My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [36]
“Put that coffee down! Coffee’s for closers only.”
—Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992
I’ve never read a book on selling or taken one of those Bag More Customers Now™ seminars. In fact, just thinking about the word “sales” makes me want to take a bath with a cheese grater. But unless you can afford a pimp, the cold reality of freelancing is you have to convince people to hire you, over and over and over again. You either learn to embrace your inner Alec Baldwin (albeit a kinder, gentler version), or you don’t get to buy groceries.
Like many wide-eyed creative types, when I first struck out on my own at age twenty-four, I was blissfully ignorant of how much self-whoring I’d have to do. Pretty laughable when you consider that back then I was a wallflower—on a good day. You know the dinner party guest most likely to hide in the laundry room because she has no idea how to strike up a conversation, even with a friend of a friend she’s met forty-five times? The ridiculously shy girl pretending to busy herself at the buffet table, terrified to look anyone in the eye, let alone speak in a register above a stage whisper? That was me.
Fortunately, trying to get people to hire you for a freelance gig isn’t too different from trying to get someone to hire you for a staff job, something my mama mercifully taught me to do. “Nice to meet you, here’s my bio, this is how I can help your company, and here’s why I’m the right person for the job” still applies. So if you know how to ace a job interview, you know how to appeal for a freelance gig. (If you don’t know how to interview, there are entire bookstore shelves devoted to that subject.)
That’s not to say I was the Queen of Smooth. Queen of Awkward was more like it. As if the not-looking-people-in-the-eye thing wasn’t disconcerting enough, my potential clients were often treated to bouts of nervous giggling, hair twirling, and cuticle picking. Ditto for my tendency to choke on my free coffee upon being asked “What’s your availability?” or “So how much do you charge?” (Lesson number one: Don’t negotiate over hot liquids.)
Whether my first few paying clients felt sorry for me, were worried about a scalding-induced lawsuit, or desperately needed a warm body, no matter how bumbling, is anybody’s guess. Somehow, I managed to get enough of them to hire me that I kept my geeky ass out of the cube farm. And with each passing year, and each addition to my portfolio, I grew more poised, confident, and comfortable in my own freelance skin. Today I no longer hyperventilate before that initial phone call or meeting with a hotshot new client. And I must admit, sometimes I even get a little adrenaline rush out of hawking myself or my projects.
How to Make First Contact
But maybe you don’t have the luxury of time. You’re newer to this freelance game and you want to know what you can do now to polish your pitch, artfully woo potential new clients, and seal the deal. (If you’re a shy introvert, you may even be wondering how you can become a sassy self-promoter overnight.) Thanks to a little game I like to play called Learn from My Cringeworthy Mistakes, you don’t need to spend a decade-plus learning as you go like I did.
Let’s start with contacting a client cold from that Top Ten list you made in Chapter 8. As anyone who’s ever wasted her time blindly emailing jobs@wesellwidgets.com will attest, you need the name of the go-to person. Here’s where that vast personal and professional network we talked about in Chapter 7 comes in handy. With any luck, you’ll discover that your neighbor’s boyfriend’s cousin works at Sassy & Sassy Advertising and is happy to give you the name of an art director there who hires freelancers. Bonus points if your neighbor’s boyfriend’s cousin will talk you up to that art director or make an email introduction. And if tapping your network gets you nowhere, try your dream client’s website, Google, LinkedIn, or everyone’s favorite twentieth-century trick: calling up the company and asking for the