Getting Started

Know who you are and what you sell

Notes: First of all, you need to really know your added value (What unique skills do you offer the market), your skills, your strengths and your weaknesses (to be improved): make a SWOT of yourself.
Then, decide on what market you want to play: what are you going to sell, products or services and in what way you would present your offer. Make it attractive: packages of offer, blog posts, advertising in social networks, etc

Notes: You want to create a product that has enough demand and characteristics that can make it competitive.

"The price tag you put on yourself decides your worth. Underestimating yourself will cost you dearly”

(Apoorve Dubey)

“The more you focus on the value of your product or service the less important the price becomes”

(Brian Tracy)

Notes: What is your value?

•  What’s your experience and educational level?
•  How do you move within the sector?
•  How many projects can you manage at the same time?
•  What unique skills do you put on the table?

The value of a product does not have to fit with how the user perceives it. We must achieve that the price is less than what is received in exchange.

What is the market price?

The more cash you have in the bank, the lower your risk will be and the higher your chances of success.

Notes: Many promising companies fail because they don’t have the resources to last long enough to get things going. How long can you last without any clients or income? The more cash you have in the bank, the lower your risk will be and the higher your chances of success. It is recommended to start with 6 to 12 months of operating expenses on hand.

Contact everyone you know

Notes:

• Make a list of all your contacts, including family, friends, previous coworkers, acquaintances, etc.
• Talk to them about your business: Bomber emails to all your contacts.
• Send an email, call or send a message to those you recall can be useful informing about your product, what does it solve, who is it for, and ask if they know anyone that it may be useful for; as a result, you may end with a couple of referrals and it will aid to spread the word. This will help you as well to practice your selling skills and anticipate questions potential clients will ask you.
• Participate in ‘Meetups’ – Look for related groups in the social networks
• Coworking spaces: It is a great way to meet people and broaden your contacts, as well as a good space to work. Some of them offer free day passes, or even free week trials.
• Make yourself available when the opportunity arises. When approaching people, try to be assertive, but not aggressive.
• Try not to get home working all the time… get out and share… Face to face meetings are very important and more effective than online meetings or emails.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RSc9mtZp4

If you don’t exist online, you don’t exist

Notes: Useful platforms for freelancers:

* There are similar platforms for almost every kind of profession.

Notes:

• Create a strong presence in social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram offer great opportunities to connect with communities that may be attracted to your product. They will provide you with more contacts and traffic to the business.
• However, it is true that they consume a considerable amount of time and require constant effort. Hence, it is fundamental to identify the profile of the potential clients to address them directly.
• It is advisable to use special promotions or free product trials in order to attract easily consumer interest. This can lead to clients recommending the product to other people and help spreading the word.

Notes:

The “Once and bye”: you provide a product or service. To a client and the relation is finished.
The “Retainer”: Start a Project, Think about a service that you can offer and the value that will contribute in the medium/long term (e.g. create a website to your client (maintenance) and offer him/her also another product as sales campaign, newsletter, consulting calls, etc.).
The “Exponential”: Introduce you to Other people of the sector
That of passive income ��  You create a product once and it will generate incomes itself in the time (eg. Writing a book or a guide and sell it online)

JUST TALK TO THE CLIENT

Notes: Just talk to the client:

• Find out what causes them more friction at their daily professional tasks; Know what’s his daily work
• Ask directly to the client
• Learn what personal and professional goals are

Notes:

• Consumer trust is earned through the goods quality. That is why it is important to make a great offer with good client service.
• In the offline field, this responsibility relies on the individuals who run the business, while in the online field, its equivalent is the webpage. Which must be taken care of, be good-looking to the consumer and present facilities to acquire the products along with accessing them and pay for them. The business must involve consumers through the purchasing process.
• Optimizing the website also includes facilitating verifiable, relevant and reliable information; adding displays of the product and ease consumer contact.
• Give new customers a deal!

Notes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH1TXfQSwUQ

Handling difficult customers

• Developing a custom-formula to handle difficult calls
• How to prevent call escalation and in increase first call resolution
• Keeping cool and letting go of stress before the next interaction
• Learn to be an “ambassador” between the company and the customer

Positive communication

• How to use empathy and positive words and phrases to soften negative information and increase cooperation
• Effective methods to engage with the caller while still keeping control and managing call times
• Active listening skills
• Creating professional, concise and effective email messages

Telephone etiquette best practices

• A short, consistent greeting to create a positive first impression
• Current best practices for placing callers on hold, transferring calls and closing the call with courtesy and professionalism
• Tactful questioning techniques to gather information

Personal responsibility/Ownership mentality

• Service mindset – How attitude directly impacts the service provided
• Shift focus to solving the problem instead of placing blade
• Maintaining a positive voice tone even when having a bad day
• Seeing a customer service position as meaningful and how it contributes to the company’s success

(By bonfire training)

HOW TO GET YOUR FIRST CLIENT

Unit 3 – Further dissemination - Your personal brand

Notes: Your personal brand website is your home on the web, the hub of the content you create and a destination for every member of the network you’re building to power your career. Even if you are active in different online platforms, the content you post on social media networks belongs to those networks. You need to own your personal brand and purposefully direct it.

Recommended platform to create your blog: Medium

Notes:

• Many organizations while doing an event like to bring in speakers that can share something innovative or new with their members.
• This presents a great opportunity to share your experience.
• In addition, writing a blog or publications can be convenient to share ideas, topics and expanding your skills and business experiences.
• Accentuate the positive: When you speak to potential customers, they might have all sorts of questions without great answers: "How many other customers do you have? How long have you been in business?“. Try to answer them by accentuating the positive: "How many other customers do I have? That number isn’t as important as the fact that of those who have tried my product or service, 95 percent would recommend it to their friends“.

Communicate your achievements

Share your portfolio:

✔GitHub (programmers)

✔Behance (designers)

✔Dribbble (designers)

✔InVision

✔Contently

✔SquareSpace: Flatiron

✔Wordpress: (writters)

 

Notes: Useful platforms to better manage your business:

⮚Slack

⮚99designs

⮚Codeacademy

⮚HubSpot

⮚FocusLab

⮚FreeAgent

⮚Clear Slide

⮚mHelpDesk

 

Testimonials: quote, video, audio, case study, social media, customer interviews, peer review, press review, guest blog posts.

In order to grow your business, you need to be a part of your clients, achieving business milestones

Notes: Earn recommendations, positive reviews:

• Testimonials are a fundamental part; every successful customer should be a marketing asset.
• Some examples of tools in which testimonials can be used Quote, video, audio, case study, social media, customer interviews, peer review, press review, guest blog posts…
• The point is, in order to grow your business, you need to be a part of your clients, achieving business milestones.

Notes:

• Contacting relevant companies of the field can lead to cooperation, but not only that. Often, companies have more projects than they could carry, which can lead to them asking you to take their surplus business.
• With collaboration you can learn about their business which may help you as well in terms of business management and creative ideas for new projects.
• Likewise, it can give you credibility on the market to work with a remarkable brand and expand consumer trust

• Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a free service that connect sources with journalists.
• You will get messages informing about what kind of sources journalists are looking for.
• If you see something you can contribute on, you might get yourself featured in a publication, or contact directly journalists and offer yourself as a source, providing ideas for articles they could write with your assistance.

Take care of yourself

"FREELANCERS CHANGE FREEDOM FOR SECURITY”

Notes

• While the number of freelancers is growing, concerns related to health security, job security, and mental health are also increasing.
• It's not uncommon for self-employed individuals to fall into bouts of anxiety and/or depression when their work is at a standstill. As self-employed individuals, it's easy to forget the usefulness of a support network and how much self-employment builds upon isolation.
• The lack of a company structure often prevents freelancers from fully understanding their legal employee rights, leaving them with little or no recourse against underpaying employers. Without a social or contractual safety net, freelancers have no real protection against unfair and illegal treatment.

(By https://cmr.berkeley.edu/blog/2016/4/freelancers/)

• Make sure you’re eating right

• Get enough sleep

• Learn to deal with stress in a healthy way

• Schedule some time for yourself

• Require a contract with your clients

• Spend time with the people you care about most (try to fix your daily working hours)