What’s Working Now For Client Acquisition (A Guide For Freelancers)

330. What's working now in client acquisition

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[00:00:00] Brian: Hello and welcome to the six figure creative podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood If this is your first time ever listening to show welcome, so glad to have you here Thank you for giving this podcast a chance There's a ton of shows out there and you decide to listen to this one, which is great This podcast is for you if you are a creative freelancer You offer your freelance services for money.

[00:00:16] Brian: You want to make more money from your creative skills and you want to do so without selling your soul where you can actually sleep well at night. If that sounds like you, you are at the right place. It is October 1st. As of the time this episode airs, we should be into the full swing of fall where it feels like fall.

[00:00:29] Brian: Maybe the temperature's not quite there yet. if I'm to guess, because you know, it's like end of September right now for me. it's looking like it's still gonna be kind of hot, but you know, pumpkin spice lattes. I got my coffee here. This is not a pumpkin spice latte.

[00:00:39] Brian: It's actually just a black decaf coffee, for those who don't know, I stopped drinking caffeine for medical reasons, And I still roast my own coffees, but they're decaf now, which is a lot harder to roast. not a huge pumpkin spice guy, but I respect those if that's your cup of tea, pumpkin spice tea, would that be good?

[00:00:54] Brian: I don't know. I'm gonna stop yapping today's episode. We're going to talk through what is working today for client acquisition for [00:01:00] freelancers. So again, as of October 2024, this will still be relevant 2025. I promise you couple months does not change what's working and what's not working, but this is what's working that we're seeing, working with, tons of freelancers.

[00:01:11] Brian: well over a hundred people right now that we work with. closely. So we get to see inside of lots and lots of different businesses. What's working, what's not working. Troubleshooting the problems. one of my favorite things on earth to do is problem solving.

[00:01:21] Brian: It is like probably my biggest superpower, no matter what problem comes up, I guarantee I will find a solution to it or a workaround, which is just another way of saying solution. So I get to do this amongst all of our clients and it's a lot of fun.

[00:01:31] Brian: So with that, we've found out what works best right now. so what I'm not going to cover in today's episode, I'm not going to cover word of mouth. I'm not going to cover content marketing or any kind of other like social media marketing or long form content marketing, whether you're posting reels or you're doing YouTube or blogs or whatever.

[00:01:46] Brian: We're not going to talk about content marketing. We're not going to talk about cold outreach. We're not going to talk about marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork or one of those places where you just list yourself for sell. We're not going to talk over networking in person online. We're not going to talk through even email marketing, which I still [00:02:00] love.

[00:02:00] Brian: All those can work. And this is a really important point here. I am not here to dictate how you run your business or your life. I'm just telling you what I'm seeing working right now in today's age. Anything that I just mentioned can work. You can make all of those work for you. And it depends on whether you come the approach of well, none of these work for me because of X, Y, and Z.

[00:02:17] Brian: And you're just an excuse maker. Or it's like none of these works because of X, Y, and Z. Therefore I will figure out how to solve that problem, which again, is the problem solver approach, which if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to have that approach. all of those can work. However, I'm not going to talk about any of those today

[00:02:30] Brian: because here's Brian's Unfiltered opinion of each of those word of mouth. It's not reliable. it's a wonderful bonus to have. It is a good sign that you're doing good work and that people want to refer you to others, but it is not the thing that's going to keep your business running.

[00:02:42] Brian: Especially if you don't want to have these ups and downs to face your family months, let's put that aside content marketing awesome, but it's a treadmill take it from somebody who is doing a podcast right now This is long form content. I do this just about every week if I don't it's because I'm you know Taking a retirement trip with my mom who she finally retired.

[00:02:57] Brian: We got to spend entire summer traveling with her Amazing [00:03:00] experience. I would not trade that for anything else. So yes, I will take a month off of the podcast to do that. But aside from that, over 300 episodes, this has been a weekly show for years now, since 2017, 2018, when I launched the show, this is a treadmill, so if you do not want to be on the treadmill, For a long time, content marketing, it might not be for you.

[00:03:18] Brian: Cold outreach is similar. It's like treadmill. If you stop doing it, it stops working. It's actually worse than content marketing because content marketing, if you stop doing it, it still works because you can do replays. You still get like SEO. You still get people going through yourautomated emails, getting linked to your content.

[00:03:31] Brian: If you do that but cold outreach, if you stop doing cold outreach, you get off that treadmill immediately, your clients stop coming in. and it's also kind of like a lower status thing. It's almost like, you know, the creepy guy who slides into the girls DMs and, no one asked for that, right?

[00:03:44] Brian: So don't love that approach can work and especially in certain verticals That is the more effective method, but it is a generally lower status Marketplaces are not super great because you have what I call the Fiverr tax So if you're on Fiverr or Upwork you tend to have to pay the 15, 20 percent fee, on top of what you're actually paying your government and taxes.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Brian: So you get less than half of the money you make, and in some of your countries where you have a high tax rate, you're getting like a quarter, 20, 25, maybe 30 percent tops of what you earn. Every hundred thousand dollars you make, you take home 30, 000. That doesn't sound like a very good thing to me.

[00:04:12] Brian: It's also a single point of failure. So like if you become dependent on Fiverr. Or upwork you rank high on the sites best case scenario You're making 100 grand a year from that If something changes in the algorithm or you get buried in the results or they ban your account because they found out you were taking People off of their platform and working on them off the platformAll of a sudden zero coming in.

[00:04:28] Brian: So the single point of failure, that's why I don't like those networking. wonderful thing, problem with that is personality based. So if you are not super social, that can be a problem. It's also location based. So if you're not in a great location to be around your ideal clients that also can be a problem also can be super cringe.

[00:04:41] Brian: If you go to networking events, that's can be really cringy. If you've ever been to bad networking events, one key point here is just don't go to anything called a networking event. That's usually a thing to avoid. And then email marketing. Finally, the thing I talked about, the negative with that is, and why I'm not gonna talk about it today is you need an email list.

[00:04:55] Brian: And most people that I'm talking to on the show, you have not taken the time invested time, money, energy, [00:05:00] effort into building an email list up. So that's an issue and then also can be a treadmill depending on how you do your email list. So, Those are the things I'm not going to talk about today. So if you're like, Brian, I don't want to hear about any of those things.

[00:05:10] Brian: Great. This is the right show for you.

[00:05:11] Brian: Now if you're like, Brian, what are you going to talk about today? What is working today? I want to explain. A concept I've explained before, it's called the 3 percent rule. one of my team members, Josh, he's British and he calls it something fancier and sounds fancier. He calls it the greater market theory.

[00:05:24] Brian: the greater market theory. So if you want to be fancier, we can call it the greater market theory. If you just want to make it easier to remember the 3 percent rule,

[00:05:30] Brian: but the greater market theory is Josh calls it, or the 3 percent rule as I call it is basically this only about 3 percent of your total market. Or your total pool of potential clients will be ready for your service right now or relatively soon only about 3 percent the other 97 percent the greater market are not ready right now and they may not be for a long time if ever and there's like a bunch of studies on this and they've done visual demonstrations of this for basic things but this is generally true like100 people say who in here Like in the process of buying a new car, who in [00:06:00] here is looking for brand new jeans or new shoes?

[00:06:02] Brian: Right now about 3% of the room will raise their hands they're currently looking for something like that. And the other 97%, it kinda breaks down. Like 20% will be ready maybe in the near future. the vast majority are not anywhere in the market for that right now.

[00:06:13] Brian: So if we look at our services as a freelancer and our pool of potential clients. 3 percent are ready right now looking for somebody actively or will be looking actively soon. The other 97 percent are not looking and many of the things we've talked about really target that 97 percent because that is a massive market if you can afford to play the long game, you can make a lot of money doing it that way.

[00:06:30] Brian: The problem is many freelancers, especially ones we work with, can't afford to play the long game. We've got to play the shorter game. How can we get that 3 percent immediately?

[00:06:38] Brian: How can we tap out that 3 percent now before we even worry about the 97 percent because in many, many markets. If you really do the math, you have the 3 percent who are ready to buy right now. That is more than enough to make it to six figures, multiple six figures in some cases. on a call yesterday with a client.

[00:06:53] Brian: We were doing the math on his actual addressable market. he's in the Toronto area. He's got a very broad market [00:07:00] offer. I'm not going to talk about the niche cause I'm going to bring up his conversation later in this episode. don't want to give anything personal away, but his total addressable market in the Toronto area.

[00:07:07] Brian: Is around a half a million people. And if you look at 3 percent of a half a million people, that's still 15, 000 people in his area, his local area. He does not need 15, 000 people to make his income goals. quarter of a million a year. He does not need 15,000 people. He needs about 120 of those.

[00:07:24] Brian: So when you only need

[00:07:25] Brian: 0.8% of the 3% that shows you how this can work, you can totally tap out that 3%, just focus on that 3% and largely ignore the 80%, 90%, 97. Now, we're not totally ignoring those. We still want some long game in it, but you start to understand why we're focusing on the three percent, especially in markets where you have a larger pool of people to go after.

[00:07:44] Brian: So how do we do this? We do something that is painfully obvious. And by the way this thing I'm going to talk about today, I've seen it work in nearly every industry that we work in. seen it work in audio, video, photo design. It works in B2B. business to business.

[00:07:55] Brian: It works in B2C business to consumer. It works locally in person. It [00:08:00] works. regionally, nationally, internationally, remotely. I have not seen an area that this won't work in. Maybe enterprise is an area probably wouldn't work in where you're going after like fortune 500 companies. In which case I would say as a solo freelancer, you are likely not going to work with those companies anyways, unless you are a contractor.

[00:08:15] Brian: And if you are that person working as a contractor, go watch my episode where I talk about contracting is for suckers.

[00:08:21] Brian: That's episode 316, the episode's called Contracting is for Suckers, There's a Better Way to Freelance. Just go to sixfigurecreative. com slash 316.

[00:08:29] Brian: But for the vast majority of people listening right now, this will work for you. So what do we do? This will sound painfully simple. Then I'll explain a little more complexity behind this in a second. But just, I want you to understand the thought process here. What do we do to the 3 percent of people who are looking for your service right now?

[00:08:42] Brian: We're in the market for your service right now. What do we do with those? We offer our services to those people. That simple. The more people you offer your services to, the more clients you will have. The reason you don't have clients consistently is because you do not consistently offer your services to people who are looking for you right now.

[00:08:56] Brian: Now the question is, how do we consistently do this without it turning into a [00:09:00] treadmill of content marketing or treadmill of cold outreach or treadmill of networking or treadmill of one of these other 30 things like email marketing that you could do, but then turns you into a full time content creator.

[00:09:10] Brian: We do it via paid ads. And before you tune out, just listen to this strategy.

[00:09:13] Brian: First, I'm going to talk about why even paid ads as a freelancer. I actually have a full episode on episode 241 called why freelancers need to stop believing these paid ad myths. ASAP. That was a long time ago. I did an episode, gosh, February 28th, 2023. That's how long ago I've been singing the praises of paid ads or freelancers.

[00:09:30] Brian: And one of the biggest objections I get from people is well, how much do I have to spend? And my answer is always the same. Spend as much as you can. I've talked about it before where paid ads are a game where you should be if done correctly earn back your money pretty much immediately Especially before you pay off your credit card.

[00:09:45] Brian: It's something called client finance acquisition something alex hormozy made popular if you haven't heard I'm a huge fan of hormozy. Listen last week's episode, you know, why? Or maybe it's a couple weeks ago where I talked about the hormozy, day that I spent with him

[00:09:57] Brian: But if done correctly You never lose money on ads. you [00:10:00] invest money and get a return back quickly. it's as if you invested money into stock market and then they just immediately paid you back that month. Once you invested plus more, it's a stupid thing to think about. Well, How much do I have to spend? you spend as much as you possibly can if they're profitable, but really quick, why paid ads? First of all, 3. 27 billion daily active users on meta platforms alone. Let that sink in 3. 7 or 2, 7 billion daily active users. More than a third of the entire world is active on meta alone every single day.

[00:10:30] Brian: And by the way, meta is the best platform for ads right now. It's the easiest to use. It's got the best algorithm for learning. You have access to every single client you would ever need or want. If you know how to do this the right way. And we're walking through that in this episode, you essentially have a consistent source of leads whenever you want.

[00:10:45] Brian: They have so many amazing engineers perfecting their ad algorithm so that they can show your ad to the most relevant people possible.

[00:10:52] Brian: And they've already done an incredible job at this. And they're only getting better. And best of all, you have a consistent source of leads, new leads, whenever you want them, whenever you [00:11:00] need them. You can turn this into a fun math game. It was actually yesterday, that client I was talking about. We had this conversation where he wants 8 to 12 clients a month to make 20, 000 to 30, 000 a month.

[00:11:09] Brian: He needs one to two calls a day to get that, which is very reasonable. One to two sales conversations a day. his current book call cost is getting calls from paid ads through this strategy or very similar strategy. I'm gonna line out here, like small differences that aren't even worth discussing, but his current book call costs for paid ads is 65, which means we have to ramp up his ad spend to around 125 a day to reach his goals.

[00:11:30] Brian: And most freelancers would freak out. I have to spend 125 a day on ads. And my only thing is we would spend more with him if he had the capacity to fulfill that much work. are you willing to spend 3, 700 to make 20 to 30, 000 a month? Anyone listening that said, no, please go away. Never come back. If you're not willing to spend 3, 700, 3, 700.

[00:11:53] Brian: If you're not willing to spend that and make back 20 if you were not willing to make that trade. This may not be the [00:12:00] place for you because I will make that trade all day, every day.

[00:12:02] Brian: If you're not willing to spend about 300 to acquire a customer worth over 2, 000, I don't know where else a better value exists. That's also by the way, not taking into account the long term effect of repeat clients of referrals from those clients. You're acquiring from paid ads and how that will drive down your long term ad costs over time, because word of mouth is an inevitability.

[00:12:23] Brian: If you're doing great work, this client does great work.

[00:12:25] Brian: So let's discuss what this strategy looks like. We have found that one of the most difficult things freelancers struggle with when we work with them is creating a lead magnet. You've actually heard me talk about on previous episodes, episode 326, just a,month or two ago, the four types of lead magnets that actually work.

[00:12:39] Brian: On the lead generation series, this is actually a very big struggle for many freelancers and we haveguys and examples and ways to help with this stuff, but we've actually found the best way to dominate paid ads for the 3 percent who are ready to buy right now of your services is to just skip the lead magnet and directly offer your services.

[00:12:53] Brian: And the way this works is when you directly offer your services to a paid ad.And I'll walk you through kind of a framework to follow here. What happens is every single [00:13:00] time somebody takes an action, like they sign up to start a conversation or they book a call with you, or they fill out your pre call questionnaire or even just land on your landing page.

[00:13:08] Brian: The algorithm will start to learn what these people look like. What is the age? What is the location? What are the characteristics similar between all these people? And the more people take action, the better meta ads gets at refining who they show the ads to. And so they have thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe hundreds millions of data points on every single human being on their platform that they get through plenty of means.

[00:13:31] Brian: I'm not going to get into ethics behind that, but we can make use of this as people who are trying to get clients We can now show our ads to the most relevant people possible, even more relevant today than ever before in the past. Whereas before you said to show two tons and tons of people and hope that you're 3 percent somewhere in there.

[00:13:47] Brian: Now it's getting better and better at just finding those 3 percent and that means you end up paying more per lead, but the leads are more qualified, they're a better fit. So you end up turning more of those leads into clients. And that's a win win. The last thing you want is to generate a bunch of [00:14:00] leads that do not want your service or not ready for your service right now. It's a waste of time. So the strategy is this. a simple 45 second ad. And in this ad, you just follow this similar framework, call it the avatar with a qualifier. if you have a specific avatar you, target.

[00:14:12] Brian: in my past music production, heavy metal bands, you could be a family photographer targeting new moms. You could be a web designer targeting e commerce companies or SAS companies or startups, but that's the avatar plus a qualifier. So what qualifies them to actually be a good fit for you? A new mom is actually a qualifier If you're not a new mom, you may not be a good fit for my newborn photo services, right? So that's an easy example, but in my world, it might be, if you're a heavy metal band with at least 10, 000 monthly Spotify listeners. So that's a qualifier.

[00:14:41] Brian: If you don't have at least 10, 000 listeners on Spotify, you may not be good at what you do as a musician. So I don't really want to work with you. Maybe it is your a web designer working with SAS companies with at least 10 K or at least a hundred thousandMRR monthly recurring revenue, whatever your qualifiers, you have a, threshold and no matter where you are on the spectrum of the best of the best or the worst of the worst, no [00:15:00] matter where you are on that journey right now as a freelancer listening to show, no matter where you are, there is a client on that level.

[00:15:05] Brian: So for the SAS company. Looking for a web designer and they're a million a month, 12 million a year in annual recurring revenue. Those companies have a very talented pool of web designers that they can target, that they can go after, that they can work with. But they're not going to hire the low tier freelancers. The lower tier freelancers, they can target the 10, 000 a month MRR companies. And then the very bottom freelancers who can't get any of those. They can get the bottom of the barrel clients, the clients who don't have big budgets, the clients who are not a big company.

[00:15:33] Brian: They still may have products for you, but there's still clients out there for every level of freelancer, but that's the first part of the ad avatar qualifier. Then talk about the clear result. You can give them when I say clear result, generally some sort of outcome focused. So if you're a SAS company with at least 10 K MRR, I can help you.

[00:15:48] Brian: So they conversion focus website, it helps increase your new trials, something like that or I can give you newborn photos that you'll cherish for the rest of your life. Or I can give you fat ass, heavy mixes that your friends are telling [00:16:00] us. So I don't know in the mixing world, there's weird language that we would use, you know how to talk to your avatar.

[00:16:04] Brian: If you have a very good understanding, the biggest mistakes you can make here is trying to talk to everyone and give out generic fluffy messaging here. That is a recipe for just wasting money.

[00:16:13] Brian: Call it avatar plus qualifier. Plus clear result you can give. And then if there's a timeframe involved, if it's important to them, especially in like industries where there's more money involved or speed is really important, then put a timeframe there. So like a SAS company who may need to get, new funnels up for a launch, or it may be, other freelancers take 30 days when you can do it in seven days. if you can put a timeframe on it, if it matters, add it here and then preferably give away to reduce risk. So newborn photos, if you're not happy for any reason, we'll do another session for free. Or if we don't increase conversions on your website, we will work with you for free until you do.

[00:16:45] Brian: Or if we can't get you X, Y, and Z, we will refund your money. Whatever your guarantee is to reduce the risk. This is really effective for cold leads because it helps set you apart from other people who will not stand behind your work.When you have a very good, Risk reduction at the end of your ad or in your ad [00:17:00] itself.

[00:17:00] Brian: That's a good qualifier. doesn't mean everyone qualifies for that risk reduction. you have your own qualification list. Or maybe have to reach the 10 k, MRR if they're not above 10 KMRR or at least have a thousand people coming to their website every month.

[00:17:12] Brian: You do not qualify for this guarantee. You put some sort of qualifiers there on the backend that you can discuss on the sales call, but we're getting into the weeds here, . So call it avatar qualifier. Give a clear result with a timeframe if you can. find a way to reduce the risk for them.

[00:17:24] Brian: some sort of money back guarantee, work with you for free until we do, or we'll do another one until you're happy, or we'll revise it until you're happy. That kind of thing. Quickly give examples of past client results or outcomes. will take you to the same process.

[00:17:35] Brian: We took Dropbox through to increase their new trials. 20%. I'll take you to the same process. We took this mom through for thesephotos, this family, through these photos, just show proof that you are good at what you do and then end with a quick call to action if you're interested, you want to learn more, just click the link around this video and there's a full video on the next page talking through everything.

[00:17:51] Brian: That's the gist of it. I have ads like this running right now. Our clients have ads like this running right now. They're 40, 45 seconds long. Very simple to make.

[00:17:58] Brian: That is the beginning of it. gets people to [00:18:00] raise their hand and say, I may be in the market right now. I want to learn more on the landing page. There is no opt in. There is no registration. It is straight to what we call an offer video where you're going to talk about your services in more detail.

[00:18:11] Brian: I'm gonna walk you through a quick framework on this in a second, but you're gonna walk through the services in more detail. It's four to seven minutes long. Generally,

[00:18:17] Brian: it states what you can do for them, discuss how it works, discuss why your process works so well, or why it's different from everyone else. Discuss more in depth of the client stories or, testimonials or case studies or show more in depth of the results of the projects, not crazy in depth, but enough to show your expertise and then end with a stronger call to action.

[00:18:36] Brian: Something more like if you're interested in this process, you want to learn more about what it looks like to work together, which you can do is click the button below, fill out a short questionnaire. This questionnaire gives me a lot more information about you and your project or your business or your, situation whatever your thing is, I'll walk you through the questionnaire a second.

[00:18:50] Brian: That'll give me more information about you so that I can see if we're a good fit together. And if we are, we'll have a discussion to see how the project work together. And at the very least come away with this having clarity on your situation. So [00:19:00] click the button below, that's it it's a very direct call to action, calling them to take an action. If you do not end the video with this, you will have lower conversions overall.

[00:19:06] Brian: So on that page, it's just a video with the headline above it. And below it is a box with just email address and hit submit. And that captures the lead the first time that shows intent that they are interested in working with you. They may not fill out the questionnaire. You can follow up with them if they don't fill it out, but you at least have their contact information at that point.

[00:19:23] Brian: The pre call questionnaire is the next step in this process. the questions on this questionnaire only serve two purposes. Don't ask a question unless they serve one of these two purposes. The first is questions to qualify them. So that is to figure out if they are a good fit for you. And if you are a good fit for them, both of those things have to work.

[00:19:37] Brian: Just like in dating, your partner has to be a good fit for you and you have to be a good fit for your partner if you want a lasting relationship. So, you know, What questions you need to know about your clients in order to know if they're a good fit for you. And you know, what may make you not a good fit for them.

[00:19:50] Brian: Maybe they want some service or some offering or some variation of things that you can't offer. Therefore, you're not a good fit for them. Even if they may be a good fit for you, better to find these things out on the questionnaire than wasting time on a phone [00:20:00] call. So that's the first. Types of questions.

[00:20:01] Brian: The second is to actually sell them on why they need your help, them realize how much they need you. So questions on whatever the gap is that you're filling in. So if it's like you are a web designer who is helping companies increase their conversion rates on their landing page, it could be like, what is your current landing page conversion rates? What is your goal? Landing page conversion rates? How long have you been at those conversion rates? Where have they been over the last 12 months? They start to see this is how far off we are from where we want to be. We've been at this for six months. Something's got to change. Now you have essentially sold them on the change, or you at least have the opportunity because they realize the gap that's missing.

[00:20:33] Brian: That's more advanced. So if you cannot think of any questions that are help selling on your services, just put qualifier questions in. Keep this as short as you can. only things you need to know. Four to six questions at most. As many multiple choice things as you can or self selects know like open fields except for maybe tell me more about your goals for this project.

[00:20:50] Brian: That might be the only thing I have that they type out long form. And then when they fill that out, you capture their name, email address, phone number at the very end, after they've answered all the questions, [00:21:00] submit

[00:21:00] Brian: final step on this process. Is very important. You do not waste the momentum that you've built up so far. They have watched an ad for you. They have maybe even Googled you at that point to learn more about you. Many people do that. They found their way to your offer video. They've watched a big chunk of that.

[00:21:14] Brian: If not all of it, they filled out your pre call questionnaire. At this point, there's a lot of momentum going in your favor, so it's important not to just squander lead. At this point, have them book a call on your calendar. Go ahead and do it. What you can do is if it's not a good fit, they've already booked a call, you can just cancel the conversation.

[00:21:30] Brian: Cancel the call. Hey, I saw you booked in. I looked over your questionnaire. It seems like we're not a good fit for these reasons. I don't want to waste your time. So went ahead out of respect for you. I canceled your call. But here's maybe a couple other people worth reaching out to.

[00:21:40] Brian: But what can be difficult is if they fill out the questionnaire and they have not booked a call yet. Then the ball is in your court. You have to call them and hope they'll pick up, which is very difficult. Today's I'm getting so many spam calls, my phone is on. Do not disturb 24 seven.

[00:21:53] Brian: And if I ever saw my phone ringing with a number I don't have in my phone, I will not answer it. So many people are like me, so you will not get a pickup [00:22:00] if it's not a prescheduled call. You can text ahead of time. That can be helpful, but it's better to have phone call on the counter so you can both set aside time on the calendar to discuss this also, but if you're local, this could be a in person meeting, that's even better, but at least a phone, initial phone conversation or zoom, and then you would just follow one of our sales processes on here.

[00:22:16] Brian: We have a couple of guides on this episode, 286, the super simple four part process for sales calls. That was part of our sales series. We did. Which episode two 85, the entire freelance sales process from beginning inthat's more than just the actual sales conversation. That's the actual sales process I talked through.

[00:22:30] Brian: There may be some relevant stuff from that episode as well, but that's 285. So you can go to six figure creative. com slash two eight six for that simple four part process. There's also episode 200. We talked about the seven key topics to cover with every client before the sale. That's kind of a different framework or slightly similar framework that you can employ as well, just depending on whichever one vibes well with you and matches the thing that you're selling.

[00:22:49] Brian: And finally, I want to recommend one more episode here. This is my favorite one. It's why your high sales conversion rate is actually a bad thing. Many freelancers, they think that they are amazing at sales [00:23:00] because they have a high conversion rate and that's actually a bad thing. If you have a high conversion rate, listen to the episode.

[00:23:04] Brian: It's because you're either underpriced or you are only capturing the hottest of hot leads. In which case you are not making nearly as much money as you should be because there are many, what we call fence leads. People who are on the fence who could have hired you, had you had your business set up correctly, your marketing set up correctly, actually harvested lead opportunities.

[00:23:22] Brian: If you had your business set up correctly, you would get some of those fence leads, but they convert at a lower percentage overall, which will drag your overall closing percentage down to a more reasonable level, which is okay. You need to be rejected at least half the time. If you're rejected less than half the time, there's likely some increases you could do on your rates and marketing efforts you can do on the other side of things.

[00:23:41] Brian: But listen to that episode for the full details of that episode, 224, I can just go to six figure creative. com slash two, two, four.

[00:23:46] Brian: So that's the essential strategy. You use the power of the meta ads platform, which is my recommended platform for getting your ads shown to the right people at the right time. You have the short 42nd ad to just pre filter people so that only thepeople who are relatively [00:24:00] qualified and ready will raise their hand and click on the ad.

[00:24:03] Brian: And then on the next page, you have the longer video To further filter people so that you're only talking with the people who are really interested and usually most qualified. You have the pre call questionnaire to filter out even more people, about half the people will drop off right there.

[00:24:15] Brian: And so if they make it through the pre call questionnaireand they book a call, which about 70 percent of people will do, those are the hottest leads. And if you're like the client I discussed earlier, and you're spending 65 to have a sales conversation, and you can close one out of three of those, one out of four of those, You now have, usually in most businesses, a very profitable paid ads acquisition channel, not including the repeat customers, repeat clients, the people that those people refer to you and the other opportunities that opens up.

[00:24:41] Brian: That is the overall strategy. Now, keep in mind, this still may not work for you. if you're still going broad with your customer avatar, your client avatar, you're trying to attract everyone. No one specific. This probably will not work for you. If your pricing is wrong. You can maybe still attract clients, but you can't make this profitable because you're underpriced.

[00:24:57] Brian: Therefore, the numbers don't make sense because this is a fun [00:25:00] math problem. When you know your numbers, you can turn this into a fun game, but it's not a very fun game if you're losing money. And a lot of people lose money because they're undercharging. And a lot of them are undercharging because of this next point is you are in a red ocean with zero differentiators, aka you're a butt in a seat and there's nothing setting you apart from anyone else.

[00:25:16] Brian: If you can't answer the basic question, I'll call it the cornerstone question. why should someone hire you, Instead of all the other competitors, if there's not a good answer for that, This may not work for you.

[00:25:24] Brian: Another reason this may not work for you is if you don't understand the basics of writing what we call conversion focused persuasive copy. You don't have to be a master at this. You don't have to be a professional copywriter. Although if you are, this helps a lot. Copywriters should be able to do this, for all their strategies.

[00:25:38] Brian: if you're a freelance copywriter and you're not doing the strategy, you're missing out. But if you don't understand the basics of persuasive copy,

[00:25:43] Brian: or you have a marketing allergy, this probably won't work for you. And then finally, if you set up your campaigns or your ad sets or your targeting. Or your pixel wrong, like some of the technical parts of this, you will struggle immensely.

[00:25:55] Brian: That is what's working as of October, 2024, likely into at least the first [00:26:00] quarter of 2025. This this into a fun math game, there is a way to troubleshoot every single number that's not working. Whether your cost per click is too high, your cost per lead is too high, your cost per qualified lead is too high. We need to get that better. Whether your cost per book call is too high, there is a way to troubleshoot every single problem in this step.

[00:26:17] Brian: Again, if you go back to what I said earlier at the beginning of this episode, if you're a perpetual obsessive problem solver like me, or at least have somebody like that to help you. If you are the person who the second problems come up. You wave the white flag and say, this won't work for me because of excuse.

[00:26:31] Brian: ABCDEFGXIJKLMOPQRSTUVWXYZ. If you're that person with the excuse maker, I guarantee this will not work for you. if you sound like this is something interesting to you, or you need to fix some of those things, we can help you with that.

[00:26:42] Brian: We can sit down, discuss this with you, see if it's a good fit here's what we'll do for you. We will first create an entire client acquisition plan specifically for you. We'll do it when the next one or two weeks, depending on our workload at the time. If you're not happy with this plan.

[00:26:54] Brian: We create for you to pay us nothing. If you love the plan, we will coach you through implementing every single element one on one [00:27:00] with you to get it perfected. So it actually works for you. If we can't at least get you to 10, 000 in new clients through this strategy or through that roadmap, we create for you.

[00:27:07] Brian: We will keep working with you a hundred percent for free until we hit that number. So if that sounds like something at least somewhat interesting, go to sixfigurecreative. com slash coaching to watch a short video. Hint, hint, this is my offer video. You can see how I went set up there. Go to sixfigurecreator.

[00:27:20] Brian: com slash coaching to see my offer video and see if this offer makes sense for you. One thing I love saying is if the things that I do work on you, it can work for you. Many people see me doing something and think this wouldn't work in my business, but it's the exact opposite.

[00:27:34] Brian: If it works on you, it can work for you. And this is a strategy that works on many people. It works for many people. it is very effective strategy.

[00:27:40] Brian: But 95 percent of the people that we work with come to us with problems in their business because one of three things, if not all three, one is they're not working on the right things in their business. And so the business is struggling. There's just things that they're not doing. They should be doing.

[00:27:53] Brian: number two, there's things that they should be doing that they are doing, but they're doing them the wrong way. The third thing is maybe they're doing the [00:28:00] right things the right way, but they're not doing them long enough. Like how many times have you done something that actually works and then you stop doing them?

[00:28:05] Brian: Because no one's holding you accountable. Our program is set up to fix all of these things by first giving you a plan, shaking hands and agreeing this plan is the right things to do in your business. Number two, coaching you through implementing the things the right way. So we were working on the right things the right way.

[00:28:19] Brian: And then number three is actually holding you accountable so that you do them long enough to see longterm success and turn them into routines for yourself so that you can actually three, four, 10 years from now, still be reaping the rewards of those things. If that sounds at all interesting.

[00:28:33] Brian: go to six figure creative. com slash coaching to learn more and apply. So that's all I got for you this week, a short and sweet episode about what's working today in 2024 to 25 for client acquisition. If you have any questions about this, please reach out. Hit me up on Instagram. I like Instagram.

[00:28:46] Brian: That's the only one I really check at this point

[00:28:48] Brian: at Brian hood. H zero zero D on Instagram. Bye y'all. I'll see you all next week. Check.