Small Victories Deliver Big Contracts

This is a follow up to previous post about the 3 things you need to know to sell more.

One my first mentors, Don Vogt, taught me that it’s 10 times harder to replace an existing client, than it is to keep them. I’ve made it a mantra. I don’t like loosing clients.

One of the biggest mistakes I see clients and other freelancers make, is that they focus entirely on new client acquisition, and not on increasing their average revenue per customer.

Whenever I start working with a new client, I start writing down all the services that I can sell to them (long and short term). Most clients that we work with, immediately need these 3 things:

1. A brand new website.
2. SEO work.
3. An evaluation of their business and client database to see if they’re leaving money on the table.

Then there’s all the other services we can sell them:

1. Video marketing.
2. Email marketing.
3. Custom web applications.
4. Social Media.
5. Content development and marketing.
6. Print work.
7. Brand identity.

If you’re not making enough money, or you want to make more, here’s a question I want to ask you.

If I were to buy every product and service you offer, what would I get and how much would I pay for it?

I learned that little doozie from Mari Smith at a conference, and it completely changed the way I looked at my business. To be honest, it put the brakes on a revolving door business.

Here’s how I sell more services to the same client

First, I figure out what they are going to need, both short term and long term, to get their business to where they want it to be. Usually, it requires much more work than what they originally hired me for.

Second, I find a way to score a small, simple victory and report the good news to the client immediately.

For example, if I’m doing some marketing for them, but they’re apprehensive about rebuilding their site, here’s how I would approach it.

1. Install google and clicky analytics on their existing site. This way I can show them that we are growing traffic to their site.
2. Start doing some basic SEO, if they are a local business start there (it gets you results faster). Usually this is not too hard, it’s just a bit of keyword research, tightening up some of the internal tags and doing some basic link building (internal and external). Rarely, do I ever have to do major cleanup.
3. Once you start seeing a pattern of growth on the analytics, report your findings to the client. An email or phone call works well, but this is also your perfect opportunity to schedule a time to come in and see them, or present your results more formally and advise them of what you should do next.

Third, start recommending other related services. This is one of the best times to do this, because you’ve just come off a win and you have momentum.

I used SEO in that example above, but you could substitute that with Social Media, Content Marketing, or anything else. The point is to get them results, so you can score a win and build credibility.

Hopefully this helps. The roadmap and decision tree after this point, depends entirely on the client’s business and what services you can provide.

This tactic works. 3 of my biggest clients started out as simple little projects that grew because I was able to deliver results and build credibility. With quite a few of my other clients, I’ve had plenty of second, third, and fourth bites of the apple, not to mention some great referrals.