Minute 04: Know Your Process
This podcast episode dropped on March 31, 2020 and was 1 minute 44 seconds long. You can get the podcast episode here.
Sales can be a dirty word, right? As creatives, we want to spend our time, you know, creating. But it’s something that needs to be done. It’s how the bills get paid, how we afford that shiny new microphone, or how we get new Transformers cards. (What can I say? I’m an 80s kid at heart.)
It’s also something that can get complicated and messy very quickly, as it isn’t our sole responsibility; once we “close the deal” we now have to create and/or make things while maintaining the relationship and looking for the next job so that we stay gainfully employed.
It’s too easy to get lost in the sales process. When was the last time I followed up on that introductory email? How many times did I call that studio I wanted to work with? Am I attempting to contact them too much, or not enough? When did I send them that quote? How much did I quote them for? Did I send them the quote?
If we map out a simple process, though, all of this becomes easier. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
I can say through personal experience with teams I’ve managed when they didn’t have a mapped out sales process, the following things happened:
Too much time passed between communiques at every stage. Without fail, sales reps who didn’t have a process and didn’t track things always thought less time had passed than actually had since the last time they emailed a client or prospect.
Too few attempts were made to land a new prospect. Much like above, sales reps, without fail, thought that they tried more times than they actually did.
Success couldn’t be repeated/mistakes couldn’t be tracked. Even when they closed an amazing deal, or if a sure thing fell through, when they flew by the seat of their pants sales reps weren’t able to pinpoint what they did right or where things fell apart.
Too much time was spent chasing bad leads or bad deals. The reps didn’t know when to cut bait and move on.
Too much time was spent on the wrong things. Reps would spend more time fiddling around in spreadsheets than they would actually communicating with prospects and clients.
They missed opportunities for repeat business. Things got lost in the chaos.
As freelancers, let’s now add in the additional challenge that on top of trying to reach out to new clients, we also need to make things for our existing clients. We have less time on a good day than a professional sales rep does for sales activity.
The solution (as previously mentioned): mapping out a process. It doesn’t need to be complicated or overly burdensome. It just needs to be a procedure that you follow. By organizing it, it ends up taking less time and energy to execute.
Here’s mine:
Prospecting
It all starts here. Where should I look for new business? There are three places:
Existing Clients
Passive Leads
Everywhere else
Existing Clients
This is our best source of new business. They already know us, they already know our work, and we already have a relationship with them. Maintaining good relationships is paramount to keeping this pool healthy. I detail that a little later in these notes.
Most of my current business (audiobooks) comes from repeat customers. They liked the job I did, and have come back to me with their subsequent projects. It’s awesome, and I’m grateful, and to make this a full-time gig I’ll need to grow my client base. So we move along to the next-easiest group:
Passive Leads
These are all of the people who contact you through your marketing work (your social media, podcast, blog, etc) or through referral business of friends, family, and existing clients. You don’t need to do as much heavy lifting in the beginning to convert these leads into clients, so they start a little later in the sales process. Again, I’ll detail this in just a little bit.
I just picked up an audiobook client as a referral from an author I worked with last year. I had to work a little more to bring them on board, but because of the recommendation it was a much easier row to hoe.
I also got the opportunity to pitch for a project based on a YouTube video I made. This person saw the video and reached out to me, and we’ll hopefully work together on a fun project very soon.
But again, in order to get to a place where I can do this full-time, I need to grow my client base so I can get more repeat business and more referrals, and also because I’ll always need a fresh crop growing in the fields…you never know when one of those existing sources will dry up. Which leads us to…
Everywhere Else
This is where it gets intimidating. Where to begin?
First: identify your target client, or as some would put it, your “buyer persona”. This is just a general sketch of the person or people you will be reaching out to. Take a few minutes to figure out who it is that is making the decision to hire you. This will help narrow your search. I created a PDF that you can use to help figure this out. I would create one for each “persona” that you may reach out to. DOWNLOAD THE PDF
you may have several different buyer personas, and that’s OK.
In my case, I’ve identified a few:
Independent authors
Production Directors
Casting Directors
By identifying who these people are in terms of job title, I now can use Google and LinkedIn and other tools to start finding them.
But wait! This would still give me the phone book (remember those?) if I were to put that into Google, so I need to refine it a bit.
Further refine this by geography. It will make things much easier. Are you only working with local clients? Then keep your searches local.
In my case, I can work with anyone from literally anywhere in the world, so I needed to be more selective with my searches. I narrowed it in two ways:
I made a list of the top 25 media markets in the United States, and then started at the bottom of the list, which turned out to be Omaha, NE. Why? Because I need to refine my pitch first, and to cut my teeth and get more experience. If I start in New York or LA, I’m going head-to-head with some of the most experienced and talented voice actors alive. By starting in a smaller market, I can play in a smaller talent pool and work my way up, both in terms of experience and in terms of how I’m presenting myself.
I looked at where the traffic was coming from on my web page and social channels. I was not surprised to find a lot of it from here in Philadelphia, but I was surprised to see that most of my traffic came from Oregon. I will add that to my searches.
OK, so let’s say you have this part down. (If you need some help with this, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, I’d be glad to brainstorm and help you with this.) What do you do with all of this information?
For starters, keep track of it. I use a CRM called Bitrix24 which is free and works well for me. (I’m not paid or sponsored by Bitrix24 in anyway, I just like the product.) There are many other CRMs out there, ranging from free to uber-expensive with tons of bells and whistles and automation tools. You could also use a simple spreadsheet. You will need to find the solution that works for you and your budget, but find some way to keep track of all of this.
Why? It’s going to get messy really quick. I have a few dozen leads from just Omaha in my CRM, and already there’s a lot going on there between folks who have responded, folks who haven’t responded yet, businesses that I’ve determined aren’t viable leads, etc.
When I was a sales manager, this wasn’t as big a deal. This was my job, after all, so I could spend all day focused on this (and I did use a CRM, Salesforce, to be exact). Now I have to balance this with the lengthy process of producing audiobooks and auditioning for other jobs, so I can’t spend 8 hours a day trying to keep track of everything.
This is where my flow chart and templates come in. I’ve made it into a PDF so you can either use this, or use it as a platform to design one that works for you. And again, if you need help with this, please drop me a line.
I also made email templates for each of the emails or messages I send so that I can easily just send the next message in the sequence.
So basically, I’ll get all of my leads together, load them into my CRM, and then I’ll set tasks for myself. I’ll keep it reasonable given my current workload: when work was slower, I would research and begin the process with 20 leads a day. When things got busier, I would drop it down to 5 or so. That worked for me; your numbers may be different, and that’s OK.
After I completed each task, I would create a new task based on the timeline in my flowchart. When that time comes, I send the next message using the templates I made, and set the next task, and so on.
You will notice that if I don’t hear back from the contact, I keep at it for about 5 months. I feel that’s a long enough time frame that I would encounter some “intentional serendipity” where they saw my message at just the right time. If, after 5 months, they haven’t responded, I’ll give it about 3-4 months rest before starting the process over.
As I move through this process, leads will eventually start to trickle into other stages: qualified or not qualified.
If they are not qualified (i.e. they don’t hire for my services) I make a note, and will continue to keep in touch with them over time, but in a more friendly way. (It also never hurts if you can refer business their way.)
If they are qualified that triggers a new process: are they the person in charge of hiring? If yes, how do they alert people about work? What’s the best way to keep in touch with them?
With that knowledge in hand, I’ll move them into a relationship management process.
This has turned into a much longer post than I had thought or intended, so I’ll take a pause here. I’ll add the next steps and flow charts in my upcoming posts. And again, if you want the PDF of this part of the process: