I used to see sales as some form of manipulation or way of trying to trick a client into buying what I was selling but that never felt right, it just isn’t my style.
I knew I needed to improve my conversion rate from leads, so I started to take sales more seriously. Luckily Nick Gulic put launched a sales course sell by helping which not only resonated with me but which helped me fill in the missing pieces. This led to an easy and authentic way to sell "myself" to prospects by focusing on how I can help them.
Learning to master sales didn’t just help me close more deals, it helped me close BETTER deals, with better prospects and with higher prices.
There is a secret benefit to learning how to sell in an authentic and caring way which is that it improves your communication skills across the board. Improving your communication across all areas of your business pretty quickly starts to make client meetings, calls and emails more enjoyable and ultimately helps projects run smoother.
All that from improving your sales process.
Sales doesn't come naturally for all freelancers, whether you're a designer or a developer. Learning that sales doesn't always have to be hard and pushy, but can be turned around into a process of sharing and helping is a huge eye opener.
For those of you who want to learn more and take your sales to the next level we have a pretty HUGE and exclusive group discount of 25% off. Take advantage of this while you can.
Nick Gulic is a coach for freelancers and agency owners and can be found at: nickgulic.com when he isnt busy running his own agency creativeclick.com.au
Beyond The Brief - Level Up Your LinkedIn
For me, LinkedIn has aways been a bit of a mystery. I remember it being this formal place that was almost just a bunch of resume's and head hunters, then it moved into a phase where it felt like it was just spam and requests from random people in San Fran (whats with that?).
It's becoming clear to me, and many others that LinkedIn has become much more social and filled with engaging content and genuine connection opportunities.
So, to help kick start my LinkedIn transformation, Nicole Osborne from Wunderstars joins me to show me everything I'm doing wrong and were to start.
With so many hints and tips, Nichole points out that the key place to start is with your profile. This is the base for your LinkedIn networking/ Because no matter how hard you try with engaging and creating content, if you're profile is not up to letting you down you will struggle to make the connections you are looking for.
And this is why we completely totally pull apart my LinkedIn profile, this is an easy way to show you what you need to do to your profile.
Download the slides
Nichole has been kind enough to provide the slides that were used in the session for you all to download. Feel free to grab them here.
With her fun Wunderstars coaching programme, Nicole uses her 20+ years of marketing experience to help busy entrepreneurs streamline their marketing efforts and fast track their social media results with stand-out branding and persuasive storytelling across their digital channels.
In this weeks Beyond the Brief catchup, we talked about escaping the Feast and Famine cycle.
It's a long one but here is some great information in there, I've time stamped the video so it's a bit easier to digest.
We talked about what the Feast and Famine cycle really is. Why it's important to set your finances up properly, having a runway, having a business bank account, paying yourself a wage.
You might think "how does that help?". By slowing down the same money and having a gap between when your money "runs out" you can act, and think with less desperation. Making better decisions that help you escape the Feast and Famine cycle.
We looked at the classic trap of not working on your business and how important it can be to map out time for marketing and networking.
We talked about recurring revenue ideas, from care plans to retainers.
There were some great tips around how to stop being a "yes person" and agreeing to things we shouldn't.
And we also answered a few great questions.
Beyond The Brief Catch up #5
No one likes scope creep in Beyond the Brief #5 we take a look at what scope creep is, how it can be avoided and how you can turn it into a win.
Beyond The Brief Catch up #4
Learning how to create processes as a designer can be hard. It's not easy to know where to start and what to focus on, but the process for creating processes doesn't need to be hard. Join us for a quick chat on how to get processes working for you.
Beyond The Brief Catch up #3
Nope, no one likes to deal with Tyre Kickers, so in this episode of Beyond The Brief we look at how you can kick those tyre kickers to the curb once and for all.
Beyond The Brief Catch up #2
This week we had the idea of talking about proposals. While we didn't stick to the topic or really cover the best practice for doing proposals there is a load of value and great little tips.
In this chat, we spend a fair bit of time talking about the crossover of Proposals, Discovery, and even sales. This is likely to be a topic we revisit or where some of us run through exactly how some of us approach, create and present our proposals.
In general, I'm not a fan of proposals and believe by changing how you see proposals and limiting what you include in the proposal document, you can greatly reduce the amount of time you spend while increasing your success rate.
Beyond The Brief Catch up #1
Well, the very first beyond the brief mastermind is done and I must say it was fantastic. We got pretty deep and covered a lot of great content.The topic today was broad "what I wish I'd known earlier" and it lead to some really important and insightful topics which include:
Care Plans: Not only did we cover them from what they are, what they cover, and how we've implemented them. We really took a dive into a whole range of small related tips notably, WordPress training tips to Angelita's killer off-boarding process.
Specialisation: Pros and cons of being the Jack of all trades and master of none vs being a niche subject/service authority. Something really interesting that came up with this topic is how when we have a broad range of skills, this can actually be a very specific and sought-after single service.
Imposter Syndrome This great topic really showed us all how vulnerable we all are, how consistent imposter syndrome is, and most importantly how "normal" this is. For me, imposter syndrome is an indication of someone who cares and is growing so this is something we shouldn't aspire to lose.
Learning and understanding Business. It can be easy to focus on our craft, but the importance and benefits of learning about business as a "creative" can not be under-rated. The more you learn about business the more you can see how what we do impacts a business and the more it will help you out if you ever run your own agency or team.
Money, Money, Money This gets deep into why so many people struggle to talk about money in business. We cover the importance of our OWN value and perception around money and how this can hold us back. As well as looking at the flip side of the value we provide to our customers.
