2001.

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Making Cash Flow

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We’ve just passed the deadline for filing annual taxes. Are you feeling a little cash-poor? Should we talk about how to put a little extra $$ into the revenue column? I suspect that landing a big client will have the most positive impact on your earnings, but counting your pennies and smart planning are always a plus. You just need to discipline yourself to adopt those good habits. Once you do, they’ll become part of your regular routine, the standard way that you do things.

Price right

Don’t be afraid to request adequate payment for the valuable services you provide. Low-balling never got anyone anywhere. I understand that when the cupboard is bare you just want to get a project in-house, fast, and it may seem as though a bargain price will entice prospects to quickly hire you. The problem is, prospects inclined toward cheap labor tend not to respect those whom they hire. You could find yourself in the mix with a difficult client who’s not only a low-revenue client, but also a slow payer. Respect yourself and your abilities and don’t go there.

Pricing B2B services is tricky, though, and benchmarking your price range is difficult. You can’t go online and research what competitors charge for a similar service. Who you know and who knows you, along with work experience in your area of specialty, number of years in business, university degrees and professional certifications and your client list are among factors that potentially impact how you can price. Your unique way of packaging and selling your skills and experience can be another determining factor. You might refer to the March 15, 2022 post Is It Time for a Price Increase for more thoughts on pricing B2B services.

Invoice on time

Freelancers don’t get paid to invoice, but you don’t get paid until you invoice. You must get serious about collecting accounts receivable. Get into the habit of preparing your more detailed invoices a little at a time throughout the month and consider sending invoices during a certain week—like the first or last week of the month. On all invoices, state that payment is due upon receipt. In general, payment is due within 30 days, but a 15 day grace period is typically extended, meaning clients legally have 45 days to pay. If you haven’t received payment by day 48, resend the invoice.

Furthermore, track the time that you spend on projects billed hourly. It’s very easy to underestimate how may hours that you work. I recently reviewed the amount of time that I spend on a recurring hourly project and was shocked (and embarrassed) to realize that I’ve been billing slightly more than half of the time that I should be billing. Corrective action will be gradually taken. I don’t want to give my client sticker shock, but I will discreetly align my invoices with the time spent working.

When discussing the work agreement with a client, ask for a 15% – 20% upfront payment on projects that you’ll bill at $1000 or more. Schedule payments to align with project milestones and leave no more than 30% outstanding for the final payment. On your invoice, indicate how you would like the check made out. If you accept credit and debit cards, electronic checks , direct deposits , or PayPal, include those options on your invoice as well.

Anticipate expenses and set money aside

Create a spreadsheet to help yourself anticipate and plan how to pay predictable expenses, fixed (e.g., quarterly tax payments, utility bills, health insurance) and variable (business association dues, professional development courses you’d like to attend), to minimize the arrival of unpleasant surprises landing in accounts payable. Next, calculate your expected accounts receivable. The document you’ll create is called a cash-flow forecast and is used to predict and plan ahead for 12 months.

Are you coming up short now and again? Figure out how to fix the problem. There are near term and long- term remedies that may be feasible for you. I recommend that you look to money raising opportunities that are related to what you do. But if you must tend bar, for example, do so if the money is good and you won’t run into clients.

  • Are you qualified to teach? Becoming an adjunct professor at a local college pays fairly well and it’s an excellent addition to a Freelancer’s CV. Teaching implies expertise and will enhance your brand and perceived value. Most schools will require that you have a master’s degree, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to subjects that you teach. Entrepreneurial incubators also hire instructors to teach subjects such as finance, tech and marketing. Do some investigation. Your real world experience can be leveraged.
  • Do you have good writing skills? If so, there are a number of money- making avenues to explore, including blog or newsletter ghost writing and marketing content for websites. Writing social media posts is another possibility. Join and browse writing and editing Freelance gig work on sites such as Fiverr and Upwork.
  • Align the payment due dates of your significant accounts payable with the part of the month when you usually have the most money. If you have a payroll to meet, W2 or 1099, time your accounts receivable payments to paydays you must guarantee
  • Call the companies you must pay and ask to change the due dates to stagger them or schedule your payments to that sweet spot in the month when you have the most money. You can also apply for a business credit card that can be used to pay certain expenses, but do keep an eye on the balance because credit card interest rates are exorbitant.
  • As a long-term tactic, review your inbound marketing tactics and amplify that which is not bringing in good prospects. For example, do you have two good client testimonials on your website? If not, consider who might be willing to go on record to sing your praises. Re:outbound marketing, consider dropping into your local chamber of commerce to see if those you’d like to meet are known to attend events. If possible, join for a year and see who you meet and what you learn, Buy a small ad in the chamber newsletter to raise your profile and maybe get the opportunity to speak or present a one hour course.
  • The best move is to build up a rainy day fund when your cash finally starts flowing. My fund saw me through the barren early months of the pandemic shutdown. I was still skimping, but I made it. Aim to save for a 6 month cushion.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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When Your Client Goes Hybrid

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You’re a Freelance consultant and well aware that continually demonstrating your value to clients, prospects and potential referral sources is an ongoing must-do. You may agree this is especially true when you recently arrive at an assignment. Your new client may throw a curve ball, maybe as a test or maybe because s/he is crazy busy. Whatever the motive, you’d better not fumble.

Increasingly, the ability to function effectively in a hybrid work environment is a competency that Freelancers and company leaders and their teams must acquire. Those of you who specialize in process improvement might even be hired to help a client institute systems and protocols designed to enable a hybrid team to operate well. Others may discover—-surprise!—-that you’ve arrived at a gig where the team is in the midst of going hybrid. Don’t be surprised to see that it will be up to you to figure out how to interact with both at-home and office-based staff and still hit your milestones and meet the deadline.

So in your back pocket it’s a good idea to have a road map to guide you through the hybrid landscape, a blueprint designed to minimize any awkwardness or missteps between the at-home and in-office crews and you. The objectives are to demonstrate your project management and political skills, produce the deliverable you’ve been hired to produce (on time and on budget) and, most of all, increase the odds of getting called back for another project. You can do it.

Martine Haas, Ph.D., professor of management and organizational behavior at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School, notes that the most common challenges resulting from hybrid teams originate from what she named 5C Challenges: communication, coordination, connection, creativity and culture. You can study her 5C guideposts as you prepare to encourage hybrid team members you’ll work with to bridge the divide between working from home and working in the office. Do that and you’ll support efficiency and productivity, enhance the success of your project and lower your stress level, too.

Communication

Sometimes, a team member who should be included in an email is accidentally omitted. That little error can result in that person being unintentionally dropped from an important conversation. The error might also result in that person being excluded from an important decision. This type of unfortunate consequence is disproportionately borne by those on the WFH shift.

Freelancers might consider developing a list of primary and secondary contacts and stakeholders and making note of who is present or absent from communications and also when decisions will be made. Politically savvy and practical Freelancers take steps to ensure that all who can contribute valuable work and perspectives will participate when you need them most.

More often than in-office teams like to admit, WFH team members are also prone to be omitted from informal discussions and minor decisions made by those who are working together in the office. The problem lies somewhere between out of sight, out of mind and the logistics of bringing WFH folks into the conversation.

Connection

In addition to technological and logistical coordination, the importance of the team’s social interactions should not be minimized. It’s vital to also encourage social connections between in-office and WFH crews, although composition of each may vary depending on the day of the week. Life and work are about building and nurturing relationships. Our networks contribute quite a bit to the success and happiness we achieve. There’s a reason that most people consider networking to meet peers or potential mentors, partners, investors, or sponsors so important.

Because a WFH schedule physically separates coworkers and has the potential to isolate and cause relationships to wither, occasional informal videoconference meetings could provide a helpful balance. Freelancers should be able to schedule an informal video meeting or two without appearing to over-reach. Nurturing relationships within your working team will make the experience better for all. Speak with your primary contact and propose an ice-breaker introduction video call designed to bring your project team together and set the stage for positive 5C experiences.

Coordination

Hybrid teams bring a greater risk of snafus than working face2face. The most common downside is the gradual onset of a rift between the in-office and WFH crews. Freelancers would be wise to apply extra effort to coordinate and follow-up with team members who work remotely. Without diligence, WFH team members could slip out of the loop.

That could result in the WFH crew not being completely on board with certain assumptions or adjustments that the in-office crew has agreed upon, for example. Freelancers working in a hybrid environment would be wise to take whatever necessary steps that bring in-office and WFH crews into agreement and on the same page. Freelancers usually depend on certain information, access, approvals, or actions to reach project milestones. Agreement and coordination are essential to success and must be enabled.

Creativity

It was probably discovered a few centuries ago that conversations spark creativity. It’s becoming apparent that teams working together in the same physical space experience a sort of collective creativity that arises organically when co-workers spontaneously begin to discuss a problem or opportunity. Scheduling a videoconference to conduct a brainstorming session is just not the same. It’s so much better to bounce ideas around with others or work intensively on solving a problem together. If it’s possible to bring WFH team members into the office once or twice during the project timeline do so. All 5C metrics will get a boost.

Culture

The phenomenon known as The Great Resignation, which was discussed in the September 7, 2021 post, has had a profound effect on working in America. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that in February 2022, U.S. businesses had nearly 12 million unfilled jobs.

That means once cohesive teams are in danger of weakening as people exit. When experienced employees leave and new ones arrive, another challenge of the WFH era is how to onboard newcomers and integrate them into the company’s culture, the expression of its brand and respect for its values. If a fluid but essentially constant percentage of a company’s workforce will remain in WFH mode, rarely or never working side-by-side with colleagues or spending time together to talk shop, how can a company’s unique “personality” be maintained or communicated? Back-channel, off-the-record. tellings are powerful. Institutional memory is a precious resource.

One fact is clear about the future of work, at least in the near term and that is, the hybrid workforce will be the norm for many organizations large and small and we’d better learn to navigate them.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Rinse and Repeat: Your Content is Evergreen

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What’s the purpose of your marketing campaign? Is it about branding, to make your company name, primary product, or service, memorable in the minds of clients and prospects? Or are you going head-to-head with a competitor and looking to gain or retain market share? Maybe your goal is to expand into a niche market, where you’ve discovered that your product or service is gaining traction and could have potential for more sales?

For every marketing tool that you use—display ad, social media, press release, newsletter, podcast, white paper, webinar—-you create content that costs time, bandwidth and money to produce. Why limit its use to just one platform? Your content is a versatile asset that can be recycled through multiple formats. It is evergreen.

Like a big holiday feast, when many dishes are served and preparation time is longer than the usual weeknight supper, don’t waste the leftovers. Instead, make note of what’s popular and serve it up again in another setting. You’ll not only deliver powerful content to new groups of fans and followers, growing your audience, you’ll save time as you do. Let’s talk possibilities.

White paper slice and dice

Can we start by defining the document? A white paper is written to promote a certain product, service, technology, or methodology and persuade current and prospective clients to believe that it’s useful and beneficial. White papers are stealth sales/ marketing documents written to entice potential clients to learn more about and eventually buy the product, service, technology, or whatever. They are designed to be used as a marketing tool in advance of a sale, to inspire curiosity, trust and demand.

White papers are typically 2000+ words in length and that makes them ideal candidates for content recycling. Selected paragraphs of your white paper can be edited and reused as (one or more) blog posts or newsletters. Your white paper can also become the core of an e-book that you can use in a call-to-action appeal on your website and social media outlets, helping to move prospects through your sales/ marketing funnel and grow your email list as you do.

If contacting media outlets is part of your campaign, a paragraph or two of your white paper might be used as the key message in your press release. If you can schedule yourself into a webinar or podcast, your white paper can provide your talking points.

Blog or newsletter recycle

If you’ve received lots of likes or comments on a post that you’ve written, you might extract a few sentences to create interesting social media posts that you can drop into one or more platforms. Your evergreen blog or newsletter content might result in two or more good social media posts that bring new and relevant info to your fans and followers. Or, you can repost an entire blog or newsletter in one or more of your social media accounts.

You might also be able to recycle a blog topic on a blogging platform, e.g., Medium. You’ll find a few of my posts in Lioness Magazine https://lionessmagazine.com/, a digital publication whose target audience is women entrepreneurs. I’m paid (very modestly) for published articles.

Consider diving into your blog and newsletter archive and updating a topic. Last December, I did exactly that when I realized that a 2019 post on writing a press release is evergreen. I updated with current info and expanded the topic to discuss creating an up-to-date press kit. I sent the article to Lioness Magazine and thank goodness my editor was pleased and agreed to publish it.

You can also turn your newsletter or blog post into a video. You wouldn’t just read it, but rather go on camera and discuss how what you’ve written is useful and actionable and will help viewers make money or operate their business more efficiently. Upload the video to your website, YouTube, Twitter, or other social media accounts.

Finally, you can reconfigure your blog or newsletter, or white paper, into a Power Point presentation and upload it to LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or your website.

Webinar and podcast encore

If the program host will agree to send you the link and you have editing skills, this feast will yield high-end leftovers. For the price of an email address (that grows your list), visitors to your website, YouTube account and other social media can be greeted with an enticing call-to-action, an invitation-only rebroadcast of the entire podcast or webinar. You might also edit a tempting 3 or 4 minute audio or video clip to upload and make your CTA even more appealing.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Patty Duke (1946 – 2016) starred as both Patty and her identical cousin Cathy in The Patty Duke Show (ABC-TV September 1963 – April 1966).

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5-Star Client Onboarding Leads to Smooth Sailing

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Hallelujah, you’ve just brought in a client, and a good one. You and the team are psyched to start working and prove your bona fides but may I suggest that you slow down and present what might be called a “soft opening” for your new client? While you want to honor deadlines, it’s good business to first give new clients a proper introduction to your company, an opportunity to understand how his/her team and yours will pleasantly and efficiently get the job done.

This first order of business is a powerful move purposed to set the stage for a mutually satisfying working partnership. As it is for so many important goals, when your intention is to develop positive and long-lasting client relationships, it makes sense to begin with the end in mind. When you consider the big picture you’ll realize that an effective client retention strategy actually starts with good onboarding.

Onboarding is a series of choreographed actions that introduce new clients to your company and show them how to access and utilize the value in your products, services and organization—-everything that made them recognize you as The One. Your onboarding program sets the tone for productive client-company relationships, signaling that client expectations will be met and reconfirming that selecting you to do business with was a wise choice. Ideally, the onboarding experience you present will amplify your clients’ trust and confidence in you and your organization, resulting in referrals, recommendations and repeat business.

Onboarding is integral to client retention and limiting client churn, meaning one-and-done assignments. I don’t have to remind you that it costs at least five times the resources— your time and money—- to land a new client than it does to keep those you have. There will always be one-off projects but continually starting at zero and chasing prospects is expensive in terms of time, money and energy.

The top two reasons for client churn are 1) the client doesn’t understand your product; and 2) the client doesn’t know how to obtain the expected value from the product. Your thoughtfully designed and well-presented 5-star onboarding protocols can solve both problems. Here’s how you can greet new clients and start persuading them to become long-time fans and devotees of your organization.

Onboarding building blocks

Along with a welcome email, in which you thank the client for choosing your company over the other potential options and letting the client know how excited you are to work together, a 5-star onboarding recipe can include all or some of the following. Making the client and his/ her team feel confident in and comfortable with you and your team is the onboarding purpose.

  • Video tutorial
  • Live online or in-person product training
  • Follow-up video or phone call to confirm that the client is properly using the product or service purchased and is satisfied with the results and outcomes (and to troubleshoot where necessary)
  • In- person or videoconference meeting to introduce your project team and the client’s team, to discuss roles, milestones, invoicing schedules, reporting updates and the like
  • Company logo swag items and/ or a gift basket delivered to the client

The good news is that your new client already likes and trusts you and believes in your product or service and that’s why the decision to work with your organization was made. Build on these front-loaded advantages by creating an onboarding method that shows clients how to have positive experiences when using your product or service and working with your team. Your onboarding process is a follow-up step of the promises made in your sales talking points.

The onboarding process has lasting benefits for your clients and your business. Onboarding makes clients’ lives easy. It is vital to lowering client acquisition costs, increasing client retention, increasing the average lifetime value of clients and supports business growth.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Super yacht Saint Nicolas (230′ 4″/ 70.2 m) at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival

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Next Up: Generation Z

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Do you hear the footsteps? Generation Z is at the door. They were born between 1997 and 2012, they number about 72 million and they have an estimated annual buying power of nearly $300 billion. Perhaps most notably, they’re the first generation to never know a world without the internet; they grew up with cellphones and their virtual lives seem as real as IRL. The oldest of them are about 25 and getting ready to enter jobs where they might be able to influence decision-makers. So maybe it’s time for Freelancers to get to know Generation Z?

They’re not the same as their predecessors, the Millennials, who grew up in more stable financial times and have a different outlook on life and different spending habits. Defining memories of particularly the older Gen Z cohort members were formed during the Great Recession of the 2000s and it wasn’t pretty.

Tough times were waiting for us when the new millennium arrived, bringing the one-two punch of the market-crashing dot-com sell-off that was soon followed by the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade towers. A few years later, the subprime mortgage scam and real estate market collapse in 2007 caused thousands to lose their homes and their money. Remember also the the demise of the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers investment houses in 2008 and a few months later, the exposing of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, when even Stephen Spielberg took a hit.

Many Gen Z members were raised in families that had financial worries, if not hardship, and they’re made of different stuff than Millennials who, on average, experienced a more supportive economy. Experience seems to have given Gen Z a practical, cautious and even skeptical bent. For example, they are often concerned about the values and beliefs of those they do business with. They are also price conscious.

Affinity for small business

Since January 2020, Gen Z increased its small business spending by more than 260% according to Afterpay, an Australia-based payment platform that’s designed to be supportive of the credit-building needs of its users (and seems so totally aligned with the Gen Z style). Afterpay reports that Gen Z small business purchases were 80% higher than Millennials. This is being interpreted as a response to the pandemic, since it was well known that thousands of small businesses were struggling or going under.

Gen Z prefers online shopping and not only for the convenience. Marketing survey results show that most were driven by the ability to contribute to the local economy, with 77% of Gen Z customers reporting that online shopping allows them to discover products from new or small companies they wouldn’t be able to find in person. Only 38% say they prefer in-store shopping. A June 2021 survey conducted by the France-based marketing company Sendinblue and CITE Research, the survey and research marketing firm, found that 46% of Gen Z shoppers had purchased more items from small businesses than they had before the pandemic.

Another interesting insight is that Gen Z customers are more willing to share their data with small businesses that they frequent, in exchange for discounts and deals. However, they insist that the business inform them of how the information will be used. That’s great news for Freelancers and small business owners and leaders who are figuring out how to reach and persuade Gen Z prospects to become customers.

Finally (and no surprise), a 2021 Consumer Culture Report compiled by PR and marketing firm 5W Public Relations showed that Gen Z gravitates to electronics and technology. Health and wellness emerged as their second favorite category. While the Zs are financially cautious and love a bargain, they can be persuaded to make larger purchases that offer fun experiences or improve their daily lives. They like video games.

It’s important for Freelancers and marketers in general who want to reach Gen Z to create content that demonstrates usefulness to cohort members. Make clear why they might need the product or service by communicating how it will improve their life, for example, improve health or promote fun, and also explain why your product or service is better than what competitors offer.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Fortnite™, the video game favored by Generation Z