The Secret to Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time
And How a Little Experiment Turned into a Multi-Million Dollar Enterprise
Sure, pushing papers for the Big Boss mortifies us. But every freelancer knows that calling our own shots isn’t pure bliss either. I don’t know about you, but on at least two occasions, I’ve nervously looked “bankruptcy” in the face and by pure luck or karma, bypassed it by mere centimeters.
In my more cautious years, I’ve learned to develop systems, test them, then expand them. Yes, this even applies to freelancing.
How? Because turning a prospect into a client is a process-based on a system. Identifying deliverables and executing campaigns for a client is a series of tasks based on a system.
Create the right system and you can almost flawlessly guarantee success and satisfaction every time.
It was in the spirit of such experimentation that I stumbled upon the singular system largely responsible for turning my struggling personal consultancy into a multi-million dollar venture that is scheduled to land and manage over 100 projects every month and has won clients like the NFL, BlogTalkRadio, and best selling authors like Christine Comaford-Lynch.
The Challenge, My Nearly Nervous Breakdown, and the Results
Then I’ll spill the beans about my experiment…
About a year and a half ago, I transitioned from being a freelancer to running a marketing firm that managed 25-50 freelance internet marketers and web professionals. In December 2007, I decided I was going to take this one leap further and build a program that would allow me and my team to coach hundreds of freelancers and pair them up with paying clients.
This presented an enormous challenge that, for three months I could not solve (and it almost cost me my business, my financial wellbeing and my sanity). How could I design a system that would:
1. Train and coach hundreds of people in the skills of marketing and web development?
2. Guarantee hundreds of new projects coming in each month?
I tested one system with a test group of 30 freelancers. It failed. I revamped the system based on results and feedback and we improved considerably. This second system was highly scalable and accounted for Challenge A. My business was now able to easily and successfully train hundreds of people — or even thousands, if the situation called for it.
But Challenge B remained a stopgap. I could not risk scaling to 100 freelancers or more for fear that I’d have no work for them.
Now this is where you’ll want to pay attention…
I had to create a system that would allow anyone, with or without knowledge of the marketing skills we were offering, with or without sales ability, to land as many clients as humanly possible.
The resultant system I’m about to share with you (and don’t worry, it’s dirt simple) worked so well, it has a 100% success rate so far (meaning every single person who has accepted the offer I’m going to share with you has turned into a client). I’m sure we’ll lose the occasional prospect, but this system will work for:
- Referrals
- Warm Leads
- Cold Leads (cold calling)
- Professionals you work with (your dentist, doctor, gardener, etc.)
- Anyone else you can dream up
The worth of the clients this system lands is mind-boggling. My original prospecting method had a nearly 100% success rate as well, but that was because I was dealing with referrals. And that system couldn’t be duplicated. It was based on me, my exact experience and accomplishments, and my sales capabilities.
But this new system now easily guarantees my company over 100 new projects per month and, best of all, these projects are in the range of $10,000 – $50,000 monthly recurring income per project. And I don’t have to do the selling myself.
Bottom Line: This system will allow you to land the big boys, compete with the top vendors in your industry, and anyone can do it. It’s dirt simple.
How to Land Your Client, Every Time
Here’s the magical phrase: “Competitive Analysis”
I found that when calling on companies that didn’t ask for my advice or help, they didn’t care to receive a proposal, or hear about how I could revolutionize their website or make them tons of money…
The only thing even cold prospects responded to, nearly every time, was this single sentence:
“I have reverse engineered your top competitors’ sites, [COMPETITOR ONE] and [COMPETITOR TWO], and can tell you exactly how they’re able to beat you in the amount of traffic and sales they get online, PLUS where their weaknesses are and how you can exploit them to pull ahead.”
Then I offered to conduct a free Competitive Analysis on their website and their top competitor’s website.
That’s it. Dirt simple.
You won’t even have to ask for the sale when you’re done. They’ll be begging you to help them.
It just happens to be an infallible truth that people are more motivated by what they stand to lose (and who they stand to conquer) than by what they can gain. By leveraging the success of their competitor against their fear of losing business to someone else, you’ll easily persuade them to want to work with you and they’ll think it was their idea to ask you!
How to Create a Competitive Analysis
Because my industry is online marketing and web development, I’m going to explain how to create an analysis for a website’s presence and traffic.
You can modify this process to address anything though. If you build websites, create a Website Requirements Assessment for your prospects to fill out so you can discuss the results. If you’re a copywriter, create a document asking key questions that gets your prospect thinking about what they need and excited about what you can do.
So, for this analysis, you need only three free websites to gain dizzying amounts of information on your prospect and their competitor. When you share this information with them, you’ll hear time and again, “This is the most in-depth, informative consultation we’ve ever had!”
Add these websites to your Favorites List:
Between these three sites, you can discover just about anything, including:
- # of monthly unique visitors
- Budget spent on sponsored listings (Adwords)
- Clicks per day from sponsored listings
- Cost per click
- # of organic listings
- Demographics, including age, income and ethnicity range of visitors
- And tons more
Imagine telling your prospect that you know their top competitor spends $18,000 on sponsored listings per day and that they receive 5000 unique visitors per day…
But you know you can help your prospect beat them and eclipse a lot of their traffic, because you can also see that the competitor website’s incoming links are old and no new site optimization has been done. These stats justify you asking for $5000 to $10,000 per month to get them ahead of their competitor who is spending even more and has weaknesses you can clearly see and exploit.
Do you see how this completely alters the nature of the consultation and the sale? You never have to ask if they want to do business with you. Instead, you’re dangling a very attractive carrot in front of them backed by hard evidence, fact, and quantifiable numbers.
As long as you’re confident you can deliver the goods you promise, it’s a done deal. I’ve even landed clients with this method without them ever asking to see past results, client references, a portfolio, or anything else. They were so shocked and jazzed by the analysis that they said, “Name your price. We’ll take it. We want to beat the pants of such-and-such competitor!”
“What If The Client Wants Something I Can’t Do?”
Perhaps you want to use this exact analysis example and land clients for web development and traffic generation. What if you don’t know how to deliver these services?
OUTSOURCE.
You have a wonderful resource right here at Freelance Switch. Here’s what you do:
Once you deliver the competitive analysis and go over it with the prospect, the next step will be to develop a detailed proposal outlining what you’ll do and the price you’ll charge. Tell them that you’ll want to put your best expert on the project and you need to check availability. You’ll get back to them in a couple days.
Then post the project here on the FreelanceSwitch job boards and find an appropriate expert. Work with them to develop the proposal and agree on the fees they want to charge.
Increase those fees by an appropriate amount to pay yourself for landing the deal and perhaps project managing and then bid that to the prospect.
Client landed. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
Leave a Comment
wow, so simple but seems to be really effective, nice post!!!
regards from the always polluted Mexico City.
FIRST hehehe,
Another extremely useful article from Jaime. Keep them coming!
And I hope this doesn’t put you out of business by revealing the recipe for your secret sauce.
Too much optimism not enough realism.
Before I finished reading this, I thought at the end there would be a link that said, “…and to find out more about how I did it, purchase my dvd and workbook and increase your sales by 1000%!!!” I was wrong, it was a very interesting posting with some great information. I’m actually surprised it’s being given away for free. Hey thanks!
How do you scale this to smaller-sized companies? Many company’s competition is either much larger (ie. restaurant compared to a fast food chain), or their competition is as small as they are, and don’t have a website that these sites can track stats for.
Any thoughts? Thanks!
I definitely like the idea. Honestly I’m a little turned off by the phrase “I have reverse engineered your competitor sites” – to me that comes across as a gimmick-y sales-pitch. How about just “I have done some research on your competitor sites”? That being said, keeping it in context with the rest of the sentence, I really like the approach. Thanks!
Excellent article. I agree with Eric on some of your wordage. I would definitely say something like “I’ve analyzed and determined your competitors edge, and here is how I can help you overcome it.” This is very similar to what I do prior to every project meeting. I go in knowing what other companies are doing better and cheaper and offer that information to my clients. This gives them a competitive advantage and also gives me a better chance of landing the contract. A little research goes a long way.
Wow. Thank you for sharing so much. I’d have to agree with @cmallen; I kept expecting the “money line.” It’s nice to see people are still willing to truly GIVE something.
Great article! (seriously, woa)
I think the wording sounds cheesy to us, but is powerful and intentionally worded to be effective for the average client. A lot of times putting it nicely, or openly doesn’t have the same impact on people as using more direct, no nonsense talk.
Had never seen those two links before, very useful!
I also think this is a good method if you’re a consultant. But I’m afraid the article’s “get rich quick” tone might mislead some, and even turn others away. In any case, I’m a new freelancer, and I hadn’t yet considered sales from this perspective. Thanks for the enlightening info…
I have yet to outsource. In the near future I believe it is the way to go in offering more. Will be testing this and see how it will work with my freelancing.
Jaime, the only thing that annoyed me in your article was that it was written as if it was one of those long sales pages that we stumble upon all the time (so, yes, I’m one more reader who was kind of put down by the post’s tone). Other than this, it’s a great, truly helpful piece. Thank you very much for sharing that with us all! Now I’m going to think about it and see how I can use your tip to promote my own freelance writing services.
@ Eric and John: Thank you for sharing examples on how to reword that sentence.
Inspiring. on point. well written. wow.
*this article along with my first coffee for the day, made my day.
Heading over to read The War Wagon Blog now. Great article, Jaime.
This is excellent stuff. Thanks!
This is an excelent idea. I’ll try it. But there are some little problems: If you’re after a smaler client, you get no or too inaccurate figures from this three sites. And then you have to invest a lot more time for a proper analysis:
Maybe you can start by looking at the sourcecode of the websites and see if they are standard compliant.
Real figures for traffic or advertising will be hard to get.
@ Jaime…Any idea how Photographers can use this strategy?
Thanks in advance.
Useful information, but I cringe when I think about all the work needed to create such a sales pitch when it could be turned down at the flip of a hat. For me, this is a great strategy to use for specific prospect targets you know are dying for help and have the budget for your services. In the end, the best clients are referred.
Thanks for the tips
Quick note: the link Twhirl points to Plurk’s website.
I think some of the reservations about the wording come more from our uneasiness with confidently marketing ourselves more than from the perspective of the clients. Clients love that stuff. About a month ago I made the decision to sell myself and upsell my services to an extent that went beyond my comfort level. To my surprise I have more work than I have ever had as a result. Expressing yourself with confidence and not understating anything has been really effective for me… and judging by Jamie’s success with this method I would guess that the wording works a treat with clients!
Very interesting read. One thing, though – I wouldn’t trust Alexa. Not a little bit, not alongside other systems, not at all. It’s just not a reliable tool, especially when it comes to smaller sites.
A good idea but unrealistic unless you ‘optimize’ sites with proven results- and to me that would be stating something you can do which is beyond anyone’s power but the search engine.
To me creating a stronger brand and position would be more effective than, ‘beating competition’, and that can be measurable and doable.
I don’t like this at all.
“If you build websites, create a Website Requirements Assessment for your prospects to fill out so you can discuss the results. If you’re a copywriter, create a document asking key questions that gets your prospect thinking about what they need and excited about what you can do.”
Isn’t this called working on spec? Isn’t it an agreed-upon fact that spec work is really bad for the industry (any industry)? You’re literally creating stuff for free, then trying to get money for it (upside-down thinking, in my book). It might be a good idea, but then again, I don’t agree. I really liked freelanceswitch.com, but this article is rather conspicuous.
Yeah, for all those who don’t like the gimmicky, sales pitches — the proof is in the pudding. We may be turned off by this, but clients are turned off by this tone, “Er, um, I was doing a bit of research eh, and I think I’d be really good at helping you with your website”
Client want to hear confidence from the people they’re potentially paying thousands of dollars.
Now that’s a really usefull post!
Thanks for the great competitive analysis resources and your client proposition — good stuff.
Not to give away the entire kitchen sink, but I’d be interested in how you assemble your competitive reports? My guess would be take screen shots and paste them into your report.
“Between these three sites, you can discover just about anything, including:”
You’re kidding, right? Because of your list, you can not accurately provide any of the items you listed – yes you can get close, but not accurately. And using Alexa for traffic……tell me that’s a joke b/c you can’t be serious.
To add to that, I just used “your system” to check a client of mine’s “traffic” using your examples……it’s more than 10x off of what their real traffic is. The system has flaws and when you pitch this, you better be sure to mention these not 100% accurate or you could be in serious trouble in the future.
I really enjoyed this article. I’m currently in a job where I’m basically at the bottom but I have a lot of Internet Marketing knowledge I know would help the company. This seems like something I could use to get my foot in the door (or, one more step in the door). I really appreciate your willingness to share it with everyone.
Let me just say this. I work in the Seo business and the first thing I pictured while reading this article was walking past the sleez-bag sales people who work in the sales office of my building. The second thing I pictured was working on those god damn MLM sites that every single tech in my office hates working on. Like some of the others commented I was half expecting to see a “www.earnmillionsfromhome.com” link on the bottom of the article. Unless you can absolutely guarantee your client that your going to “improve their sales” and “beat the competition” I think this is somewhat of a dishonest way of snagging yourself a client. I think the majority of folks here are in the freelance business to put their skills to use in a field that they enjoy working, not sell hopes and dreams to convince a client to cave into your sales pitch. Just my 2 cents noone has to agree with it.
Powerful, information-packed post! Though it may be sales-pitch sounding, it sure stands out from the rest. I know I have a hard time, sometimes, giving up my big secrets that have worked for me; I appreciate the author sharing with us. Inspiring one’s competitive nature is a often a sure win. War Wagon looks interesting and full of useful information too. Thanks.
Thanks everyone for your wonderful and insightful feedback!
@ bejamshi: “too much optimism and not enough realism.” The fact is, I didn’t just come up with this and shoot it off as the next hot theory. You can’t argue with cold hard facts. I tested this with nearly 100 consultants and now dozens of sales people. These are people seasoned at selling as well as new freelancers terrified to ask for the sale. It has worked exceedingly well for both. Can’t get more real than that! =)
@ cmallen: you are so welcome. I believe that when we give all that we have and help liberate others, we serve the highest good and hence we are taken care of in the process. It’s how I’ve lived my life and how I believe I truly came to my success. I gave away tens of thousands of dollars worth of my products and services when I first started and it has only served to help me. And that brings me to…
@ vladfr: This is not working on spec. You are hired to provide a service, such as create a website, write copy, or promote a website. You are not doing that for free. You are simply creating value. And the numbers don’t lie. We’ve had an enormous success rate with this. Nearly 100% across numerous types of freelancers and sales people. And each competitive analysis, after I created the first one and templatized it, only takes me about 5 minutes. I also have a series of questions to ask them that I then use to develop my detailed proposal and bid. If you’re a good consultant worth your price, you have to do this research anyway to create an accurate proposal and know what you need to do for your client.
For instance, in SEO, unless I do a competitive analysis and basic keyword research, how will I know how much to charge? I won’t know what amount of work it will take to get top page rankings because I won’t know which keywords I’ll push, their competition, and the strength of the existing top rankings. So either way you have to do the research. The power in this is giving that research up front for free as the REASON they need to buy. It’s value.
@ everyone else: Some of you raised the issue of wording. Phrase however you like based on your experience and confidence. That’s fine! I am a professional sales copy writer and author. I have a lot of famous clients and experience. So my wording is naturally more ‘in your face.’ Trust me, I wasn’t always like that and I believe above all else, we must be authentically ourselves. I encourage being confident and direct with clients, but foremost you must be yourself. Trust yourself to know the right way to approach a client and fly with it.
Secondly, others of you asked about the competitive analysis for small markets or clients. Remember, you’re doing the analysis for your prospect or client’s competitors, not them. So just pick a large competitor or industry leader that does show up in the referred sites and have more accurate data.
For small industries, such as photography – if you’re doing basic services for photographers, the same rules apply. If you’re offering photography services, I would take the informative approach. Perhaps do a case study on people who have hired wedding photographers, if that’s what you do, and survey them on their greatest hurdles working with photographers, what matters to them most, what they love and hated about their experience working with photographers. I’d primarily also target wedding planners who hire photographers.
There is a way to approach this for any service in any market, I assure you. Just think outside the box.
Another effective strategy I just learned recently at a business seminar is to do a competitive analysis on your client as though you were the competitor. If you had to beat your client out, what weaknesses would you exploit? This new lens shows you in a very stark, different light, where you should concentrate your efforts to protect against onslaught from a competitor.
As always, thanks for reading everyone and I welcome continued feedback and discussion! You all give excellent ideas and insights.
While I think the basic concept of offering a simple competitive analysis is a strong one, the use of data resources that are questionable at best (even SpyFu specifically states that their numbers are approximations, extrapolations, and estimates) is a dangerous and misleading tactic.
I charge a pretty penny for competitive analysis, because providing real competitive information is extremely valuable to clients. But unless you’re making clear to your prospects that the info you’re providing is essentially guesswork, you’re completely misrepresenting the accuracy of your information. And inaccurate or incomplete information isn’t particularly helpful.
I’m not arguing with the gist of the post – basing your pitch on the results of a brief competitive analysis can be a strong “in” with a potential client – but I seriously question the viability of the services you’re selling.
Holy shit this is one of the best things I’ve ever read on here. Subscribing to your blog NOW.
I agree with Michael. This article blew me away. Definitely subscribing.
Love this!!
By far the most informative read I’ve had in a long time.
Essentially, what Jaime is offering to do for her clients is to get them more market share. It’s a business strategy that she can propose to her clients where she knows what information to use in order to find the weaknesses with the competitors online business systems. Get more market share. Brilliant way to offer your services.
More articles like these, please.
This is the most valuable post I have read in a while. Your contribution will bring massive value to my business.
To those of you that find the tone abrasive – welcome to sales and marketing! The winner is the guy who positions him or herself most effectively. This is a pitch to be aimed at the business owner.
This is a great article!
Truthfully this technique is in the same family of what one of my old co-workers does when she goes interviewing. Being in PR she she includes/proposes what she can do for the company, what competitors are doing and lastly what the company should do to get a foot ahead of the competitor. Basically showing the value that you would bring to the company instead of just showing up to fill in another open ‘position.’
Great article, something to think about when cold calling/trying to generate some work.
One of the best articles I have read in a very long time from FS. Thanks Heaps.
Great article! I think the last point is something that could be emphasized more. A lot of the companies we deal with are looking for a one stop shop. Especially small businesses who normally don’t have time to do additional research themselves. With resources like this site finding people with the right skills in a reasonable amount of time is not a problem.
thank you….
Professional and commercial web traffic analysis companies use tracking software. It is one of the programs that they are using to analyze web traffic.
I have been trying to run a few of these and I have found many problems. Can you help me out? With Alexia they need to be in the top 100,000 of their research group so the majority of businesses are not large enough. With Spyfu It will not come up with info on any of the sites I try to put in and it seems that you need to pay a monthly fee to get any benefit. With Quantcast you can only do research on your site or one where you have access to the domain. you need to be able to enter the quantcast tag into it. That, I think, is impossible without receiving it from each owner of the domain. Most people are not quick to give that up. PLEASE, correct me on anything if I am wrong. I like the Idea but how in the worls can it work?
I love writing for Freelance Switch because the readers here genuinely get involved. Thank you for all the great questions and feedback. You guys rock.
Ok, to dig a bit deeper:
@ Jess: I thank you for bringing up this point. It’s hard to cover every nuance in an article. When we provide this competitive analysis, we don’t pretend that the information is accurate or takes the place of an in depth analysis that requires traffic tracking and analysis.
I’ve also found that prospects intuitively know this. They know that they’re not going to bet their bank account on it, but it helps them wrap their heads around this vague, scary beast called the internet and how the heck they’re supposed to participate in this new playing field. It demystifies things for them and puts their potential strengths and weaknesses into perspective.
I always tell my prospects that this is a quick analysis to help us gauge the nature of their market and the strength (or weakness) of their competitor’s position and hold on that market. We make the point that as we begin promoting their site and tracking data, we’ll course correct as we hone in more accurately. This brief analysis is actually a great way to upsell to your services.
@ Tim: You don’t need to be a site owner to get quantcast information. You just type in any domain and they give you a basic report. You have to own your site to register it with quantcast to have them track your data – that’s what you were trying to do.
I think I addressed it in my earlier comment to this article, but remember that the strength of this analysis is the data on their COMPETITOR or industry leader – not the data on their own website. That would be ideal, but we know that those who need our help most won’t be large enough to be listed in many of these sites. So just do your analysis on an industry leader that does show up in these sites.
@ general comments about accuracy of SpyFu, Quantcast, and Alexa: Yes, unfortunately it’s not a perfect world. This is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees – the power of this competitive analysis isn’t the information you’re giving your prospect. It’s that you’re giving it, period. It’s a peace offering and a gesture of trust and willingness to be of service. It evokes the law of reciprocation and builds an instant rapport and relationship with the prospect that is otherwise virtually impossible to create within 20 minutes of a first cold call.
So all you do is mention that this data is not completely accurate, but is used to help us gauge the overall nature of their market. Then follow that with, “when we begin promoting your website, we just install tracking to gather data on all your site visitors and then we’ll have a far more accurate picture. However, this info is useful because it shows us where our starting point is and gives us an overall bullseye to aim for. We’ll course correct as we go.”
And thank you for all the comments that you enjoy these types of articles. I promise all my posts will be of this nature. Its what I love to write. Perhaps once in a while you’ll get something inspirational or about our inner growth that empowers our professional development, but I promise to make those actionable as well.
All my best to each of you,
Jaime Mintun
I agree with the sentiment. Going to a client with some hard data and making a rough proposal upfront can be very effective. Thanks for the post.
Hi, Jaime
Thanks for mentioning SpyFu and advocating its uses. Those commenting about tools are correct; our accuracy is not infallible, but it remains strong.
To your point, a savvy user treats the data as a foundation to build upon. We’ve seen some entrepreneurs make amazing strides off of just tidbits of their competitors’ information. Being able to tell a potential client that Competitor X has raised its online spending in the past 30 days would earn more than a few credibility points.
Great article!
Hey,
Honestly, very impressive post. I like that its very positive and encouraging, Not a lot of successful people reveal much about their process. Thanks for sharing.
good article and I can gleen some info from it, but I don’t think it applies to 90% of the people here. Those tracking sites you mentioned only really have stats for big time companies. I don’t think any big company worth their salt would hire a random FREELANCER to work on their site, much less not be able to do it and outsource it to some other random person whom they prolly have never worked with before. Also, most small to mid size companies don’t apply to this methodology just for the sheer fact that a little mom and pop shop wouldn’t be competeing with amazon.
I’m afraid this works a little too well. I recently sent an email to our local paper that has an atrocious website about what they can do to fix it and that they need to look at what their peers are doing.
Well, they want to hire me to redesign their site, the problem is I don’t have remotely enough time with a full time job and full time college. I’ll either respectfully decline or figure out a way to sub-contract.
I’ll be a little more careful in the future…
I must say this is one of the best articles I have read in a long time from. Quite interesting and inspiring too. Thanks.
I’ve been a sales and marketing professional since 1971. This is one of the best sales tactics I’ve ever seen. I’m a 95% closer myself. Well done!
Very good article but I challenge your integrity as a professional:
“Tell them that you’ll want to put your best expert on the project and you need to check availability.”
and then post the job on a board and pick up a stranger you have never worked with??!?!?!?!
I guess I’m stupid…I don’t see how in the world this would work in my line of business, which is custom software development. Competitive analysis? Of what? Customers come to me when they need software written specifically for their business. I’m missing something here. This sounds like a great plan if you’re in the business of internet marketing or something like that. I just don’t get how I would work the competitive analysis into my pitch. Am I really that stupid?
It would work well if you could come up with ideas for software to develop for companies and adapt this tactic to pitch those ideas to them, instead of simply waiting for clients to come to you.
Really cool approach, it’s a way a providing upfront value by helping them identify a competitive gap. What subject line do you use for e-mail prospecting?
I second John’s comment: “This sounds like a great plan if you’re in the business of internet marketing or something like that. I just don’t get how I would work the competitive analysis into my pitch.”
Jamie, how does a ‘competitive analysis’ translate to another service? In order to do that in any industry outside of web marketing (using the tools online like spyfu and alexa), where do you get that kind of ‘insider info’ on the prospect’s competitor(s)? For example, I specialize in branding and package design for food and specialty products. How could this translate to my industry or to graphic design services in general?
Can you elaborate (provide ‘for instance’ examples) on the ways a service providing freelancer could approach this outside of your industry? I have a hunch the competitive analysis would depend less on hard data and more on a technique (as you commented later on, creating a ‘reciprocal’ relationship.) The analysis seems to be the key to the success of this technique, so please provide more in-depth info on how we can tailor it to work. A bit more detail and I think I could come up with a way to apply this.
Thanks for a wonderful sales article – we can all use some sharpening of these skills!
It seems like a lot of the “this doesn’t work” responses are thinking of this in reverse. I was skeptical just reading the article, but reading Jamie’s replies in the comments I was able to pick out the points that really make sense- Although tracking data is not 100% accurate, the data you do get there doesn’t come out of nowhere and can give you a good enough snapshot of your potential clients’ competition.
What people seem to miss is that you’re not then going to send an e-mail to the companies you’ve been researching. You’re pitching to their smaller competitors or related companies in the field.
It seems to me that if you run a small bookstore, you will never compete with Amazon on equal footing, but there are certainly things you can learn from analyzing them to make your business stronger. Likewise you can look at big franchises and take away some good information on how to improve the web presence or even general marketing for a mom-and-pop store.
Now this is the kind of thinking I can get down with.
Jaime,
Post a donation button on this site. This info has helped me land several projects and has had a 100% success rate.
BTW- Saying Reverse Engineering is the most powerful part of the line.
Thank You!
Alan
Alan, please let us see your portfolio.
Never saw this article when it first posted, but just read it today. Amazing information, really because it’s a way of thinking “as a client” rather than what skills you have as a freelancer and that’s what really makes a return on investment.
Amazingly well put, concise and most of all, effective. Thanks!
Also, I see that unfortunately your blog is gone
Is it coming back anytime soon?
This method is genius, but seems ultimately to consist of bamboozling people by using statistics that take 5 minutes to look up.
Wow – this is truly an inspiration. I realize this was written a while back, but glad I found the post. I will have to head over to your site now! Thanks for the advice!
Excellent article. We’ve done this, but have charged customers for it, never took the approach of offering it for free as a sales tool. I like it and I think we are going to give it a try. Thanks so much for sharing these details.
I was services you market to a client after giving them this information. Do you just do SEO/web design work for them?
Very useful and informative!
Great stuff! I already do freelance work full time for web design from freelance sites and I have been trying to think of a way to break off from that. I also want to get into seo and I believe this approach will take me there. Thanks a bunch!
Great post, I think giving anyone business with a website the ability to get a free SEO / SEM analysis for their business will not only show them the value and potential of their website it will show them the value of your knowledge and services.
Thank you for posting this welcomed information, Jaime.
My editor and I are collaborating on building a generic spec and are using the key principles here as the founding tools in creating a cold email campaign.
We’re going to break the sections down into pitching, consultation & services.
I think the key is to take the ideas and roll with it in your own style.
Thanks again! Helped (inspire) us enormously.