10 Essential Steps to Making the Perfect Pitch
To make it as a freelancer, you need to be able to sell your work. That’s why making a great pitch to a prospective client is one of the key skills you can develop to be more successful.
However, many freelancers screw up the pitch in a number of common ways, from talking too much about yourself and what you want, from not knowing what the client wants, to rambling on, to not saying who you are and why you’re perfect.
Don’t make these mistakes. Follow the steps below to make the perfect pitch.
1. Know the client. If you know the client well, you’re in a great position to make a great pitch. If not, you need to take the time to do a little research. Get to know their product, company, or publication. Google them, find out more via LinkedIn, contact others in your network who know the client. The more you know, the better your pitch.
2. Know their goals. Specifically, you want to know what the client hopes to achieve. Sure, they hope to sell a product or service. But how? What message are they trying to sell to the public? Who are they reaching out to? This is key. Talk to others, read their website, learn their message from promotions and marketing and advertising.
3. How will you help them meet those goals? Here’s why the client’s goals are key: because to make the perfect pitch, all you have to do is show how you will help them meet those goals. What service will you provide that they don’t already have that will move them closer to those goals? How will you be valuable to them? Why are you the perfect person to provide that value? If you want them to hire you, don’t show why hiring you would be good for you — show how it will be great for them.
4. Keep it short. Email your pitch to the client — don’t try to get a meeting or phone call. Those take too much time, and your client is busy. Think less business proposal and more elevator pitch. A few lines, and that’s it. Make it easy for them to read your pitch and respond in a minute. How do you keep it short? Get to the point: what do you want to do for them, how will it help them meet their goals, and why are you the perfect person to do that? Those three things, in three sentences (five at the most). If it’s that short, you will guarantee yourself a response.
5. Be professional, but enthusiastic. Don’t be casual. Your email communicates how much of a professional you are. However, being too conservative is also a mistake. You want to be enthusiastic about working for them, and that enthusiasm will catch on.
6. Don’t talk price, length, or details. Again, you want to keep it short. If you talk price, length, or details, you will get in the way of your main message: what you want to do and how it will help them.
7. Say who you are, but don’t brag. All you need to express is why you’re perfect, in a sentence or two. You need to show that you’ve done this successfully before, but you don’t want to sound like you’re overselling yourself.
8. Provide a link to your work. The best way to do this is to make a brief mention of one or two past successes, and provide a link for them to read more. A website with a portfolio, or a link to your best published work, are great for this.
9. Follow-up. If you don’t hear back in a few day, send a polite follow-up email. They will respect your following up. However, if you still don’t get a response, wait a week to send another follow-up email. Then drop it if they don’t respond, as they either 1) are not interested or 2) are too flaky to work with, if they can’t respond in a week.
10. Make multiple pitches. The perfect pitch is one that is part of a series of pitches to multiple prospective clients. You can’t rely on one pitch to be successful. Send several (3-10) to the clients who would work best for what you want, and tailor each pitch to each client.
A few times a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of FreelanceSwitch. This article by Leo Babauta was first published September 4th, 2007, yet is just as relevant and full of interesting information today.
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I know this article is for a freelancer site but with a couple of tweaks above (not a lot mind, just a couple) this article could also be a guide to the perfect job interview.
This is a good article but it doesn’t always helps. At a congress or convention for developers and designers you often aren’t familiar with the people there, you you will not know them or their goals. So the perfect pitch isn’t so perfect anymore..
Label me old school, but an email isn’t always the best approach. A meeting enables you to engage the person, understand their personality and quickly respond to any questions or comments.
Meetings, in particular, are perfect for situations where snooping around in Google or LinkedIn won’t do much for results because the company is too tight-lipped about product direction or corporate goals. Yep, those companies still exist, and they have big budgets. They’re just harder to land, but once you do…
The drawback with meetings is that you have nowhere to hide. You can’t be too slick, too quiet or too shy. You need to be confident, respectful, empowered, able to think on your feet in front of a group of people and most of all, be a really good listener.
Email is great, it really is, but not for everybody and every situation. Looking over the best work I’ve done, each has started with a meeting then follow-up proposal, not the other way around.
Well i would imagine a different set of guidelines when it comes to such a situation jens. This is a great article and i appreciate the thought that went into it.
Hi
Very good article. I have written series of articles on sales and marketing. If some of you are interested, please visit:
http://www.rajeshshakya.com/category/marketing/
Cheers,
Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!
It’s amazing that you’ve managed to list out the 10 essential steps to making the perfect pitch. This is indeed essential to anyone who are ready to kick start their career in becoming a freelancer.
To me, freelancing is the way to gain experience as well as to know where i stand in terms of my capabilities and potentials. Skills indeed are important, but in order for a client to categorize me as being potential, i need to be willing and able to sell myself to them.
I will recommend this post to my colleagues whose friends are seeking for a job as a freelancer/contractor. However, i feel that besides allowing future clients/employers know what you are capable of, it is also important to list your personal goals and missions in life besides of what you can fulfill.
Great guideline and looking forward to further posting!!
Good tips
I totally disagree with #6. Don’t talk price, length, or details.
You should be prepared to utter an exact price the second you are asked about it. Otherwise, you’ll seem insecure.
The longer you postpone it, the harder it will be to say it.
Also, the bigger the price, the more valuable everything you say after it will seem. “Hi. I’d like to present this $10.000 logo [...]“
Eugen.. not necessarily.
Price without context and the understanding of the value created is just a price.
Just think about the iPhone5 that has just come out. I’ve heard loads of people talking about the features of it, but i’ve not really heard much on how much it costs.
I disagree with Eugen. Clients already are too focused on the price, so sometimes throwing out a number right away without selling them on you first can back-fire. They look at the price and don’t respond, thinking it’s too much.
Also, it’s impossible to know the entire scope of the work right off the bat. You can’t give an accurate price until you know every request the client has.
Email was never a good approach in my countries and probably on other developing countries. But a good thought it is
i’m half-way between eugene and kyle! i think not discussing money at some point in a pitch can lead to confusion, frustration and disagreement later however i think kyle is right that you can’t be exact about it. i usually give my hourly rates and if they ask for a project price i always word it like ‘somewhere around £x – £x depending on x,y and z’ so they know it is just an estimate.
Good thoughts, I only disagree about using just email. People want to see you and hear your voice. If you interest them, they’ll make the time to meet you. Email is too impersonal to use alone. My advice is to call first and then email, and then follow up with a call and try to set up a meeting.
Well I agree with having to know the budget. How are you supposed to win the bid if you don’t know how much they are willing to spend? I was afraid to ask these questions and now I have to go back and start over. Which is fine.
For clarity, if you can’t be physically in the same location ( a possible client is in Buffalo, NY and I am in Detroit, MI) a friend of mine reminded me to have a Skype conversation. This way we are talking to each other and can tell what is going on. Technology is a great thing these days.
So do you send the actual article to the publication or just your ideas?
To Yvette: I was told always to tempt them with the covering letter/pitch email. If you send in the actual article they can easily give it to one of their regulars or permanent staff and ask them to follow it up and to change it.
I think this is a very good and universal article on pitching. I work in finance and pitch often to private wealth clients – and this article hits the spot. This is one of the best templates to work off that I have seen. I think it really grasps the essentials.
An interesting article but suppose you pitch the same idea to 10 publications and 3 say yes? Most publications want exclusivity, don’t they? It might be hard explaining why you are turning down offers and you are probably going to lose the business of two customers permanently, aren’t you? I am a novice freelance just starting out, so please let me know if I am wrong.
Great tips!, I always think that a face-to-face meeting is best but obviously if you have a business where you have clients all over the world, that would be tricky. Skype and video calls work well in that case. People tend to do business with people they relate to and trust, I don’t think you can achieve that without building some familiarity.
The price can put people off because they think its too much or some people may look at the price as a good investment and sign up their and then. Depends on how you tailor your quote
Discuss price only after you have established value in the mind of the client – both your value, and the perfect choice for the work, and the value of the work to the client.
Rajesh, the links to your site don’t seem to be working. Also, I tried just the url and that did not work either.
Just thought you would want to know.
Hi Leo! Great tips! I think getting to know the client is very important. One should know a little bit about them so you can plan ahead. A little research about them is a big plus.
Good point on number 9. In the past, I’d usually just drop it if they don’t reply within a week of my first contact attempt.
As with others, I partially disagree with point 6. Sure, we don’t have to talk about pricing right away, but if the opportunity comes, why not take it?
Good post.
I really have to agree with #6 – web services are very much based on relationships. Get in front of your potential client and sell them on you first. The price will be less important after that.