How to Speed Up Your Freelance Sales Cycle Without Sacrificing Quality
Ah, the sales cycle. From prospecting to closing a new client, the work you love to do doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.
We know it can be a long journey from the second a new client catches your eye to the moment you kick off a project. Quarter after quarter, creative businesses running their virtual studios on Wethos consistently report the most sales wins in the first two months of the quarter.
That’s why we’ve got a few tips for tightening up that sales cycle so you can stack your client pipeline in those first couple months of a new quarter.
1. Flip the script: Clients are pitching you!
Nothing is worse than finding out a client isn’t a good fit for your values halfway through the sales cycle. Get ahead of this by making sure you’re engaging with clients who align with your mission statement.
Have them do some work of explaining who they are, what their values are, and why they think they would be a good fit for you. Gone are the days of pitching yourself to clients. They’re the ones in need of your services. Curious to know how you can find out if a client’s values match your own? Read our article about how speaking your mind is good for deciding on which clients will align best with you.
It’s also important to know the tell-tale signs of a bad client. You don’t want to be stuck with one down the road, so be prepared to hit pause on the process when red flags show up.
2. Set goals and agendas for each call of the sales cycle
To help speed the conversation along, it’s always helpful for expectation-setting to share goals and agendas ahead of time before a client call. That way, they have an idea of the decisions that should be prepared to make during your call.
Be as clear as possible beforehand so that when you show up the call, you know the questions to ask and they know the answers they’ll give.
3. Make a scope of work that’s so clear, there are nearly no questions
Sending out a scope of work that immediately gets a signature feels pretty darn great. So avoid the seemingly endless back-and-forth of questions, tweaks, and pushback. Put together a scope that hits on all the right services while clearly outlining each phase of the project. Make sure to clearly state how much money you’ll be expecting in total, with a breakdown of how the funds are distributed across your deliverables.
With Wethos Virtual Studios, you can build free scopes using our customizable scope of work templates that come with pre-set services and pricing recommendations. All you have to do is create a project, find the template you want to use, copy it over, and adjust it as you see fit. You can even add your brand logo and colors to the scope of work to add that special, unique flair. So send out that flawless scope and wrap up your sales cycle ASAP. Hit up our general Scope Overview for the download on all things Wethos Scope of Work Templates!
Happy scoping to all, and to all a merry sales cycle! Have questions? Hit us up online: @wethosco on Twitter or Instagram.