A143 - Do you meet leads and clients face-to-face?
09/12/18 • 6 min
I was speaking at a conference of developers and freelancers and presented with this question of meeting face-to-face or everything is virtual.
Being in New York, obviously there are many opportunities to be able to meet people, leads, and potential partners.
When starting out, I did meet lots of leads at coffee shops, their offices, and other places. I’d either get in my car, or hop the train and head on to the location early for the meeting.
NY has traffic and lots of it and the subways have been known to be late from time to time as well, so I always went extra early because I’d rather show up early than be late.
Once there, I’d grab a cup of coffee or drink or whatever for myself and my guest. I especially did this with leads at the first meeting, but would carry that through when they became clients as well.
They would arrive, we’d talk and get to know each other and I would then go ahead and ask whatever questions I needed. Or we would talk about the project tasks and statuses of things. Whatever the purpose of the meeting was.
I’d then hop back into the mode of transportation back home and be on my way with the rest of the day.
Travel time loses profitability
For a one hour meeting, this often times would result in 4 hours of time spent. Between the prep time, travel time, and waiting time, profits literally would fly right out the window.
As I started to notice that an hour spent talking resulted in a half day of actual time, I analyzed that against those meetings that were virtual.
I took into account if they were leads vs clients. And ultimately tracked the time spent and the likelihood of closing the deal.
What I found was that leads that wanted to meet in a coffee shop often would be tire kickers that didn’t result in becoming a client. They were looking to bounce their idea off of me.
Leads that invited me to their office, well they resulted in becoming a client about 65% of the time.
Virtual meetings
Those that I would hold as virtual calls, whether that’s through video or phone, were somewhere in between.
But the virtual conversations I would have took 25% of the time than meeting face-to-face.
I started to key in on the points where I could ask the right questions up front to filter out tire kickers better.
I started to only meet those that had a place in mind to meet me rather than me deciding on a place.
And finally, I would hold kick-off calls when we decided to work together face-to-face.
See the value of the face-to-face can’t be measured to be honest, but it adds to a much higher trust factor that you’ll never get virtually.
Over the course of my career, I honestly haven’t had many local clients, so I when possible, I try and meet face-to-face somehow.
Over time I’ve guarded my time with purpose. I’m only a single person without a sales team. So getting out there and pressing palms as they say, in a sales capacity needs to produce intended results.
For me, it’s unacceptable and hinders the growth of the business to spend a half day to only talk with someone who is looking to get free advice for one hour when they have no intention on paying what I charge.
Lawyers, doctors, and other professionals guard their time, and so I took a page out of their books to do just that.
Most of my meetings now are virtual because I have leads and clients all over the world. That’s not to say though that I don’t meet up with people, I just try and do so as the relationship progresses.
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👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
I was speaking at a conference of developers and freelancers and presented with this question of meeting face-to-face or everything is virtual.
Being in New York, obviously there are many opportunities to be able to meet people, leads, and potential partners.
When starting out, I did meet lots of leads at coffee shops, their offices, and other places. I’d either get in my car, or hop the train and head on to the location early for the meeting.
NY has traffic and lots of it and the subways have been known to be late from time to time as well, so I always went extra early because I’d rather show up early than be late.
Once there, I’d grab a cup of coffee or drink or whatever for myself and my guest. I especially did this with leads at the first meeting, but would carry that through when they became clients as well.
They would arrive, we’d talk and get to know each other and I would then go ahead and ask whatever questions I needed. Or we would talk about the project tasks and statuses of things. Whatever the purpose of the meeting was.
I’d then hop back into the mode of transportation back home and be on my way with the rest of the day.
Travel time loses profitability
For a one hour meeting, this often times would result in 4 hours of time spent. Between the prep time, travel time, and waiting time, profits literally would fly right out the window.
As I started to notice that an hour spent talking resulted in a half day of actual time, I analyzed that against those meetings that were virtual.
I took into account if they were leads vs clients. And ultimately tracked the time spent and the likelihood of closing the deal.
What I found was that leads that wanted to meet in a coffee shop often would be tire kickers that didn’t result in becoming a client. They were looking to bounce their idea off of me.
Leads that invited me to their office, well they resulted in becoming a client about 65% of the time.
Virtual meetings
Those that I would hold as virtual calls, whether that’s through video or phone, were somewhere in between.
But the virtual conversations I would have took 25% of the time than meeting face-to-face.
I started to key in on the points where I could ask the right questions up front to filter out tire kickers better.
I started to only meet those that had a place in mind to meet me rather than me deciding on a place.
And finally, I would hold kick-off calls when we decided to work together face-to-face.
See the value of the face-to-face can’t be measured to be honest, but it adds to a much higher trust factor that you’ll never get virtually.
Over the course of my career, I honestly haven’t had many local clients, so I when possible, I try and meet face-to-face somehow.
Over time I’ve guarded my time with purpose. I’m only a single person without a sales team. So getting out there and pressing palms as they say, in a sales capacity needs to produce intended results.
For me, it’s unacceptable and hinders the growth of the business to spend a half day to only talk with someone who is looking to get free advice for one hour when they have no intention on paying what I charge.
Lawyers, doctors, and other professionals guard their time, and so I took a page out of their books to do just that.
Most of my meetings now are virtual because I have leads and clients all over the world. That’s not to say though that I don’t meet up with people, I just try and do so as the relationship progresses.
-------------------
👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
Previous Episode
A142 - How do I set a goal?
Today we are going to set some goals the right way. It’s not December (most likely) and that’s ok, setting goals shouldn’t be just an annual thing.
As a freelancer, you are in control of your day, year, life even. This can be daunting and overwhelming at times. This time of year for me is always when I start thinking about my goals.
It’s easy to remember because my birthday is this month.
For the vast majority though, goal setting doesn’t happen until end of November or in December. I would encourage you to start thinking about your goals a bit earlier than that though.
What is a SMART goal
That’s Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-based.
Most times I don’t remember all 5 because for me what I find helpful is that it needs to be specific, measurable, and time-based.
So saying that you want to “increase revenue” is not a SMART goal.
It’s not bound by time.
Something important here is that the clearer something is in your head, the easier it is to break down into smaller chunks and take steps into achieving it.
For example, if I were to ask you what would what would be success for your business a year from now.
And you responded, I’d like to be working with clients who respect me and understand the value I bring to their business. But also like to be making enough money so that I can turn down the other garbage work.
Now I’m purposefully using this as a response to the question because 40% of you, the people that come to my website, tell me this.
Since this is likely to be your response, time to listen up.
We are going to dig deeper here.
Make it specific
The question I would ask is “What does “enough money” to you mean so that you can be selective about the projects you work on.
If you were to say, for the sake of easy numbers, $100k per year. That makes it easy now.
That means you need to make $8,333 per month.
This is specific and easy to track.
The next step is, where does this come from? Does this come from 1 project at $8,333 or 8 project at $1041?
Make it actionable, which translates to being realistic
The next question I would pose is, which one of those seems the best fit for you?
Here’s where the reality check comes into play because you should know from your current experience the types of projects you are currently landing and then extrapolate on that.
If you are now taking on projects at around $1000 but taking on 2 or 3 right now, 8 seems a bit unrealistic, right?
You may want to think about upping the price of a project and taking on less to get to that same number.
And finally, ask yourself, what kind of projects to I have to pitch or go after that fit the type of budget that I am looking for.
Take action and measure
Together we’ve now taken that large goal and made it into manageable, smaller bits that is easier to think about and take steps towards achieving.
Since it’s so clear in your head on what you need to do, you can further break it down into weekly tasks to focus on and set up checkpoints along the way to see where you are. These are called leading indicators.
Rather than looking into the past month and saying “I only made $5k this month, so now this month I have to make $12k. Which are lagging indicators.
If you are curious about what leading vs lagging indicators are, check out the show notes for some more information on that.
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👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
Next Episode
A144 - How do I work “ON” my business and not “IN” my business?
If you don’t work take your business as serious as your clients’ well you won’t be in business for long.
Have to be disciplined on protecting that time.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s episode, when you are freelancing or consulting, you have to be extremely mindful of your time.
It can quickly get out of hand where you spend a tremendous amount of time on things that you shouldn’t be.
Now working “ON” your business really isn’t something that is a choice if you are running a business. But I get the idea here.
The question basically is asking about doing all the sales, marketing, support and administrative work that isn’t your client’s business.
It ultimately comes down to having discipline. Willpower if you must.
Carve out and schedule the time
What I did very early on in my career was block out time on my calendar and get up an hour earlier every day.
Just knowing that I wasn’t taking time away from clients but still moving the business forward allowed me to not feel guilty and build my business.
Now there are whole days on my calendar devoted to the business. Which means that I don’t take any client calls or do any client work during those days.
Google has the 80/20 rule that they put in place for their employees to explore their own passion projects.
I like this split because even doing 20% work on your business will make a tremendous impact in a very short amount of time.
Get support and accountability to make great strides
Having that schedule and committing to moving the needle of your business is critical to the growth and sustainability of your business.
Inside of Feast we hold a 90-Day Challenge called “Moving the needle” because it’s that important. Folks in challenge meet up every week and check-in on the progress of what they need to do. Sales processes, libraries of operating procedures, building a team, and even content marketing have all been made as tremendous strides from these challenges.
If you are more of a person looking for 1:1 support. Having someone holding you accountable has made the biggest impact on improving my business.
If you are disciplined enough to do it yourself, then just do it. If not and you need that support from someone to hold you accountable, then find that person or free community to do so.
Tools
Use a tool like Calendly and give links out to people.
This tool is great because it allows for you create blocks of time that you are available, sync it with your calendar and then people can go ahead and pick from the time available that works best for them and you to be able to schedule calls, etc with you.
Working “on” your business starts with the management of your time. Setting aside that time and making it as important as the time you give to your clients.
Let’s face it, if your clients value your service, they’ll value the time you put into your own business to stick around. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself out of business and your clients won’t have you anymore.
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👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
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