Open Thread: How do You Sell Yourself?
March 27th, 2008 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 3 Comments
Independent web workers face a linked pair of challenges when it comes to hunting for clients: we have to find them, and we have to tell them why they should hire us. Like it or not, when you’re working for yourself one of the hats you have to wear is “marketer.” If potential customers can’t find you, they can’t hire you. If they don’t know why they should hire you, they won’t. It’s that simple.
The net, of course, makes finding clients easier than ever. Many of us have adopted a strategy of being very visible (even in the pre-web days) to maximize the chance of being tripped over by those who might hire us. Speaking at conferences and user groups, writing books and articles, and giving training courses were traditional parts of this strategy. In recent years, many independents have added blogging, social networking, and things like Twitter to the mix.
When you find a potential client, the second part of self-marketing kicks in: positioning yourself as the person they should hire. Tools for doing this include the traditional résumé (online or off), personal web sites, brochures, and even just chatting. Whatever the medium, you need to refine your personal pitch into something that’s compelling, interesting, and fast to deliver.
But this is an area where none of us are perfect yet (or else we’d be rich and retired, right?). So – share your tips! How do you connect with clients? What and how do you pitch as your skills? Any advice for the prospective web worker who wants to make the leap but is afraid of that first step?
3 Comments Post your own comment
Jay says: March 27th, 2008 1:52pm
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. If I knew the answer, I’d probably be buried in client work instead of job-hunting. In fact, that made me think that part of the trick might be to treat landing clients more like landing a job.
Cathy Moore says: March 27th, 2008 4:17pm
I’d suggest that a web site and blog are much more effective than a résumé at making your unique offer clear. They also establish you as a business owner who knows the basics of invoicing, meeting deadlines, and so forth, while a résumé suggets, “I’m still in employee mode.”
A tightly focused blog has worked great for me. I’ve also gotten some visibility from posting slideshows at Slideshare.net and speaking at conferences.
Michael Wolff says: March 28th, 2008 3:47am
We understand the problem that you raise and have been working on developing a solution over the last few years.
The company, “ki work”, has been developed as a a search and operational utility for outsourcing and finding online work. There are a number of companies that already offer services such as Elance, Gurus, oDesk, Rentacoder. ki work is different… it enables experts in specific categories of expertise to mediate the global sourcing and operation of online work between buyers and sellers of professional online services. These cover over 400 different categories across most business functions including accounting, administration, consulting, customer service, legal, marketing, recruitment, sales, software, training and web development.
We are just completing our development in alpha and will shortly be launching in beta. We have also developed an app in Facebook “ki work bounce”, which facilitates both the promotion and finding of online workers.
We are not quite fully functional but we would welcomoe your feedback.
Thanks, Michael
ceo – ki work