So, this morning, (in light of the romantic time of year), I thought it was time to show your business some love. Here’s a couple of points:

1) It IS a business!

Ok, this may sound dense but I clearly remember sat at my new desk (at home*) not having a clue what to do next. It seemed bizarre to me that I could escape the shackles of working for someone else, equally bizarre that I do work that I liked, that I was in control of my own destiny. These plus points can easily hoodwink you into thinking that you’ve got some sort of hobby rather than a proper job; because a job should be painful yes?

But no, it IS a business. And it deserves to be treated with the attention & respect that a business deserves.

(*Another post coming on working at home; the plusses & the minuses)

2) You are a salesperson

Whilst we’re on the topic of admitting we’re running a business, let’s re-cap another old chestnut. You need to send yourself some love for all the other qualities you bring to your business. It’s easy to pigeon hole ourselves (“Oh, I write the front end code…“, “I get the backend to work…“) but, for a freelancers & small business owners, this belies the myriad of other skills you are bringing to the table.

A key one is sales. Many of us have that mental image of that saleperson; that pushy oik who you’d rather hit with a cricket bat than talk to. And, perhaps due to our long ingrained perception that such people are shysters existing simply to rip decent folks off, we do not want to be associated with them. Fair enough, but…

For many freelancers they are the only person involved with acquiring new business; following up on leads, sending proposals, pitching. Guess what this is? Yep, it’s a sales process. And guess what that makes you? Yep, a salesperson. Are you trying to rip people off? No. You’re simply trying to offer folks your excellent service; and being an open, honest, friendly, helpful, straightforward salesperson is part & parcel of that. Repeat after me “I AM a salesperson…“.

3) Ignore the Competition

Don’t worry about how X business is doing, what client’s they’ve won, what awards they are up for etc. Just concentrate on what you can control and what you can do. You are in charge of shaping the direction your business grows. Want to stay on your own as a freelancer? Fine. Want to collaborate more with other freelancers? Fine. Want to employ folks? Fine. There’s not set answer.

Concentrate on the positive things you can control rather all those things you can’t. Oh, and bear in mind that the market for our services is growing all the time; and the average freelancer only needs an infinitesimally small slice of that pie to carve out a very healthy living.

4) Where do you want to be in five years time?

When you first start out this question can seem like a luxury. But, at some stage you should get to the point where the bills are getting paid, you are bringing good work in and things are going ok. That would be a good time to start planning. I’m sure it is better to plan from day one but, based on my experience, all your energy is used up fire fighting & bringing work in and, until that is under control, you can’t lift your head up to take a long look at where you want your business to go.

I won’t pretend answering this question is easy; and it may involve some serious soul searching. It doesn’t have to be a contract, written in stone, your goals & objectives can change. This is something I’ve been mulling a lot recently and I think I’ll share you what I’m thinking for my business in a separate post.

5) Watch this Video

I get lots of emails telling me about other resources which are of use to freelancers online and this one I’d like to share with you now:

I know for a fact that I was clueless about 90% of what this video talks about for, possibly, the first 5 years of my business. I just bumbled along, making it up as I go. The concepts presented in the video can, at first, seem like something which relates to other, more grown up, real businesses. But, even if your procedures aren’t formulated, then they must still exist in some shape or form (otherwise you wouldn’t be in business). Realising that such a process exists and that any process (or part of) can therefore be improved is an important step to realising that your business is more than just designing & coding.

Happy Valentines Day.

Joel

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A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is system for tracking what stage your leads/proposals are at in your sales pipeline*. It also helps keep track of what you’ve said to which customer.

(*ok, this is a wanky phrase but, if you don’t think think you have a sales pipeline, and you are billing for work, you must have one in some shape or form!)

There were a few shout outs on Twitter for the apps Highrise (which I’ve used), Salesformics, Daylite & Capsule (looks good) but we’re not going to drill into those in this post because I just want to start by saying what my simple sales process is.

I’d love to hear your comments on this, comments on my/your process or any other thoughts on CRMs (especially some of the apps above). I’ll then put together a separate freelancer CRM app post.

My Process

For years I sort of played around with Highrise because I Like its lightweight, non-prescriptive approach but, over time, I found I just wasn’t kinda doing much with it. And, rather than learn a new, complex bit of CRM software, I decided to knock a quick Google spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheet

My Google spreadsheet is split into several worksheets:

1. Leads
2. Proposals (all)
3. Proposals (open)
4. Projects (all)
5. Projects (open)

Let’s now go through what each of those does.

Leads

If someone has been referred to me for work, or if there is a person or company I’d like to get on the radar of, I’ll add an entry to this worksheet. I’ll make a note of:

• A unique code for this lead (I like codes, it’s the relationalist in me)
• Name / Company
• Status (lost, won, open, stale, dead)
• A short description of current status (e.g. ‘Need to email‘)
• The date it was last updated

Once a week or so I’ll take a look at the OPEN (or STALE) rows and decide whether or not I need to take some action (e.g. call them, send an email etc). If so, I’ll update the row with what I did and modify the date field.

(Note: unlike a proper CRM I suppose I haven’t got a full audit trail of what I did and when, but I’m cool with that)

To be honest, I don’t spend as much time on this worksheet as the ones that follow.

Proposals (All)

Hopefully, as some point, I’ll have warmed my lead up enough to get to the stage where I’ve submitted a proposal.

The ‘Proposals (All)‘ worksheets contains these fields:

• Unique proposal code
• Project code (if/when this turns into a project, see later)
• Client name
• Description of current state
• £ Value

I tend to create proposals a number of different ways depending on the scale of the work, and depending on the client etc. It could be in an email, it might be a PDF, I may have created one in Quote Roller. Either way, I’ll record in the spreadsheet where I can find the original proposal because, if I don’t, you can guarantee I’ll be tearing my hair out months later looking for it.

(Some folks print out key records and put them in a file, I’ve tried that but it just doesn’t work for me very while. Doesn’t feel very digital).

Proposals (Open)

This should be pretty obvious. If the client is still considering the proposal then it’s open. And this worksheet is then important because I tells me that I need to contact these people to find out where they are with it.

Now this is something I chatted to Nick about: when I first started dealing with clients direct, I would be shy in contacting them. Thinking that sending the proposal email was enough to win the work. I probably did this because contacting the potential client felt a bit pushy, a bit salesy (who wants to be that pushy person?).

However, the thing is, your proposal (whilst important to you) is rarely the most important thing to the potential client. They to have a business to run, department to look after etc – your proposal is only one issue in their in-tray. You have to stay in touch with them to make sure your proposal gets the attention it deserves*.

(This is also an saying that there are 7 touch points before making a sale. I dunno if this holds water but people rarely buy things like complex websites without a few steps of interaction.)

Some folks are scared of asking about their proposal in case someone says “no‘, they don’t want it. However, in an odd way, that’s a good response as you can move on; better hear ‘no‘ than nothing at all.

When anything happens, I’ll update this worksheet with when I last spoke to the person and date stamp it. This allows me to quickly scan the list to see who I’ve not spoken to for a while.

Projects (All)

At some stage, clients will agree to some of the open proposals (hurray!). At this stage I take them off “Proposals (Open)” and I create a new entry on the “Projects (All)” worksheet. This sheet contains these fields.

• A unique project code
• The related proposal code (one must exist)
• The client
• Status (OPEN, CLOSED)

I used to add some financial information on this sheet but now I create a project in Free Agent (and I make sure I put the project code in Free Agent as well).

This newly created project code also crops up in Red Booth (which I use to manage projects) and Harvest which I use on & off for time tracking.

Projects (OPEN)

I’ll also make a note of this new project on my ‘Projects (OPEN)‘ worksheet. These are projects which me and my team are working on right now; this is my work in progress.. Typically around 5 to 10 things on here.

Fields on this worksheet include:

• Project code
• Client name
• Brief status (e.g. “Emailed to arrange a meeting w/c Jan 20th“)
• Date last updated

For some projects I also capture certain financial fields :

• Billing total
• Estimated supplier cost (I work with team of freelancers to deliver)
• Monies received (so far from client)
• Difference (function: between ‘billing total’ & ‘estimated supplier cost’)
• Amount still due (function)

This is a killer worksheet for me. This gives me an ‘at a glance‘ view of where my business is and what money is still left on the table.

Note: I do less financial stuff here now since I use FreeAgent’s project facility.

A Quick Recap

This spreadsheet is my birds eye view of where I am in terms of leads, proposals and projects. I also use it to get a feel for how much money is still left on the table (this helps me budget & forecast).

If you’re not doing a sales process already, I hope what I’ve posted here will be of some help to you; please feel free to shout out with any questions.

If you do have a process in place at the moment, I’d love to hear your comments on the above or any info about your process.

Thanks

Joel

p.s. did I mention the conference in Cardiff? ;)