Transcription
If you, as a freelance designer or marketer, are stuck around the 10k mark and simply can't progress, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you do, then you are probably missing these three things that I will present to you in this video. I have accompanied over 1300 freelancers in the last 6 years, meaning I have truly worked with them. I have probably helped many more through my channel and social media, events, but I have truly accompanied them. And what I see is that many believe that the things that brought them to 10k are the things that will bring them to 30k. That is not the case. What you need to get from 10k to 30k are three things that some people have on their radar, but they consider them in isolation from each other. And these three things are like a combination lock. They really need to click into each other. So imagine you have a combination lock, then it goes click, ah, okay, check, then the second number, click, ah, okay, check, then the third number, click, ah, okay, then the lock opens. And we have clients who have truly said, hey, 30k a month is easier and less stressful than 10k a month. And that is the experience I want to share here. What three things do you need for that? Let's go.
The start for this and the basis of everything is offer and positioning. It is extremely important that you do your homework and in what order you need to go through it. First, I want you to do an analysis of your strengths. What does an analysis of my strengths actually mean? Imagine you want to see what you can cook. You open your fridge, what ingredients do I have in the fridge? What pots do I have? What kitchen appliances do I have? Is there an air fryer? Is there a microwave, is there an oven? Do I have a good grill? What does that look like? All of this is an inventory first. You open your shelves, your cabinets, put in rice, put in this, put in that, and first look at what ingredients you have to work with. And then comes the second point. Now you conceptualize possible offers. You don't just cook. You say, I could cook this dish, I could cook this dish, I could cook this dish, sorry to all who are fasting right now. But this is just a simple metaphor for the process. This means you want to do an inventory first. Many do this completely unconsciously. Yes, that was booked with me. It's a bit like going into a burger joint known for its burgers and saying: "Yes, you have some beef there and you also have it, can't you make me chili?" Yes, okay, we'll do it. And then they wonder why the customers aren't happy, why you can't charge much for your chili, even though you're at a burger joint. This means I first want to see what kind of restaurant we are. Will it be a burger joint, will it be an Asian restaurant, will it be an Italian restaurant, what will it be at all? I'm just in theory right now, then I look for the ideal target group for my possible offers. This means you have the offer and the target group, and I'm currently scanning through different offers and different target groups. It is very, very important that you do this. Why? I recently had someone on a call who said, yes, I specialized in restaurants. I said, okay, cool, restaurants. What kind of restaurants? Yes, like small local restaurants, because I can reach them here and not many go there. This target group is not yet so occupied, and I already knew directly what was going on. I said, do you know why this target group is not occupied? Why a local restaurant might make 2-3000 euros a month? Let's say 5000 euros. How much can you charge for your social media services? Imagine you increase their revenue by 50% just through social media, which would be huge. This means the kebab shop, instead of 4000 euros a month, suddenly makes 6000 euros, which is already a significant amount, and you charge 1500 euros for your social media service. Do you see how that doesn't work? This means the biggest learning. Sometimes it's the same dishes that provide much more value for a different target group. And here I always say, please ensure that you have a ROI of four to five on an annual basis. And with the average customers, not with the best customers. With our best customers, the ROI is 100, with our average customers, our clients earn back four to five times as much as they spent with us during the collaboration. And that is always a good benchmark. It can be that if you say, well, my clients don't earn anything extra. Either you increase their revenue or you reduce their costs. If you can't communicate that, you have a positioning issue, and you notice that by doing it this way, it forces you into positioning in this direction. This means that the entire step, we have perfected it in the last 7 years, and we are truly number one when it comes to positioning for designers, developers, and marketers, because it is a very, very important building block, and then we build our offer ladder. This means building our offer ladder means I want a minimum CLV of 15k. The Customer Lifetime Value must be at least 15,000. Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to reach that 30k with a 3000 euro service. If your service, if your ticket price is 3000 euros, then you need 10 clients a month. For that alone, you have to set up a complete sales machinery, and here with 15, two clients a month. So, and that is something that few people consider, and it consists of an entry offer, a main offer, and a retainer offer, and here the entire discussion is away from hourly rates, because with hourly rates it is very difficult to reach 30k. We have people who manage it, they have double the turnover, but it is difficult to reach it, and I would always take this path. So, I would always take this path. This means you have done your inventory analysis, conceptualized possible offers, found the ideal target group for your offer, and built an offer ladder. The offer ladder says which offers come, in what order, and build on each other, and what price points you can charge for them. And the cool thing is, if you now say, Maran, how do I do that? What would that be for me? Here you have a QR code. If you scan it, you will get to our AI tool, which will build an offer ladder for you using our AI. It takes 2 minutes, you fill in the details, and our AI works in the background based on data from over 1300 clients in the German-speaking area, designers, developers, and marketers. It shows you. What would your offer be? What are the price points? What does it all look like? You can scan it now and apply it. It's brand new. I'm really impressed with how good the results are. I've already entered several cases and seen how good the results are. This means you can use it for free, and exactly, have fun with it. So, and then it is super important. The last point is that we create a message market fit. This is the DNA. This means that in our collaboration, we call it a Business Case Sheet, it's like a sheet from a business plan, but for marketing, and it's one-sided. And it's not this one-page marketing plan, but it's deliberate, it guides the client so that you consciously have a messaging that is heard. This means a question, for example, what do you believe in in your field that others don't believe in, that competitors don't believe in? Who do you want to throw stones at? These are many things. Why is this so important? This is all theory, and here we package the theory for external representation, and many say, then I need my LinkedIn, I need my website, I don't know. And they hire someone for LinkedIn, someone for the website, and wonder why they don't have a consistent omnichannel messaging. Why? Because they lack this core DNA, and with me, you can see on all channels I have had consistent messaging for 6-7 years. Why? I defined the DNA once and project it outwards. First and very important point: offer and positioning. Before you have that, don't waste your time with any social selling, any webinars, any funnels, and these are all things I do myself, right? But I did them at the beginning. Step 2: establish a predictable lead generation channel. This is a super, super important step, and I'm doing it now. Why am I doing it now? There are people who say, Maran, I've tried it, or I've done it with hope marketing, or I've done it through recommendations. I'll tell you honestly, if your company, your freelance business, lives on recommendations or on some freelancer platforms, then you don't have a job, you don't have a successful freelance business, you have a hobby where you write invoices. And I'm deliberately expressing myself so provocatively because you know exactly that it's true and that it's the main deciding factor why you have so much stress. Because this here is nice and good, right? This is the basis. But this here is the reason why you let yourself be held hostage by your difficult clients. Most freelancers became self-employed because they want freedom and self-determination. And this is contrary to that, because they don't know where the next client is coming from, they have to dance to the tune of their existing clients. And I know people who already have a bad feeling in their stomach when they read a client's subject line. I know people who say, I don't know why I'm always so nervous when I have to go into a client meeting. I can tell you why you're nervous. Because you know exactly that this client generates your main revenue, and if this client has a problem, you don't know where the next client is coming from. That's why you say please, please yes and amen. And that's why it's extremely important that we establish a predictable lead generation channel. Here we ask ourselves, where does my ideal client spend their time? And you notice how this builds on itself. Ideal target group, it builds on itself. I ask myself, where do they spend their time? I'm not in love with any platform. We have clients who rock it on LinkedIn. We have clients who rock it through ads. We have clients who win software development clients from the US through TikTok. Why? Because the principle is internalized, because the things click into each other, and that's why it's so difficult for me to tell you in detail now, do this on LinkedIn, do this, do that, this is not a detailed video. I want to do it in a way that you can apply it to yourself. Where does my ideal client spend their time, and then generate visibility. Important, visibility, not virality. It's a small but significant difference. People, when I say visibility, yes, oh God, it's already full, and I see all the influencers on LinkedIn and they do this and that. First of all, we have recency bias. What you see, you have in your mind, and you think everyone is active there. That's not the case. You don't have to compete with the next influencer. Compete with your competitors in the developer community, in the designer community. How many people regularly create content? Very few in Germany, there are 20, 30 people, I know them all. It's still so underserved, and you don't have to measure yourself against these people. You don't have to measure yourself against me on LinkedIn. You always have to measure yourself against your colleagues, and one post already puts you in the top 10%. Imagine you make two posts a week. Amazing. And here, please, not on virality. It's about generating the right visibility. I prefer a post every day with 100 views from my target group over 10,000 views from another target group. I've made clips where I say, I don't know, rich people don't wear Rolexes. Over 1 million views, 0 euros from it. I have clips, 5000 views, positioning insights on how to go from solo freelancer to entrepreneur, and sometimes clients came through that, that's the small but significant difference. And then this, if you're already doing this, great. You're already a lot further. And the next step is the step where most people fail, and that is to predictably convert visibility into first meetings, and please don't believe all the lies out there. Yes, through our inbound system, you don't have to do anything. Clients come to you. That doesn't exist. That doesn't exist. Why doesn't it exist? Imagine it exists. If it exists, everyone jumps on this bandwagon. If everyone jumps on this bandwagon, it no longer works. It no longer functions. And that's how the market works. And therefore, if you only rely on inbound, it's like sitting under an apple tree, opening your mouth and saying, eventually an apple will fall into my mouth. It might happen. I find it irresponsible to build a freelance business on that. Especially a responsibility for families and for other people. You must be able to control where your next initial conversation with your prospect comes from. Many ask, what's the frequency? What should the conversion rate be? I don't optimize for that. What I optimize for is time spent per first meeting. This is a metric that we determine with all our clients. How much time do you need for a first meeting with your prospect? How many first meetings do you need for an analysis call? How many analysis calls do you need for a concept call? How many concept calls do you need for a paying client? This brings me to the next point. This is the last digit in my lock, and that is a sovereign sales repertoire. The goal here is to turn prospects into paying, satisfied, and long-term clients. This is important. Why do I write sovereign sales repertoire? You don't have to become the next sales professional. You don't have to. Why not? All the people who say you have to be really good at sales, first of all, you're not competing with me or others who preach this all the time. You're competing with your colleagues again. And the 80/20 principle states that I can achieve 80% of a result with 20% of my input. If you want to speak a new language fluently so that you can get by in the country, six months are enough. If you want to perfect the language, where you know, for example, plusquamperfectum and Präteritum, it takes several years. The better you become at your craft, the more you have to do to get a little better. Law of diminishing returns. And this also applies to sales, and that our clients say, oh, this takes so much pressure off me, that I don't have to become a sales professional. I just have to be better than my competition. And your competition, I can tell you, the majority of them are currently afraid of AI, don't deal with such things, or don't invest anything in themselves at all. Our clients do all of this and have these results. This means here I always say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And this sovereign sales repertoire consists of our three-step sales process. But here too, a big disclaimer. Marketing also sounds good. Three steps, two steps, our method, the reality is a bit different. I have clients who have been burned elsewhere and say, yes, there was somehow, I don't know, closer principle and this and that, and you name it, and it never worked. Then I said, what kind of offer do you have? We do software development in the six-figure ticket range. Then I say: "Yes, no wonder it doesn't work." That's not how it works. Bring the decision-maker to the next call or do this and that. It doesn't work. It has to be adapted. In general, there is a law that the larger the tickets, the larger the company, the longer the sales cycle, and it has to be adapted. But the principles behind it remain the same. This means we always adapt to the client, and that's why these two things, that's why I couldn't be specific about channels here. It depends heavily on these things. What comes out here? That defines step 2 and step 3. Like a combination lock. All numbers must click for the lock to open. And here, 80% of our people have this three-step sales process. This means conducting strong initial meetings, which take a maximum of 20 to 30 minutes, conducting a strong initial meeting where you really create a gap, where you really identify the needs, where you really have something like a sixth sense about whether the client can afford you, whether you want to work for the client, all these things. Then an analysis call, which is a really strong anamnesis. What does the client have? Where do they want to go? What do they doubt? And then this call ends with, dear client, thank you for all the information. I'll let this sink in and will write a concept for you. When would you like to conceptualize something? When can I present the concept to you? That is then the concept call. This is important for the concept call. Why do I say concept call? Actually, I'm presenting my offer here. But if I say, when can I present the offer to you, the client says, please send it to me, and then you have the situation again, okay, we'll get back to you in Q3. Never, never, never communicate offers asynchronously. Unless it's some kind of fire-fighting project that's worth less than 1000 euros. That's okay. And here I really want to close the deal. Here you need a really good presentation and offer structure. Deep enough for the client to understand it. Not so deep that I trigger the logic brain in the client and they have to switch their brain into turbo mode, because a confused mind doesn't buy. This is now really the high-level, but these are things that are super relevant. If you want a deep dive into this sales process, I have a YouTube video on my channel about it. It's called Sales Process, I'll link it here. And also here for lead generation, I have one or two approaches on how to do it if you want to get more specific. But I can tell you one thing, all clients we have helped to get from 10k to 30k, these three things just click for them. It clicks, then the lock opens, and they suddenly feel carried by a wave instead of swimming against it. And I couldn't be super specific just now, but I'm sure you have an idea of what this is about. What I would recommend to you, scan this QR code, have your positioning worked out, and if it goes in the right direction, definitely book a 15-minute call so we can determine, based on your positioning, what step 2 and step 3 could look like. If you're up for it, scan the QR code. Otherwise, if you liked the video, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe if you haven't already. We will be posting weekly YouTube videos again regularly, even though I'm in dead mode here. Our offspring could arrive at any moment. So, we are now 10 days before the due date. I'm very excited as an expectant father. Exactly. Feel free to share your thoughts as freelance fathers. I'm very curious. Thank you for tuning in. See you next time.