The 5 Building Blocks Of Client Acquisition | Keys To Consistency

338. Client Acquisition Building Blocks

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Brian: [00:00:00] in this episode, I want to break down all of the building blocks of a full client acquisition system, i. e. a client acquisition machine. and the goal of this is to update this for 2025. I've covered a lot of this stuff before. And a lot of these things I've dived deeper into, I've like zoomed into the very intricate details of each of these building blocks in past episodes. But in this episode, I want to break down the entire thing, start to finish.

Brian: because so many freelancers are missing some of the key pieces from this entire system. And many times you were missing the pieces, not because you don't want to do them, not because you're lazy, not because you are distracted, although that is a big one distraction, but because you just don't know.

Brian: And so this episode is attempting to break down. Some of these things so that you realize, Oh, I don't have that. I should actually start to implement that in my own business, because if you don't have all of the pieces of this machine,

Brian: you're going to experience feast or famine, inconsistency, no idea where your next client's coming from. And you generally have no idea how to fix it. That is the case for most freelancers that I've ever talked to in my entire life.

Brian: and if you think about this, similar to a car engine with missing spark plugs, the engine might be [00:01:00] wonderful, but It is like this beautiful pristine brand new engine and a brand new car, but without spark plugs, it will not even turn on. So in your business, what are those spark plugs that are missing?

Brian: So this episode, I'm gonna break down the five core building blocks to keep your business running because the fuel for your business is clients.

Brian: If you do not have clients, you do not have a business. And if you do not have all of these building blocks for client acquisition. You do not have a business,

Brian: but if you get all of these building blocks, right. you will have consistent new leads coming every month.

Brian: So you'll know where your next client is coming from. They won't give you as much pushback because you have the proper systems in place. You'll be able to close clients without getting pushback on pricing,

Brian: charging what we call Goldilocks rates, more on that later. You'll be able to complete projects efficiently and quickly. So you can keep up your hourly earnings as a freelancer.

Brian: and you'll always know where your next projects are coming from and even have them stacked up ahead of time so you can project what your income is going to look like, which is powerful as a freelancer.

Brian: And I talked about this before in a previous episode, but getting your projections accurate within a 5 percent error of margin can be done or even better, like I did last month, Project your best [00:02:00] month ever and then exceed that by like 27 percent we were 27 percent over projections when you're off It's because you did even better than expected and that's the place I want you all to be

Brian: So if you're new here, this is the six figure creative podcast. We have audio and we have video. If you're on video today on YouTube watching, this is a great episode because I'm going to actually have the outline and the visual up in front of you for most of the episode, if you're still listening and you don't feel like going to video, that's fine, but if you can't get to YouTube to watch this, it's preferable, but this podcast is for you.

Brian: If you are a freelancer. You offer creative services and you want to make more money from those creative services without selling your soul. If that sounds like you, you're in the right spot. In this episode, we're going to break down all the things you need to do to start getting more clients in your business.

Brian: so let's dive into this, or if you're watching on YouTube right now, then you can see the outline I have in front of me. It's got. basically the five core pieces here, which is lead generation, building blocks, lead nurture, building blocks, sales, building blocks, fulfillment, building blocks.

Brian: So actually fulfilling inner service and LTV slash AACV letters mean lifetime value and average annual client value. These are the five core building blocks of a client acquisition system, and they all break down [00:03:00] into sub building blocks. And we're gonna dive into each of these because each of these has multiple elements.

Brian: In order to have the thing checked off. If you don't have them checked off, you essentially don't have anything in place. And we're going to start here at lead generation. ~by the way, Leland and the edit bounce back and forth between the screen share and my face, however you can, if you can show my face on the bottom right of the screen chair while I'm talking, that can be helpful because it shouldn't block anything.~

Brian: ~However if I'm talking for long bits. And not referencing the outline, just have it on my face. I know it'll get tedious, but you don't have to overthink it. ~When it comes to lead generation, there's actually two different types of leads. Most freelancers have this first type. We call them sales leads internally here. A sales lead is someone who is Sent an inquiry. they're actually interested in hiring you. And most freelancers rely on hope marketing to get these. marketing is just where you're waiting around for a referral from somebody hoping that it lands in your inbox eventually, right? This is the feast or famine where you get a bunch of these and then you get none of these.

Brian: You just go up and down, up and down, up and down. It's very stressful. If you're trying to actually generate sales leads yourself, the thing that has, I've seen work time and time again, works best is to actually create what we call an offer video funnel. I break this down in episode three 30 what's working now for client acquisition.

Brian: So if you want to go to that, just go to six figure creative. com slash three three zero. And by the way, I'll have a lot of links for this episode that like dives deeper into specific things. You're like, Hey, if I need to do this, I need to go dive deeper into this episode. So any episode you ever need to [00:04:00] get to us for this podcast, you just go to six figure creative.

Brian: com. Slash. Whatever three numbers are associated with that episode. So for this one, it's three, three, zero. And that episode, again, it breaks down everything to do with the offer video funnel, and to summarize it, it's essentially. A 5 to 10 minute video talking through how you can actually help someone, offering your services to them, so they understand who it's for, what the outcome is, who you've helped in the past,

Brian: and what to do next if they want to hire you. It can show examples of your work, things like that, but putting it all into one concise video in the 5 to 10 minute span is one of the best ways to show people exactly what you can do to help them. In most cases, many freelancers fail to do this very basic thing.

Brian: You make it very difficult for people to find this basic information on What can you do to help me

Brian: and the specific funnel here can be used in a bunch of different ways. We'll talk through how to actually get eyeballs to this, funnel or your website or to your services. later in this episode, in general, it can be used in a bunch of different ways, but the funnel itself, the steps are, they land on a page that has your offer video on it.

Brian: They can watch the video. Bye. If they're interested in learning more, they go to the [00:05:00] next page, they fill out a pre call questionnaire to give you all the information that you need in order to know if you can help them or not. and then you jump on a call with them in order to talk over the project.

Brian: It's very simple, straightforward, but it's the fastest path to leads. But if you know our 3 percent rule, then you know that generally in any given market, only 3 percent of people are ready to buy right now or looking for your services right now. rule of thumb, blanket statement about 3%.

Brian: So this is really good for getting that 3%, but it's not very good for the other 97 percent of people who are not ready right now. What can we do for those? That's where we get into marketing leads. Freelancers usually do not get marketing leads. This is like the thing that no one that I've worked with has ahead of time.

Brian: I'd say maybe 5 percent of people have this ahead of time when we work with them. Marketing leads are people who have raised their hand to say, I might be a good fit for you. I want the thing that you're offering. A lead magnet in general is usually the thing that we're, giving away here. but they haven't expressed interest in actually hiring you yet.

Brian: And this is a very straightforward funnel. It includes a lead magnet. That is the actual thing you're giving away. And then a funnel lead magnet funnel. And that is a way to actually get them to sign up for the lead magnet, to deliver the lead magnet, to [00:06:00] even give them an offer video on the next steps.

Brian: There's a bunch of different ways to set this up, but on episode three 25, we have an episode called the secret to consistent clients. It's part of our lead generation series. There's actually three part 327. I recommend going back and doing that. If you're ready to start generating marketing leads, because it goes into all the things about actually creating a lead magnet, How the funnel works, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian: But this is for the other 97 percent of people who are not ready to go right now. You can give them some sort of free resource or free thing or free report or free guide or something that's actually going to get them to raise their hand and say, I might be a good fit for you. The whole goal of this is to find people who are a good fit for you, even if they're not ready right this second, because in many niches, there's a all the stars have to align in order for them to need your service.

Brian: I've seen this all across the board. And one of the most obvious ones is in my background, which is a music production for mastering engineers as a mastering engineer. The only time you get a client is when the client has, this is the music world, if you don't know the music world, you're learning a little bit of the, how the sausage is made.

Brian: The musician or the artist of the band has to have written the song. It has to have gone through pre [00:07:00] production. a studio, recorded it. It's got to have been edited. Then it has to be mixed. only then, when all of those steps are completed, then it is mastered. And that can be a many, many week or month process before it's even ready for mastering.

Brian: Many times the window for getting a client who is ready for mastering is very short. If you're trying to get people who are not ready for that service right then and there, it's A leadmatic can be a great idea to get those people who are in the quote off season, right? Because that's most people in any given market.

Brian: So that's the first part is actually generating leads of some sort.

Brian: But now we have to talk about methods for eyeballs. Because whether we're generating marketing leads or sales leads, we still have to have eyeballs on our offer of some sort. We're offering a lead magnet or we're offering our services. Eyeballs matter here, right? We can both agree. If you do not have eyeballs on the offer eyeballs on your services or eyeballs on the lead magnet, you don't get leads, right?

Brian: So we have to talk about what are our methods for actually getting eyeballs.

Brian: There are five main methods here. This is going back to what I learned from Alex Ramosi, the different types of traffic, I think there's six in his world, but I don't think the sixth one is that relevant to us, but the first way to get eyeballs is referrals.

Brian: This [00:08:00] is what most freelancers do. And they do it in a horrible way that just. Makes me easier waiting around for clients to find you're not asking for referrals You don't have a system or a process for asking for referrals You don't know when you're going to ask nor do you ever really ask so This is a method to do it.

Brian: But if you do it, you need to turn into an actual process Not just a whole marketing mess, right? Next one is something called earned media. Earned eyeballs is another way of looking at it.

Brian: And that means you have put in the sweat effort of getting people to pay attention to you. It can be long form. Like this podcast is a form of earned media. We have thousands and thousands of listeners and viewers, and this as episodes, 338. I've earned this through many, many, many, many hundreds of hours of work.

Brian: And people listen to the show every single week. And we have new people listening to the show every single week. long form. It can also be YouTube, anything that's not what I consider short form media, like reels, Tik TOK, Instagram shorts. Those are all short form media.

Brian: general Instagram posts. People in the art world or the photography world are generally just making posts of their content.

Brian: There's owned media or owned eyeballs. That just seems like an email list or a community email lists are [00:09:00] pretty relevant, but hard to get for freelancers, Unless you have a really good form of earned media of some sort.

Brian: But email lists are very powerful.

Brian: They consistently, time after time, end up being one of the highest ROI things you can own. So this is why, again, a lead magnet goes really well into this, because a lead magnet helps build the email list up. There's also communities. So there are things like Facebook groups. I've seen tons and tons of people start communities on Facebook around a common thing, and that common thing, if you're smart, is around gathering your clients together.

Brian: And it could be as simple as if you're a web designer, it could be

Brian: and maybe you work in the SAS space. It might be a community either for specifically SAS entrepreneurs, or it might be a community related to web design for SAS, but there's also dedicated communities that are off of Facebook, things like school. com circle. so I think are another kind of tools you can use to form communities.

Brian: but in both of these cases, whether it's an email list or communities, you essentially own that asset. You control it. You are the admin for that thing. You can reach out when you want to reach out, whether it's email list, you can post when you want to post as a community, it can be a [00:10:00] powerful way of getting clients or eyeballs in this case. Next is paid media. This is one of my favorites because it is something that you can go from a trickle to a torrent in a matter of days, right? There's gonna be things like meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, X, YouTube, Google, PPC. my platform of choice is meta because it includes Instagram, Facebook threads, WhatsApp, They have like a massive portfolio of apps at this point as of a couple of years ago, the last time I saw was more than a third of the entire world uses a meta app every day, which is an insane amount of people.

Brian: There's also like niche communities or niche platforms and niche publications that you can actually sponsor in order to get eyeballs back to your site, back to your lead magnets, back to your offer videos, any of those things. And these can be very powerful because while they can be generally much, much smaller, they can be very targeted to your specific demographic.

Brian: The next method for getting eyeballs is affiliates. This is a lot less common in the freelance space, but there are people you can pay for results like 10 percent finder's fee, where you have someone out there that's like sending you leads and any leads that you close, you pay them out a referral fee.

Brian: [00:11:00] I've done the MyPast with mixed results, and I've gotten clients from it, but nothing like super consistent. But then there is another type of affiliate, which is a little bit more popular, you see in like the course world, where people or businesses that control large amounts of your ideal eyeballs, you can get them a big referral fee or some sort of payment in order to send you traffic.

Brian: So this might be the person who already has the big community built out and you have a partnership set up so that they allow you to post or they post on your behalf to send people to your lead magnet or your offer page with the agreement that every client that you close from that they get 10%.

Brian: There's a full overview of this all the different traffic sources if you want more of a deep dive into all of these, by the way, you can get to this, outline that I'm actually showing on the screen here.

Brian: You can actually open this up by going to six figure creative. com slash three, three, eight, which is probably the easiest way to get to all of these things. Instead of going to the individual episodes, that way you can actually study this outline and go to the actual link. That I'm going to because we have a link to the six methods for getting website traffic as a freelancer.

Brian: That's a YouTube video. It's not a link to a podcast, so I don't have a good easy link for you to get to that other than you just searching on [00:12:00] YouTube for that exact title. But if you go to six figure creative.com/ 3 3 8, it will actually have a link to this outline and you can just find the link to this specific resource.

Brian: There's also one more thing to talk about when it comes to getting eyeballs. To what you're actually offering. And that is evergreen promotions versus one time versus blitz. So evergreen promotions are where you have something that you're just promoting all of the time. It might be that you just have ad campaigns running 24, seven, three 65.

Brian: It might be that you just have. Content that you're promoting on your socials or your own or earned media all the time throughout the year that would be evergreen promotions There's also just one time promotions and that is where you just have this thing and you promote it one time and it's basically done But then there's this concept of blitzes that I want to talk about blitzes are where you promote one thing many times over a relatively short amount of time and these can be powerful because of the rule of seven and the rule of seven is this, people need to see or hear about something around seven times before they take an action.

Brian: Again, that can go all over the place between I've heard seven to a hundred, but just say it's the rule of seven, because we know that if someone hears [00:13:00] about something more than one time, they're more likely to take an action. that's why I don't like one time promotions.

Brian: Because you have this thing that you've created. It might be your offer video. It might be your lead magnet or this business you've created. And for you to just promote it one time is doing yourself a disservice for how much work you put into that thing. So if you're going to promote it, either evergreen, you've got this.

Brian: Content schedule you're doing, or you've just got ad campaigns or retargeting campaigns going all the time, or you've got blitzes made this lead magnet. I'm going to promote nothing, but this lead magnet for the next seven days, over 12 posts or three posts and three emails, and I'm going to get an affiliate to promote it or a partnership.

Brian: so if you do use any of these resources for getting eyeballs to one of these lead magnets, then you're Or your offer video funnel, consider using either evergreen and I'll bold that or blitzes, but don't use one time. In most cases, there can be uses where it makes sense.

Brian: So that's the lead generation building block. Lots of things in there. but the bottom line is this, if you're not generating leads, if you're And you're just waiting around for them to come to you.

Brian: This is a massive missing piece in your business. And this is one of the most common ones I see [00:14:00] in any of the clients that we work with.

Brian: the next big building block is lead nurture. Once we actually have a lead of some sort, someone has sent us an inquiry. They've downloaded our lead magnet. How do we nurture those people? Well, there's kind of two different areas to talk about here. The first one is trust.

Brian: How do we build trust with people? The next one is top of mind. How do we actually stay top of mind with them over a long period of time? Both of these are very important. How you do them can be up for debate or up to your preferences, but both need to be there. The first is, again, trust methods. How do we actually build trust? There are different ways to do this. There's social proof and there's messaging. When it comes to social proof, have, again, we have Past episodes on this, but there are things like reviews getting 25 or more five star reviews, or at least no more than a 4.

Brian: 7 star rating. Having reviews on a platform like Trustpilot or Google is a good way of building social proof. Testimonials can be great as well, but they need to be done correctly. There is normal testimonials from known names. So someone's like, Brian hood is great. Or. Mywebdesign. com is an amazing person to work with, highly recommended.

Brian: These are like generic, what I consider normal [00:15:00] testimonials. These only work if they're from known names. So if there's somebody in your space who is a big name, then in that case they can just say whatever they want, right? It's just the association of that big name with your brand. It doesn't necessarily matter much what they say.

Brian: They're just saying nice things about you. It's more of like you have an endorsement from that big name than you are an actual testimonial. if you're getting testimonials from people who are not known and it's not just a nice endorsement from a big name, then we need to get results oriented testimonials.

Brian: That is where they're talking through a result that you got them. so if you can web design, it would be getting increased in conversion rates or a website that somehow brings in more clients or something in that regard for podcasts, it could be tons of downloads or clients brought in. If you're a podcast producer, a podcast editor, music producer, produced a song with, you know, millions of streams.

Brian: Any of these things is talking about results that the client wants, that other clients would want. That's the kind of testimony that we need from, you No names, right? And then the third is if you don't have good results oriented testimonials from these people, ask them for a review instead, because reviews are a place for you to collect lots [00:16:00] and lots of meh type of feedback from people or meh kind of, bland testimonials in one place so that in aggregate, it's impressive.

Brian: The individual names and faces that aren't recognized are not powerful at all. If in doubt. Unless it's a big name or a really good outcome, just ask them for a review instead. So those are two big ways is reviews or testimonials. And the third big way of building trust with people is through case studies.

Brian: a case study is better than a testimonial because you're showing the full transformation that you've taken your client through. or if you're not taking them through a transformation at least the types of Results that you've gotten them and the last social proof is Portfolio, this is more of just less social proof and just more actual proof But there can be social proof elements in there if you have worked with known names The big deal is can you actually?

Brian: Proof to people that you can give the outcome that you're, telling them, right? So your portfolio is that for people as a freelancer. If you're a really good web designer, a really good brand designer, a really good podcast producer, show your work, show all the things that you've done, especially the big name clients that you've worked with.

Brian: But that's a wonderful way of actually building trust with clients is through all those social proof [00:17:00] methods. But now there's messaging. Messaging is another way to build trust with people. It can be your website copy. What you say on your website can build trust. It can also push people away, and in some cases, pushing away is a wonderful thing because you're pushing away the wrong people, which can in many ways attract the best fit people.

Brian: The more specific your website copy the more it's going to be drawing in those clients that you're talking to and pushing away those people that it doesn't resonate with. They

Brian: can also talk a lot about things that they relate to or they resonate with, the past freelancers they've hired that were sketchy and didn't do what they said they do. The lack of communication those other people have had that you have all these processes in place to make sure you actually communicate with clients.

Brian: Your process has been tested thoroughly and constantly improved through feedback and iteration. these are messaging points that can help build trust with your clients because you've shown that you've put in the work. And many freelancers, if you look at their websites, I'm going to dog on designers and photographers of the world.

Brian: Many of you just have these horrible gallery view websites. I go to your website. Photographers are the worst at this. There's no copy. There's no words whatsoever. It [00:18:00] is just a big grid gallery of photos. Videographers are the same, just a big grid gallery of all your videos.

Brian: And while that's good to show your portfolio, there's nothing wrong with showing off your portfolio, your work. It's really bad when you're talking about messaging because there is no messaging. I'm supposed to look at your portfolio and I have to immediately know am I the right client for you? Am I the right fit for you?

Brian: Do you offer what I need or what I want and for my specific project and the kind of projects that I do? Can you meet the requirements that my company might have our specific projects? I don't know this because you don't have any copy on your website. Tell me that stuff So that's how messaging can build trust. It also can be Spoken on your content. So if you're creating long or short form content the messaging you have in that content can be powerful ways to build trust with people and then emails. Again, if you have an email list that you've built up and you're seeing them regular emails, that is another form of content, but that's a way to, again, build trust with people, but building trust is just one piece of the puzzle here when it comes to nurturing leads, because if they forget about you, they may trust you.

Brian: They may be a really good lead, perfect fit lead. They trust you. They know they're like, you're really good what you do. And they're like, ah that Sean guy or that Amanda girl, she's [00:19:00] amazing. can't wait to hire her for our project. But if they forget about you, it doesn't matter if you're not top of mind, when they're ready to hire out for the project, then you will not get the gig.

Brian: So that's where top of mind methods matter when it comes to lead nurture. a big, big part of lead nurture is making sure that you're actually top of mind over the long haul, especially for those 97 percent of people who are not ready to buy right now, how long will it be until you are ready to buy or ready to hire?

Brian: Is it going to be a month, three months, six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months before they're actually ready. You need to be top of mind through all that time. And there's different ways to do this. There's one to many methods like creating content, doing paid media, retargeting retargeting for those who don't know is where you can show ads to people who have either interacted with your social media accounts or people who have visited your website.

Brian: Or people who've even visited specific pages of your website. You can show ads to people who are on your email list. You can upload the email list to things like meta ads, but retargeting is a wonderful way of one to many staying top of mind. And many people listen to this podcast right now. You've seen my ads.

Brian: You've probably engaged with something or you've been to my website. Then you're going to get [00:20:00] retargeting from us for a long time. You'll be retargeted from us for six months or more up to a year. You'll just see stuff from us for a long time, and we're working on a retargeting strategy still. But just know that that is a method that I currently use myself. There's also one to one methods. in the freelance world, everything you do does not have to be a one to many method. It can be one to one and that's wonderful. So if you're doing things like meetups with people, phone calls with people, texts, DMs, anything that actually Builds those relationships on a one to one scale. That is perfectly fine, but is, again, different ways to stay top of mind. And the higher your client value, the more you need to rely on one to one methods. Because if your average client is worth 100, you cannot do one to one.

Brian: you cannot afford it. Matter of fact, if you have 100 client value, consider changing everything you do about your entire business. But if you have 100, 000 client value, are you going to try to do all those one to many methods for your 100, 000 client? No, absolutely not. Make it as personal as possible.

Brian: You can be very manual in your lead nurture when it's a 100, 000 deal, [00:21:00] right? And then obviously there's somewhere in between. Most of the people that we see and work with are between that five and 10, 000 client value, and that's a wonderful place to be. And so in that price point. You can do a blend of one to many and one to one.

Brian: There's also automated methods. Things like email nurture sequences. That's like a short term thing where when someone signs up for your offer video or your lead magnet, they go through a series of emails anywhere from 15 emails that walks them through different specific steps to nurture them to go from, Hey, I just met you.

Brian: Or, Hey, I'm interested in to Hey, now I am actually ready to go. That can be a wonderful way to automate some of the lead nurture steps to stay top of mind over a moderate amount of time. This isn't going on forever. But it is a moderate amount of time. Now, that being said, I do know people they've written tons and tons of emails throughout their time, emailing their list.

Brian: So they have like hundreds of emails and they will drip those like one a week for two years. Right. And that can be pretty decent way to nurture a list long term. and again, there is also retargeting. This is another, what I consider like automated way where you don't have to do anything retargeting.

Brian: You can just set it up one time and it's [00:22:00] done. Whereas content, you have to continuously put out work over and over and over again. It's one to many, but it's very manual. Retargeting is once set up one time, it's just automated from that point on.

Brian: So we've talked about the first two big building blocks. We've talked about lead generation and how you need to actually start generating leads, whether it's a sales lead you're trying to generate or a marketing lead, you need to get eyeballs on those offers that you have, and you need to promote it via evergreen promotions or blitzes.

Brian: But then once you have a lead, we need to nurture that lead over a long period of time. We need to make sure that lead trusts us, both of those things have to exist. If they don't trust you, they will not hire you. If you're not top of mind, when they're ready to buy, they will not hire you. But now we get into the third building block and that is sales.

Brian: sales are broken down into kind of three big buckets here. We've got a sales process. What is the actual sales process? You go through the follow up process and then the actual assets you need in order to sell people properly. Those are the three kind of big building blocks or the sub building blocks within sales.

Brian: The first one is sales process. Let's talk over this. your lead flow is a big part of your sales process. What is the flow that a lead goes through to go from. [00:23:00] Inquiry to close to cash collected. The one I recommend is have someone fill out a pre call questionnaire or an inquiry form, something where you can get a decent amount of information, not too much information, but just enough info in order to know are they a good fit for you?

Brian: And are you a good fit for them? Can you help them? And do they need your help? just, any questions that just get to that bottom line is all you need. You don't need to know everything about them. If it doesn't answer, One of those two things, can you help them? And do they need your help?

Brian: Then it doesn't need to be on that questionnaire. The next thing it needs to go to is once they fill that form out, just have them book a call immediately. That's what I recommend ~because if they're not a good fit, you can cancel the call. However, if they are a good fit, it is much easier to get them to book a call immediately after filling that questionnaire out than it is to.~

Brian: ~Get them to book a call once you reach out to them and say, Hey, I reviewed your questionnaire. We'd be a really good fit. Let's book a call and chat over your project. ~You're going to get a much higher percentage of people to book immediately after filling out the questionnaire than you will following up with a manual email.

Brian: So once they fill the questionnaire and they book the call, then you go through an approval or rejection process. And that's where you've reviewed the pre call questionnaire, their inquiry form. And if they're a bad fit, you just say, Hey, I'm so sorry. I don't think this is going to be a good fit for you.

Brian: I went ahead and canceled your call just to respect both of our times, but I appreciate you reaching out and if you can say, here's three other people that might be a better fit for you, or if it's a good fit, you say, Hey, I reviewed your questionnaire. I saw that you booked a [00:24:00] call for next week at 3 p.

Brian: m. on Monday. I can't wait to chat about it. And then you actually have the call and you close them. That is the lead flow that I recommend most freelancers follow. It can obviously differ depending on your niche and how you do things, but that's the lead flow I, recommend.

Brian: There's also the call script or the outline. That's another big part of the sales process. How do you actually run your calls? How do you start the call? How do you do the discovery process? How do you close the people? Do you collect money on the actual call? I've got episode 286 here It's the super simple four part process for sales calls. And that's part of our sales series. Again, a episode series that'd be helpful for you. So we've got our lead flow and that is like, how are we actually pushing people down our sales pipeline?

Brian: We've got our call script, how we're actually running our sales calls. We've got our pre call nurtures sequence. Like What do we actually do to make sure people show up on the calls prepared? any kind of pre call homework needs to be done on either side.

Brian: But also, so they don't forget about the call. It is really easy for people, especially the colder they are, for people to forget they had a call. Or just for something to come up and they just say, ah, I don't want to do it. Right? A good pre call nurture sequence improves show rates. So if you're struggling with show rates, that's a thing to focus on.

Brian: There's also, again, [00:25:00] part of a good sales process can be scarcity. If you have any genuine scarcity. As a freelancer, you should have genuine scarcity because you are only one human. You cannot work on a thousand projects this month, there is a limit to how many projects you can take on.

Brian: And the more in demand you are, the more genuine scarcity is there. So when you say my next available date for projects starts three months from now, would you like to pay deposit to lock in that date? That is a good scarcity to play because it is real scarcity. It is a good reason to ask for a deposit.

Brian: And it makes people want to take the action sooner rather than later. Versus if you're like, I am desperate for clients. I will take you on whenever you want. Let me know when you want to do things. People will take a lot more time to pay you for anything.

Brian: And they're a lot less likely to pay deposit if there's no scarcity behind it. So scarcity is another big part of the sales process. And then money, just money. How do you actually handle the money portion? Do you pay in full upfront? Do you do a deposit? Is the deposit refundable or non refundable? Do you blend?

Brian: Do you If so, like, how much do you collect up front versus afterwards? Do they pay you at the end of the project or do they pay you at the beginning of the [00:26:00] project? I recommend, if you can, this is going to differ for so many people, but I recommend, if you can, take a, around a 30 to 40 percent non refundable deposit in order to put the dates on your calendar in the future.

Brian: That is if you're in high demand, this is what I've done in the past and then the remaining balance be due on the first scheduled day of whatever you're working on or after the first approval. So if you have some sort of asset you deliver for approval early on, go ahead and get the payment on that part.

Brian: So just to give you a context for this in my world, in music production or mixing and in my case, or even music production where bands come to the studio, I'd be booked up three, six months in advance. And so when I'm talking to clients, it was a really good reason for getting the deposit very quickly from people in order to book them on my calendar.

Brian: The deposit was non refundable. So bands couldn't just sketch out on me because I'm working with relatively unsophisticated entrepreneurs. These are like band dudes. They're not the people who are going to be the most dependable, right? So that's why I put it non refundable. And then the remaining balance was due on the first scheduled day of recording, because I don't want to play debt collector.

Brian: I'm not a debt collector. I'm a freelancer, right? So on the first scheduled day of the studio, they come prepared with the money [00:27:00] and my reasoning for that was, Hey, go ahead and bring the rest of the money in so we can pay up for the whole project. If we finish early, I'll refund any unused stuff.

Brian: because I charged per day at that time, not for the flat project. If you charge for the flat project, then you don't have to worry about that, but go ahead and pay up in advance so that we don't have to worry about money. We can just focus solely on the project and stay creative, right?

Brian: That was my reasoning for that. So that's what I recommend doing. If you can, there can be cases where that doesn't work. There can be cases where you just make small changes, but that's what I recommend for more on this. If you go to episode 285, I've got an episode called the entire freelance sales process from beginning to end.

Brian: I've got a lot of this show, we're 338 episodes in, so there's a lot to just refer off to. But if you feel like your sales process sucks, go back and check out that episode. Next is our follow up process.

Brian: most of the time, you're not going to close them immediately on the call. If you are closing them on the first call. Or are closing the majority of the people you talk to. It's because you are not generating new leads. If you're closing like 90 percent of people or more than 70 percent of the people you talk to, your rates are either too low or you're not generating enough leads.

Brian: You should be closing between 30 percent and 50 percent generally, is what I consider a good close [00:28:00] rate, if you're generating a lot of leads or your prices are at their acceptable rate. So, If you're closing a lot of people, then raise your rates or start generating more leads so you keep your counterbook solid.

Brian: But now we've got the follow up process. If you don't close them on the call or get a deposit on the call, following up is a huge part of actually getting paid. there's a short term follow up and that's where I've made the offer. You have talked to money. they have said they need to, get their funds together, or they need to talk to their co founder, or they need to talk to their bandmates or whatever the case is here.

Brian: so short term follow up matters a lot here to make sure that they are getting all the things they need to get done

Brian: so that you can close them. The next 30 days, long term follow up is where someone is delayed for like a long period of time. Like they're just not ready. They're not in the right season of life for whatever reason. And long term follow up can take. Months or years even I

Brian: think the longest I ever followed up with someone was 18 months and I closed them after that But it was because I had a long term follow up process in place So if you're gonna do good follow up process here

Brian: use reminders or tasks This can be as simple as putting reminders of Siri in your phone to follow up with so [00:29:00] and so in three months or can be as Complex. I'm using complex and air quotes here.

Brian: Cause it's not complex, but it can be as complex as using a CRM that has tasks built into it. But for more on this, go to episode 287 for this podcast. The followup process that helped me double my freelance business. This is another episode in that sales series, in that episode, I break down all the steps in my short and I think longterm followup process.

Brian: Now let's talk through assets for sales. What are the assets you need to get in place in order to properly sell people? I already talked about this first one here, the pre call questionnaire. The pre call questionnaire can be a wonderful asset in order to properly sell someone. Because in any good sale, there has to be a gap.

Brian: And the gap is, where are they now? Where do they want to be? What is gap between those two things? And your service or solution should fill that gap. If you're a freelancer you fill some sort of gap. It might be as simple and butt in seat as I am a video editor and I will edit videos. And the gap is you have a video that needs edited.

Brian: And the end result you want is an edited video. Therefore, if I'm selling to the gap, it will be I will edit your video. [00:30:00] Very basic. commoditized, very button seat, but that's an example, but in a full transformational offer that I, try to get as many people to, offering as I can, where you're taking people through a full journey, a full transformation, that gap can be huge.

Brian: And your pre call questionnaire can help you uncover. What are those things in the gap that you can really ask about and push on in order to increase. The urgency to close people. a really well thought out questionnaire can be a huge asset when it comes to closing more people, but there's the CRM as well.

Brian: A good CRM makes the sales process so much easier. It makes the follow up process easy because there's tasks built out. It gives you good insight into where every deal is at every stage. it makes it easier for you to collect funds, easier to save templates for follow ups and emails so you're not typing out the same thing over and over again.

Brian: It can be a really good asset. I'm pretty sure in the sales series, Again, go back to episodes 87 for that full cell series. Somewhere in that series, I talked through CRM and pipeline setup and which one we recommend. But a CRM is a huge part of this.

Brian: And then templates, templates can be a really good asset to have when it comes to every single [00:31:00] part of the sales process, when it comes to follow ups, when it comes to pre call nurture, when it comes to answering common questions or common objections, or anything, having those templates created, saved, and in a place that's easy, accessible.

Brian: Which, again, good CRM will help you with, great asset to have when it comes to closing more deals.

Brian: So that's the sales building block. Questions to ask yourself here are, do you have a good sales process in place? Do you have a good follow up process in place? and do you have all the assets needed in order to close people properly? We've got two more to go here.

Brian: We've got fulfillment, which I don't talk about a ton on this show. But it's still worth talking about because fulfillment can vary wildly from person to person. And I tend to talk more client acquisition here. And then we've got lifetime value or average annual client value to talk through. So let's talk through fulfillment.

Brian: When someone's paid you, they've given you money to offer a service, you now need to actually deliver on that service. If you don't, and you don't do it well, you will not get clients. You will have a negative word of mouth snowball going against you, and it'll be harder and harder and harder for you to get more and more clients.

Brian: Because for every client you work with. You now have a detractor out [00:32:00] there telling people not to work with you instead of an advocate out there telling other people to work with you.

Brian: So fulfillment is a massive part of this. We actually hired a freelancer to do a project for us recently, and it was a horrible experience. And we will not work with that person again. And we will not recommend that person again. As a matter of fact, if anyone wants to hire that person, we will detract them from working with that person because they were terrible at communication.

Brian: They were slow. They delivered a bad product. So in this case, have tons of other projects that they can work on. Lots of other money they can earn. But they won't get it because their fulfillment was bad. So think through your fulfillment. there's different stages, different things to think through here.

Brian: This is not a full exhaustive list of all the building blocks of fulfillment, but these are some good ones to think through. The first is an onboarding process. Can you actually bring your clients on board for your services efficiently? And there's different steps in this. we actually have a full guide on this and an episode on this. Of course we do, but it's the ultimate, Onboarding experience or ultimate process for freelancers, but there is the client agreement.

Brian: The actual thing that people are signing to work together. So they're both parties understand what's at stake here. What's done. If things aren't delivered when things are to be delivered, et cetera, et cetera, there's the project questionnaire. This is [00:33:00] different from the pre call questionnaire for sales.

Brian: And this one, you're trying to get all the information you need from the client in order to fulfill the project. There's the questionnaire review time. So you actually diligently review in the questionnaire, taking notes, getting things ready for the actual, what we call the kick ass kickoff call. That is where the call talks through the entire project, makes the client feel comfortable.

Brian: Make sure that everything is aligned. Everything's ready to go. And then the last kind of stage of this onboarding process is what we call follow up for dear life. If there's anything you need from the client before you can actually start the project, you follow up for dear life until you have every single element ready for kickoff.

Brian: That is a good onboarding process. If you have all those elements built out, if you want more of this, again, we have episode 292. title of the rock solid eight part client agreement for starting off every project, right? If you don't have a client agreement, listen to that episode and then episode 293, which is the first step after that is the five step blueprint for perfect client onboarding.

Brian: That is holistic overview of all those steps I just gave you so that you have a lot more details about each and individual step. So again, if onboarding a weak point for you, start there. But also after you're done with the onboarding, now you have to deliver the project, [00:34:00] actually do the project.

Brian: And the goal here is to do it efficiently and efficiency is both time and quality delivering the same quality or even better quality in a lot of cases using the same amount of time or less. So either better quality, the same amount of time or the same quality with much less time spent. So in order to do things more efficiently, we have something we call the easy eights.

Brian: That's a T E S easy eights. And that is. Every single thing you do in your business needs to be looked through in this, specific lens. Can you eliminate this process from your business in this case, your fulfillment process, could you eliminate this and still get the same quality?

Brian: If you can't eliminate it can you automate it? If you can't automate it, can you delegate it to some other human being for a relatively cheap amount of money? And if you can't delegate it, can you mitigate Meaning, you make it suck less. You mitigate the part that sucks on this. Or the things that take up your time here.

Brian: That's the EZ 8s in a nutshell. And everything you do, from each step in your onboarding process each step in your delivery process, every little thing you do If you work in a digital audio workstation or some sort of creative tool like [00:35:00] Figma or Premiere or whatever, your process needs to be efficient.

Brian: So everything you do, you just think through that lens, can I just eliminate this altogether? If you cannot eliminate it, can I find a way to make it Be done automatically. There's tons of automation tools out there. There's things like Zapier. There's things like. A stream deck, there's other like even crazier automation tools than that to make things that are 10 button presses, just be one button press and those of things can add up, especially things that you do over and over and over and over and over again all day, every day long, like it can be a wonderful thing to find ways to automate those sorts of steps, but if you can't automate it, can you find some sort of help, especially in there is geographic arbitrage, I think this is the phrase where The dollar just goes further.

Brian: So South America can be a great place if you're in central time zone. If you're in Europe or Australia, then look to the Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe, but there can be some really good deals where you're paying what feels like a very low rate. But to that person is a really good amount of money.

Brian: That's great delegations. long as they can fulfill to the quality that you expect. there are many people out there [00:36:00] who work for what we consider cheap, who were better than us in many ways. and then again, the last piece is just mitigating. If you, have to do something, if you're the only one that can do something, it can't be automated, delegated or eliminated, just find a way to make it suck less.

Brian: We've got a whole episode on this, by the way, episode 216, how to spend less time doing the stuff you hate. The easy eights framework. That's the second part of, delivery or fulfillment as a freelancer. The third part is what we call a feedback flywheel. So we've talked about again, keeping the project efficient.

Brian: We've talked about onboarding clients efficiently in a way that makes a client feel seen and heard and understood, the feedback flywheel is the key to making everything work better, keeping clients happier, making your processes smoother, making sure clients are getting what they want, what they deserve. So we have a whole episode on this episode 299, why you should ask your clients for feedback after every single project that was part of our infinite client series.

Brian: And the whole concept of that infinite client series is if every client you worked with Gave you two more clients. You would never run out of clients again, but in order for that to happen, you have to make every client so damn happy. Then they can't help, but refer you to more people, [00:37:00] right? In order to do that.

Brian: Feedback's a huge part of this. If you ask every client for feedback and you have a really good feedback collection process, for every single project you do. You're getting feedback from your clients. You're implementing changes based on that feedback. You're implementing that on the next client you work with, and then you're getting more feedback from that project that you've already improved the processes on.

Brian: If you keep going around that loop again and again, and again, things get better for you. For the clients that we work with, we have multiple, multiple touch points for feedback through their entire journey so that we can get feedback from them.

Brian: On every single thing that they work on so that we can start improving things over and over and over and over again. We're constantly updating the things inside of our coaching program to make sure that clients are happier, getting better results, less confused. we practice what we preach here.

Brian: We have a feedback flywheel in our own businesses here.

Brian: That's the fourth building block is fulfillment. The last one here is lifetime value or A C V. You've heard about me talk about this recently. on episode 335, my seven favorite ways to make every client worth more.

Brian: Increasing lifetime value of a client is a huge way of making sure your business fundamentally sound. Because again, if every client's worth a hundred dollars, [00:38:00] you do not have a very good business unless you're selling cheap courses. And even in the course world, that's too cheap.

Brian: But if the client's worth 100 every single month, that gets a little more interesting. Preferably more than that, but a little more interesting. So here are the seven ways just to kind of recap episode 335. But if you want to go to that episode, that's a great place to go. If you want to increase how much each client is worth to you, but get them to buy more of the thing you sold them in the first time.

Brian: sell them more of the same service. The next one would be build a better package that fully solves the problem versus just a button seat. Earlier talked about the video editor or actually a good one to talk about would be like a podcast editor. Someone who just edits podcast episodes that is kind of a button seat service But then there's the full service podcast production person who handles everything from getting the podcast up and off the ground The sonic branding was just the music.

Brian: There's the podcast show art. There's the gear choices There's the setup for gear. There's the sourcing guests if that's a part of the show It is the name of the podcast the length of the show the format of the show producing the show live on every episode, sure the episodes are edited, making sure they're posted on all the places they're supposed to be posted,

Brian: making sure they're promoted each [00:39:00] episode, pulling clips from each episode for socials. That is a much bigger deal that's fully solved the problem. And the problem is the person wants a show out there to promote their business. They want a podcast to promote their business if it's a B2B podcast.

Brian: And a podcast editor only solves a small portion of that. So if you can solve the full problem, you can make more money. The third way to make clients worth more is to find better clients. So if you're working with sports podcasts and it's. Two guys talking sports in their basement.

Brian: It's probably not gonna make a ton of money. If you're working with consultants where the average client for consultants, 10, 000 or more, all of a sudden there's a lot more value to be made there. So the same podcast skills can be applied to two different types of client avatars, but they're worth way more for avatar B because in that world, there's just more money to be made.

Brian: So in general, the closer your services to the money. The more money you will make, or another way of putting this is Alex Mosey says, solve rich people problems. They pay better. So that's another way of looking at this is finding better clients. The fourth is finding additional services to sell. So if there's other services you can sell to the same client that can increase how much a client is worth.

Brian: So if you're a web designer, there might also be web [00:40:00] development. There might also be. Hosting and maintenance, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. That's all covered in episode three 35. The fifth is a shift to recurring. instead of just a one time project fee, you find a way to add a recurring element in there so you get that ongoing income that you can start to stack up.

Brian: What we call monthly recurring revenue MRR. Number six is just follow a sales process that actually works. Many people, you are stuck in bottom feeder prices because you suck at sales. And because you suck at sales, You're getting pushed back on pricing people saying they can't afford you because they don't understand the value of what all you provide.

Brian: So that is a easy way to make clients worth more. Or number seven is just raise your damn rates, which I talk about in episode 335. If your clients are not worth much because you're stuck at low rates. Easiest way to fix that is just raise your rates. And finally, when it comes to lifetime value, I want to talk about Goldilocks pricing.

Brian: think I've talked about this before, but it's just worth talking about here and give you some specifics on this. Goldilocks pricing means you have no whales or minnows. A whale is where have one client paying like the bulk of your income. I've seen this many, many times. I think I had an episode on this where we were talking about it.

Brian: Dropbox contractor. [00:41:00] Yeah, it was contracting is for suckers. It was that episode. don't remember what number it was, Just look through our backlog. If you want to hear this, It was the freelancer who contracted for Dropbox making like 20 grand a month.

Brian: And that was like their only work they did, which is, again, it's a lot of money. I'm not going to dog that. That's wonderful. But the problem is you have all the risks of being a freelancer where you have to pay for your own insurance. You have to pay your own taxes, all the downsides.

Brian: the risks. of a single source of income, but you don't get any of the stability of a day job. not guaranteed a job. there's no hoops you need to jump through in order to fire you without HR giving them a fit. You know, There is no insurance paid.

Brian: it's like the worst of both worlds in that case. So a whale client is rarely a good thing, because if you lose that client is a substantial amount of your income. Whereas a minnow, Is the opposite problem. If you had, a thousand clients worth a hundred bucks each, that's a hundred thousand dollar business.

Brian: Sure. But every client is going to eat up little bits of your time, effort, energy, right? A hundred bucks a month is okay. If you're a software company offering a software as a service, If you're offering your time as a service, you've got to be able to charge more than a hundred bucks a month.

Brian: So our benchmark we give our clients and we [00:42:00] recommend to anyone listening to the show is. To be able to do 10 to 35 projects or clients a if you're earning about 100k. Another way of looking at that would be like no client is worth more than 10 percent of your income and no less than 3 percent of your income.

Brian: if you're making 50 grand a year, that means no client should be paying you more than 5, 000 or no client should be paying you less than 1, Now obviously, If you're like well, I don't want to charge less than 5, 000 and that's what I'm getting. The big question is, are you actually booked solid?

Brian: Because if you're not booked solid, then you can get more of those 5, 000 clients. Those benchmarks are for people who are booked solid. You do not want to be booked solid, not be able to take on any more clients if a client's worth more than 10 percent of your income or less than 3 percent of your income.

Brian: That's the benchmark. So that is the big pieces here of, All the building blocks of client acquisition. Do you have a way to generate leads? Do you have a way to build trust and stay top of mind with those leads? Do you have a way to close those people efficiently? A high percentage when you're selling to strangers or at least people who know of you, but may not know you well yet and be able to sell at a premium price.

Brian: And can you fulfill on that? Give them what you sold [00:43:00] efficiently and continuously improving your fulfillment and make sure that every single client is worth the between three and 10 percent of your annual income. If you get all of these things checked off, you're doing great.

Brian: But I want to talk about how to prevent overwhelm here, because it can be easy for people to say, I have some of these things done, but there's like seven things that Brian talked about in this episode that are. Things that I know I need to fix in my business and it feels overwhelming here and I would rather just keep playing on my creative apps and Never pay attention to this stuff and continue to go through the feast or famine ups and downs of life That hope marketing will get you you don't need to do every single one of the things I talked about You don't have to do all six or five sources of getting eyeballs on your offers.

Brian: You don't have to do Every one of those methods for follow up, you just need to do the parts that make the biggest difference in your business, given your skill set and your limitations and what you already have or don't have. So I want to offer our help with this. If you need help with this We first create a plan with you to add what's missing, fix what's broken, and then we pitch this plan to you and. In this pitch, you get to review all of our hard work that we've done for you [00:44:00] and say, do I agree with this or do I disagree with this? Do I like this plan or do I hate this plan? If you hate the plan that we've created for you, you do not pay us anything. just part ways. If you love the plan, we will coach you one on one through implementing this plan.

Brian: Now depending on when you watch this, we may or may not have spots available

Brian: because this is a one to one program. We do not have infinite spots. There is genuine scarcity here. As I alluded to earlier, like scarcity matters when it comes to sales. We have a genuine scarcity. we've averaged over the last six months, almost 400 applications a month for this program. So we only work with those that we know we can help. you want to see how our own client acquisition process is apply for this program, this is a really good thing to see you fill out an application.

Brian: We see if we can help you, and if you need our help, and then we will talk to you about it on the phone. And then if we feel like it's a good fit, and you're interested, then we will create that full plan for you. After you fill our onboarding form, we will pitch it to you, and then you decide, whether or not you want to work together with us on that plan.

Brian: So that to me is the least overwhelming way to address these issues, versus trying to go back to the 30 episodes I probably linked in this episode, listen to every single one of them, put your own plan [00:45:00] together, with all of those knowledge gaps not seeing. The hundreds of people that we've worked with and not having done this for years and years and years like I have, it is much easier to just pay someone to fill in the gaps for you versus doing it all yourself.

Brian: I am saying this from the perspective of someone who spent over 100, 000 on over the last two, two and a half years to help me fill the gaps in my own businesses. If you want to apply for this, just go to six figure creative.

Brian: com slash coaching, you can fill out the short application there. There's actually, I think even short video you can watch on that page, our own offer video that tells you who we help, how we can help what we've done for other people. Again, we practice what we preach here. six figure creative. com slash coaching. If you want to apply So that's all I got for you this, episode. Again, if you want. The outline from this episode, just go to six figure creative.

Brian: com slash three, three, eight to get it.

Brian: There's no opt in required. It is literally just my notion document, a link to that public file there. So that is it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll see you next week on the six figure creative podcast.