Hey everyone.
Welcome to my free Freelance Sales course, brought to you by Pipedrive.
In this series, we'll be covering a different stage in
the freelance sales process.
A new video will launch every Wednesday in July, so be sure to
subscribe so you don't miss them.
Pipedrive is the first c r m designed by salespeople.
For salespeople, I'm sure many of us who are looking to sell our
freelance services are familiar with a prospecting spreadsheet,
but Pipedrive is so much better.
Pipedrive allows you to not only keep track of your prospect's contact info, but
also move them through your sales funnel.
Keep track of each touchpoint you make with them.
In today's episode, we'll talk about where to find leads or people
that you actually wanna sell to.
But first, let's talk about how Pipedrive can help you
kick your sales into high gear.
The leads section of Pipedrive allows you to manually add new leads
or import them via a spreadsheet.
The deal section is fully customizable and allows you to add prospects into columns,
representing different stages of your sales funnel, move them along and get
reminders when it's time to follow up.
Okay.
Projects, helps you keep track of deliverables.
You can also integrate this with an existing tool like Asana or Monday, and
campaigns allows you to create stunning emails and nurture your contacts.
For today's episode, let's talk about those contacts.
How do you get them?
Where do you find them and what do you do with them once you have,
when it comes to actually finding leads, I always say that it's.
Easier to start with something than absolutely nothing.
So my best advice is to start with your network.
Start by just telling people in your circle, in your life, on your
existing social platforms that you're open for business, asking around,
seeing if anyone has any referrals for you, if they need any help.
That you can offer them.
Sometimes people are afraid to do this because they feel like the people in
their existing network might not be their ideal client, and that's, that's
totally understandable and I respect that.
Just make sure that you are clear about who your ideal client
is when you're reaching out to friends, family, existing networks.
For example, when I first went freelance, I posted on my LinkedIn dot.
I was starting my own business and that these were the specific
types of companies and individuals that I wanted to work with.
A lot of the people in my network didn't fall under that, but what
they did is they shared the post and extended the reach of it.
Or they reached out to me via message and said, Hey, I am not, you know,
one of these types of companies, but I still would love to work with you.
Are you able to take me on?
And I could either then tell them yes or no.
So start with your network.
It's a lot easier that way.
Now, with that said, you don't want to only rely on friends and family
as your primary lead source because that really is not sustainable.
You cannot repeat that over and over again at.
Certain point you're going to run out of friends and family.
So you need to have a good system for developing leads on your own.
And my best advice for that really is to post content.
Use social media to your favor, use it to your advantage, and start by
going where your ideal clients are.
And this is really the first step to finding leads.
I mentioned it earlier, but I'll mention it again, that you need to know.
Who your ideal client is to start with.
So if I am saying that I wanna do video production for Fortune 500 companies,
then that means I'm gonna make LinkedIn my primary platform, because I'm
gonna look at social media reports.
I'm gonna look at.
Information that the platform puts out about who's on their platform,
and I'm gonna know that LinkedIn is probably gonna be my best bet for
reaching those higher level CEOs or CMOs or executives and things like that.
Meanwhile, if my target audience is small, local businesses, I might actually
focus on Facebook since a lot of them tend to be in Facebook groups or browsing
Facebook pages and things like that.
I could run Facebook ads.
Build up a Facebook page of my own with small local business tips and so on.
So you wanna choose a platform that your ideal client is on.
This is huge.
Do not skip this stuff.
I think a lot of us tend to go with the platforms that are the most fun for us, or
that just come the most naturally to us.
And don't get me wrong, we should be leaning into our innate natural
gifts and all of that stuff.
But at the end of the day, if I'm fishing where fish are not, I'm gonna
have a hard time eating that day.
Now with that said, you don't wanna just post on these
platforms just to post either.
You wanna be doing it strategically and you wanna be doing it in a way that drives
people back to a lead acquisition funnel.
And I know that's like very fancy terms here, very fancy language we're using,
but really what that means, Is you just want to have a system for how you
actually capture people's contact info and you know, get them to know about
what services you have to provide.
So in a lot of cases, that might mean that you're using what we call
a lead magnet or some type of a.
Free gift or free download or free access to something in
exchange for an email address.
That's a great option for a lot of businesses, particularly
our service-based businesses.
Something that I did when I was first getting started
with taking clients on my own.
I would host a monthly Lunch and learn webinar, and in exchange for
getting access to that lunch and learn webinar, you simply had to
give me your email address and I would send you out the the link.
I think webinars are also a really great way of just kind of showing
what you know, showcasing that you're the best person for a job.
It's almost like a working interview, if you will, or a working discovery call.
So it really helps to cultivate that trust.
People are able to ask you questions live on the call, things like that.
If you want a more hands-off approach, this could also be some type of
a download, an ebook, a workbook, a you know, one pager, one sheet
about the service that you offer, or the industry that you're in.
I know I've downloaded tons of, you know, eBooks and things like
that from production agencies.
Uh, for social media managers.
I have gotten free social media audit.
Or checklists for your social media profiles.
These are all great ideas that you can use and you wanna be in your
content and on your platforms of choice, you wanna be pushing back
to that lead magnet regularly.
Of course, you wanna also add other things to the mix.
You wanna, at the end of the day, be posting helpful, useful content
that is going to help you develop your, you know, authority and that.
Space, establish yourself as a leader in the space, but you also
want to be driving back to that lead magnet here and there where you can.
The other piece of lead acquisition is, Prospecting outbound prospecting.
So the social media profiles, posting content, that's one side of it, right?
That's getting people to find you and reach out to you, download your
stuff, say, Hey, I wanna work with you.
But the other piece of it is you actually going after these leads yourself.
My advice for this is to just start with a list of dream clients or clients
that you really wanna work with.
List them out.
If you don't know, if you cannot name, you know, 10, 15 companies that you would
love to work with, you might actually wanna go back and do a little bit more
market research on who your ideal client is because you should be able to, to
list out, you know, a handful of people just off the top of your head if you
really are getting to know them well.
Well enough to.
Be able to sell to them.
So start by doing that, just listing out people that you'd like to work with,
brands that you'd like to work with.
And then my secret tool here is really LinkedIn.
I go to those companies profiles, uh, the company pages, and I just start
searching for the people who would be in charge of hiring a freelancer like me.
So if you are a social media manager, maybe that is a chief marketing
officer or a VP of marketing, maybe even a marketing manager, if you are
doing creative things, maybe that's reaching out to the creative director
or head of creative, things like that.
I just search for those people on LinkedIn and I try to grab their
contact info and put it into pipe drive.
Now something else I like to do in addition to just saving that contact info
so I can make a cold call or a cold email, is actually like to connect with them on
LinkedIn as well, because if you think about it, I am so much more likely to open
an email from a familiar face, a familiar name, than somebody who I have no idea.
Who they are, right?
So you should be establishing that connection with them, either
on LinkedIn or maybe maybe our ideal clients aren't on LinkedIn.
Maybe it's for you, it's Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, whatever the case.
Try to connect with 'em if it's appropriate.
Obviously I think Facebook profiles can be very personal, so maybe not
that one, but any other platform, I think it's totally valid to send a
connection, request a follow request, and just send a message and say, Hey,
following you cuz I love your brand.
This is what I do.
Do not.
Sell.
Right.
Do not sell on that first intro.
Just tell them who you are, what you do, and if your profiles are optimized
and if you're posting the right kinds of content, it should really speak for you.
You should not need to hammer them over the heads with what you do and sending
through a link and all of this stuff.
They should be able to see what you do and hopefully they reach out to you before you
even have to send through that cold pitch.
Once you have leads identified, you'll wanna add them into pipe drive.
Adding your contacts into a CRM allows you to track progress towards your
goal at a quick glance, and also communicate with your team about
where you're at in the sales process.
Since you have a lead you'd like to pursue head to the deals section of Pipedrive.
You can customize this view to match your specific sales process, but I
really like the default, so I'll click the plus sign under the qualified
column there you'll add as much information about your lead as you have.
Think of this as your virtual Rolodex.
Then you can begin scheduling activities like calls, meeting
lunches, or emails, and we'll talk more about that in the next episode.
And leave me a comment.
I would love to do a little pop quiz here.
Give me a name of a company that you would love to work with, or maybe.
You wanna keep it under wraps for now?
That's totally okay.
Just tell me a little bit about them.
Do you wanna work with small local businesses, solopreneurs, fortune
500 companies, healthcare companies?
Gimme a little bit of information about what types of clients you'd like
to work with down in the comments.
So I know that you're with me.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
And thank you again to Pipedrive for sponsoring this series.
Be sure to check them out in the description.
I will leave you a link there.
I'll talk to you in the next one.
Bye.