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Lesson Info

How to Attract High-Quality Clients

So how do you get higher quality clients on the fiber platform to notice you? Well, if you're new to fiver and you're maybe a new seller or maybe even a level one seller, you will have been contacted by some clients who just seem to either want things super fast or super cheap and they're not really the highest quality clients that you want to work with. Now, I believe that all clients can be good clients, but some clients are just better quality than others. It's just a fact. So how do you get the highest quality clients to want to work with you? First, let's define what an actual high quality client is. So high quality client is someone who wants the best possible result for their business. It's someone who isn't focused on how much something costs, but more so how much value you can provide. So they don't mind spending a little bit more if it's going to get them a better result in the long term. And it's also someone who's respectful and who actually believes in you and trusts you a...

nd respects your expertise. Now, if you can attract clients who are respectful and who trust you and who really want the best value for money, those the clients that are going to stick with you for the long term and they're going to pay you very well for your time and efforts. And they're also going to be a joy to work with. So how do you attract these high quality clients that I'm talking about? And how do you do it in a way where you can stand out above everyone else on the platform that offering the exact same type of service that you are? Well, the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that your profile is professional and perfectly created. Now, I actually cover how to create the perfect fiber profile and I go through it with you step by step a little bit later on in the course. But it's really important that you make sure that your profile looks as good, if not better than every single other freelancer on the fiber platform that's offering the same type of service as you so that you can stand out and give clients a reason to choose you above everyone else on the fiber platform. Now, the next tip to attracting high quality clients is to know your target audience. So what do I mean by that? Well, for me, for example, my target audience are businesses that are either just starting so new start ups or businesses that have tried to brand themselves but they have done it unsuccessfully. The reality is that I know after doing this for a decade, if a client has tried to brand their business before and they failed, they are more likely to pay more on the second try because they know that they need to invest in their branding and they know how difficult it is to get things. Right. So what does this mean for you? That means that over time, you're going to learn who your target audience is and also most importantly, who is going to pay you the most for your time and expertise. For example, you could be offering two different types of services. One could be designing logos and one could be designing use or something else to do with graphic design. Now, one of those services could be the most profitable by far. And if it is, then you should lean into that particular service and the type of target audience that is buying that service more than the other service. The reason being is if you're dedicating 50 per cent of your time between those two services and one is extremely profitable and the other one isn't anywhere near as profitable, then if you put 100 per cent of your effort into this service, you're going to make double the money Anderson, we'll be going into the financials and numbers later on in the course in a little bit more detail. But it's really important that you have the data and the self awareness to realize which services and which types of clients are bringing in the most revenue. So you can focus more in that area and you can get more money for your time invested. And that leads me on to my next tip for attracting high quality clients which is to showcase your work properly. So what do mean by showcasing your work properly? Well, I'm going to cover this in a little bit more detail later on in the course as always. But basically what we need to do is we need to understand how the best agencies and experts in the world showcase the type of work that you're doing, whether it be logo, design or brand identities or video editing or copywriting, whatever it is, you need to find out who the best in the industry is, see how they present their work and then copy them. So this is really simplified just to basically get the message across. If you want to figure out how to present yourself in the best possible way, then who better to learn from the best in the industry, who are getting paid the most in the industry, we'll cover some more data later the course. But I just wanted to give that piece of information because it's really valuable and it can help you start thinking in a way where you can instantly start presenting yourself as more professional. Now, another great tip to helping you attract higher quality clients is to be solution orientated and not just offer a service. So what do I mean by this? I mean that instead of just offering logo design as a service offer something which can solve a problem for the client. So for example, you're not just selling a logo design, you're selling an identity which can help the client with their business build trust with their potential customers. And when you're communicating with the client and when you're doing other things like writing the title for your gig or the description or creating the video for your gig, which we all cover later on in the course. Anyway, in more detail, you need to make sure that you are providing a solution which is a pinpoint for the actual client instead of just saying, oh, you know, I do logos and I do color palettes and I do this. What is the benefit that the client is going to get from working with you as opposed to everybody else? The reality is that there are thousands of freelancers who can offer a logo design, but who can really offer a brand identity package that can help build trust and credibility for the brand that it's created for. It's the exact same deliverables, but it's a completely different way to look at things. It's connecting with the pin point that the client is currently facing. They want to have a brand which is seen as credible and trustworthy and you're going to offer them the solution for that particular problem. It's a really subtle shift. But once you start thinking in that way and stop thinking about what you can offer and basically think about what problems you can solve everything changes. And you start to have far more in depth and far more meaningful conversations with your clients, which actually ties into my next tip of adding more value through your thinking. So for example, I have a really great friend who is a freelancer called Olympia. She's a fantastic designer and she had an issue with one of her clients where he basically asked her to come up with three different variations for a logo which she designed for him. And I told her, I said, listen, this is the moment where you need to showcase your expertise and provide value through your thinking. So what I mean by that is she needed to give him a suggestion as to which logo she thinks is going to be best. Not because it's her opinion, speaking from an objective standpoint, because one of the logos from a design standpoint was more scalable. And what that means is it basically looked better when it was super small, such as being a fabric con or you know, being on, you know, a pencil. For example, if it was going to be on a pencil and the way to angle that is to say to the client listen, you're the captain of the ship, you can make whichever decision you want. But from a design standpoint, this logo here is the logo which is going to serve you best as a brand mark. Now, at that point, you've given all the power to the client. But what you've done is you've provided more value and no cost to yourself. It's literally cost you maybe five seconds to write this down on the message to them on fiber. But you've provided more value. You've showcased that you care and you've also positioned yourself as an expert. So they're going to come back to you and they may ask your opinion on something else when they want to work with you again. So by providing more value and not being scared to give your opinion and say, listen, obviously you can make whichever decision you think's best. You're the captain of the ship. I always use that term when I'm speaking to clients just to make sure that they know that they're in control and it's their decision. Ultimately, this is going to be the best decision from a design standpoint. But ultimately each decision that you make, there's no wrong decision. I'm just saying that from a design standpoint, this is going to be the best option for you, but you can make whichever decision you like that's really empowering for a client because it shows that you can, it shows that you really want them to get the best results for their money. And that leads me on to my next method, which I've used for pretty much my entire career, which is to be the helpful doctor. Now, I was actually conducting some sales training with a student of mine who I was coaching and he was really struggling to not sound really salesy on his calls with his clients. And I said to him, when you go to a doctor, does the doctor try to sell you anything? And he said, no doctors always really helpful, really supportive and you know, just trying to do the best for me. And I said, well, why don't you do that with a client? And what I mean by that is when you're trying to sell something to a client, they're never going to really buy it unless it's in their best interest. And sometimes it comes down to, for example, if your particular service or solution isn't the best for that particular client, you need to point them in a different direction and say, listen, I don't think we're the right fit for each other at this moment in time. I actually think that you'll be better served and you'll get a better result for what you're particularly looking for from either this person or by doing this type of service. And what that does is it basically develops instant level of trust that you are not acting in your best self interest, but you're actually looking after the client, you're thinking about them before you're thinking about yourself. And if you're speaking to a client and you're telling them how great you are, they're going to be a little bit dubious about what you're saying. But if you say to a client, listen, I've made some mistakes in the past, I've did this, this, this and this and I've learned a lot from that. They're gonna be far more open to believing you. We take negative comments, it's far more believable and we trust them far more than we do positive ones, especially when we're talking about our self, right? So the trick here is to think long term and to think about the long term relationship that you want to build with that client, that client may never come back, they may never speak to you ever again. That's fine. It's better to think like that because it's going to create a relationship that is going to be far more profitable over the long term, not with every client, but with most clients. And that might sound a little bit risky. But me, it's worked for me and it's worked for me for a decade now. So I've got a lot of confidence in that approach to say the least, very obvious approach, which I've pretty much already covered is to build your credibility on the fiber platform. Now, obviously, we're going to be going into this in more depth by getting more reviews and managing your client's expectations and we'll go through the tactics of how to do that on an actionable basis. A little bit later on. But once that I think is really important is that you really focus on just building your credibility and trust on the fiber platform before you start thinking about making as much money as possible. Now, when I first started out on fiver in 2017, I really didn't know what was going to sell on the platform. I tried to do logo design but you know, I couldn't sell anything for more than, you know, five or $10 at the time. But over time because I gradually got better and I also build trust and credibility on the platform. I started to be able to charge a lot more. And now my packages are around $2000 for a branding package, a standard one and to get on a Zoom call with me for one hour to go through your brand and your marketing or get some, you know, expertise in those two particular areas. It's $500.04 95 which is simply because I've built a certain level of trust and credibility on the platform where people know that I may be the most expensive branding expert on the platform 100 per cent, but I can guarantee results and that's the difference. And a lot of new sellers try to price themselves super and they don't have the credibility. So they're never going to sell their products or services at that high rate. If they do not build the credibility first, that's a super great tip that I would recommend to you is sell your services at a discount at the very beginning. But then gradually increase your prices as you build credibility and understand that from the client's standpoint, they don't know you yet and nobody really reviewed you yet. So it's kind of a little bit more of a leap for them to actually hire you if you don't have credibility and trust on the platform first. Now, the last tip, which is a little bit controversial because some people believe in it and some people don't, but I swear by it, I think it's one of the most beneficial things for both making sure that you're the right fit with the client and also making sure that they are going to be a quality client to work with anyway, is to have a consultation call with them. Fiver has a feature on the message board where you can basically click for a Zoom call to start it's recorded and then it's uploaded to your chat so that everyone can refer back to it later on. If anything's said within the conversation, which you need to refer back to and having this call just for 15 minute discovery call can really help you to understand the client's issue, the client's challenges and can ultimately help you be a lot more helpful within the realms of trying to solve their problems. And it also just, you know, from a selfish point of view as freelancers, like we're trying to build a business here, we need to also understand that we need to make sure that we're the right fit for the client and they're the right fit for us. So for example, if a client wants, you know, to rush everything and they just want, you know, they don't really care about quality that much, but they still want really great quality, but they need it yesterday. And, you know, I don't really want to work with clients that want to rush everything. It's just not my thing. There are people out there who can provide those types of services where they simply just rush everything and they just get things done and the quality is not quite there. I want to really take the time maybe a day or two just to kind of really refine things and get things in a really solid place. So having that little 15 minute call with them really helps to put things in the perspective and really make sure there's chemistry between you guys to make sure you're the right fit for each other, which is going to be super beneficial. It's going to save you a lot of time challenges and agony later on down the line when you find someone that isn't quite the right fit but you're already engaged in a project anyway. I hope these tips were valuable. There's still so much value left to come in this course. So, on that note, I will see you in the next lesson.