Building the Come-to-Me Freelance Model

What I’m reading: The Lewis Man by Peter May
What I’m listening to: LOVE by Kendrick Lamar (feat. Zacari)

Today I’m off to meet with a new client at his office. Normally, I don’t travel to see clients, but he wanted me to meet his team. You can’t pass that up. So I’m choking back my anxiety and heading to New Jersey for the morning.

Funny way to start a post on getting clients to come to you, isn’t it?

Well, that’s part of the mix, right? Sometimes a face-to-face is best. Sometimes you just want to cement something that’s already heading in a good direction.

And sometimes you just need to get the hell out of the house.

All of the above — that’s me right now.

It’s a model that’s worked well for me since 2000 when I attended my first trade show as an employee, and worked even better when I attended in 2004 as a freelancer. I gained business credibility, and I gained a number of clients over the years, showing up and engaging in the client’s business needs.

I gained the same credibility without leaving home, too. So can you.

I’m sitting here nearly three years from any hard-core marketing effort and the phone is still ringing, the clients are still finding me, and the projects are still coming in with minimal effort on my part.

How the hell did I do that?

By putting a shitload of effort out over the years. By staying in touch with contacts. By having conversations (not sales pitches). By listening. And by learning.

All the while I was working my arse off, I was also doing this:

• Gaining experience
• Gaining samples
• Expanding into new-to-me territory
• Gaining face/name recognition
• Making friends

You’re doing that too, I bet. You’re learning, you’re gaining confidence and experience, and you’re becoming known in your network. So how do you get the clients to come to you?

Here’s what I’ve done and still do that works:

Show up

It’s that easy. Just show up. When you introduce yourself — in email, in person, or on the phone — give your short pitch, then ask smart questions of the person in front of you. Then show them you heard them, be it a follow-up question, email, or suggestion.

Be in the conversation

It’s rare I lend my voice to a conversation on a risk management or insurance forum. However, I’m there. I hit the Like button, I retweet and share content, and I join the Twitter chats, retweeting participants’ comments and adding what I can where I can. It’s not that you need to know the answers or lend anything deep to the conversation — you simply need to engage in it in your own way.

Be everywhere

I’m still getting traction from a coup I pulled off at a conference three years ago. Because I had been actively pitching to editors, I realized my ideas were going to align directly with the editorial calendars. I had four articles in four different publications — three cover stories — all lined up in the publications section of the conference. Two of those were planned on my part. The other two were happy accidents.

You may not have the chance to pull something off like that (and I’m still shocked I was able to), but you have the chance to show up on LinkedIn with your article, which you’ll share with your network of contacts in that industry while you’re on Twitter talking about a project that hits on that same topic/expertise…. you get the idea. It’s called creating several points of contact. However you can make that happen, do it.

Be bold

What I mean by bold is this: be that person who knows your stuff and infuses that confidence in your conversations. My conversations with clients lately are more along the lines of trying to learn more about them and their businesses, find out what their needs are, and ask them questions that can help me decide if we’re a good fit. In other words, I focus on them. What that does is it allows me to be me and not the writer who’s desperate to land a client. In every conversation, I go in assuming we’re just having a conversation — it’s a fact-finding conversation. You’d be amazed how much pressure that takes off you, and how much more relaxed your conversation will be.

Focus on solving the problem

One of the questions I ask of all clients is: So what can I help with? Try it — pretend there’s a client sitting in front of you right now (if it helps, open the last email inquiry you received and talk to it). Ask the question.

Look at how you’re already shifting your perspective — the minute you approach conversations that way, the pressure is off. You’ve teamed with your potential client, even if just for this one conversation, in order to understand the problem he or she has, if not to ultimately help them solve it.

Stay in touch

Send that client an email, share their recent tweet, say hello on LinkedIn — that’s how I manage to keep people in my orbit. We all tend to let a few clients fall under our radar, but why not reach out now? It’s never too late to reestablish the connection. And if you’re attending the same event, make a point to seek them out and say hello. This is the nurturing part of knowing people, and I like to approach them as friends I see on occasion rather than people who might hire me someday. It’s okay if they don’t hire you, too — they know people who know people, and damn if one day you won’t hear from one of them who got your name from so-and-so.

Writers, what goes into your method of getting clients to come to you?
How long did that take you? 
What types of clients typically come back to you without prompting?