Freelancers, be an investment, not an expense

Do your freelance clients think of you as an expense or an investment?

Circa November 2017, I was focused on content marketing and using the brand name Wunderbar, an homage to my German minor that no one in East Tennessee understood.

Anyway, a prospect asked me for pricing, and I sent her the sheet explaining my retainers.

She proceeded to divide the monthly price for a month’s worth of blog posts and social posts by the approximate word count and tell me that she couldn’t afford to pay that much per word.

My prospect reduced my 2 degrees in English and 9 years of writing and marketing experience to price per word.

She also confirmed the truth of this observation from Sean D’Souza at Psychotactics:

“Price dominates in the absence of relevant information.”

All other things being equal, or in the absence of relevant information, people want to pay the lower price. And why wouldn’t they?

I do. The last thing I want to do is overpay for a commodity like basic white bread, two-ply toilet paper, or a gallon of gas.

However, you’re not a commodity, I’m not either, and in freelancing, all other things are never equal.

The comparison is never apples to apples.

Take two writers, Laura and Bertrand. They may possess comparable writing skills, but each of them has more in common with an orchard than an apple.

Any blog posts either writes they produce within that bigger orchard context of hard skills, soft skills, personality, education, background, years of accumulated experience, books read, conversations had, subject matter expertise gained, and a more or less satisfying experience for clients.

For a prospect, Sassy Sol’s Salsa, to make a truly informed decision about which writer is the better choice, they would need to take a stroll around each orchard.

The shiny, inexpensive Red Delicious apples in Bertrand’s orchard may lack flavor. Maybe they’re regularly bathed in pesticides. Maybe they weren’t grown by Bertrand at all, but magicked into existence by AI. (I agree, this apple metaphor is ready to die.)

Laura’s apples are more expensive, but they’re also an organic, pesticide-free, nutrient-dense heirloom variety as crisp as a Tennessee fall morning.

Once the client takes a bite, they’ll taste the difference and know that Laura’s apples are superior in every way.

Therein lies the problem: What if the client doesn’t bite because she’s using flimsy math to calculate Laura’s price per word?

Most clients won’t spend the time required to properly vet freelancers and make a true comparison based on overall value, not initial price.

They turn freelancers into apples, into price per word, hour, or deliverable, not because they’re all cheap and malicious but because they’re busy and want to speed up the decision: “Bertrand’s Red Delicious apple is bigger. I’ll get more bites for the buck.”

When my prospect reduced me to a price per word, I had already lost.

Price had become the deciding factor in the absence of relevant information.

The client and I should have been defining desired outcomes for her business and the value of those outcomes (which would be the same as me giving her a tour of this orchard I’d spent the last 9 years cultivating):

• What’s been missing?
• What’s giving her heartburn?
• What would she like to see happen?
• How many new customers does she want and by when?
• What’s already working? How does she get customers now?
• What is the lifetime value of one new customer, on average?

Long-term value for the client, not short-term cost, is the reframe we need for discovery and sales conversations.

Otherwise, conversations revert back to price. Or, apples.

As soon as your client apples you, you’re firmly in Expense Territory.

As soon as prospects view you and your work as expense, they’ll make comparisons based on price or try to talk you down on yours.

Why wouldn’t they? Smart business owners minimize expenses. They negotiate for lower prices office space, Wi-Fi, and hosting. When they lower expenses, they see higher operating profits.

If they view you as an expense, they naturally want to pay you less, and later, when they need to cut expenses, you may find your contract or retainer on the chopping block: “Sorry. Recession. Inflation. Barometric pressure. Flatulence. You understand, of course.”

They may apologize. They may promise to be in touch. They may even compliment your work. Yet, you’re set aside like a Red Delicious all the same.

Value-focused clients, on the other hand, keep making investments, no matter what the economy looks like.

That’s why you want to get as close to the money as you possibly can.

Take freelance writing, for example:

• Case studies and white papers are closer to the money than press releases and reports.
• Pitch decks are closer than social content.
• Email funnels are closer than blog posts.

You want to be the freelancer who clients can’t live without. You want the long-term value that you create to be so out of proportion to what they pay you now that they can’t afford to lose you.

If you want job security, so to speak, you must figure out how your work puts money in their pockets.

These questions can help you become decidedly less apple-like:

• How have you helped clients succeed in the past?
• What did that mean for their businesses?
• How much were those results worth?
• What did that experience teach you?

Also, ask these:

• How are you able to work faster, better, smarter now?
• What desired outcomes or results can you deliver now?
• If the client were to do nothing at all, what’s the opportunity cost?

Finally, what do people need to believe in order to do business with you?

Expenses cost money, and investments make money. I can’t stress that difference enough.

The best freelance clients want investments. In essence, they want to buy future money, and they have a hard time parting with freelancers who get them paid.

Restructure your positioning and offers so that you’re closer to the money. Make it obvious how you help clients paid. If you can.

Otherwise, make it obvious that you help clients avoid making expensive mistakes with their [fill in the blank].

Be an investment, not an expense. The best investments make money or prevent people from losing it.

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
2. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make  6 figures as a freelancer.
3. Custom Business Roadmap. Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Business Redesign. Raise your effective hourly rate, delegate with confidence, and free up 40 hours a month.
5. Clarity Session. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. I've done well over 100 of these 1:1 sessions with founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers who wanted guidance, a second opinion, or help creating a plan.‍
6. How I Build Digital Products. In an effort to build in public, I’m writing down my process for launching a new product that’s been on my mind for some time: a library of SOPs and other tools for freelancers and consultants.