August 27th, 2008
Feast or Famine: The Freelancer’s Sales Pipeline
photo credit: seeks2dream
Sometimes I feel like I’m riding on a pendulum that is swinging back and forth. At one end I have more websites in development than I can comfortably handle, and I’m working long hours just to meet my deadlines. In a relatively short period of time, though, things will shift to the other extreme where I find myself twiddling my thumbs and wondering how I’m going to earn enough to pay all the bills. From conversations I’ve had with other people who have gone into business for themselves, bouncing back and forth between these two scenarios is very common. It’s also very annoying.
Dissecting how this pattern gets established is easy. When I have nothing on my plate, I frantically scramble to get any and every project I possibly can. All of my time is spent on sales and marketing. Zero time on productive development.
This type of dedicated focus will eventually pay-off. Then I get a flood of projects requiring my immediate attention. All of my time is spent on productive development. Zero time on sales and marketing. You see where this is going. Once I complete all of these projects, there’s no new business coming in. So I start the cycle again, spending all my time trying desperately to attract some new clients.
What’s worse is I even recognize it while it’s happening. When I have a stack of projects that I’m working on, I know that there’s no marketing happening. But what can I do? I need to take care of the clients I already have on the line.
Finding Balance
The key is to always be spending some of my time on finding new business and some of my time working on the projects I currently have. It’s far easier for me to make the time to do the current development work I have. (After all, there are clients asking me when their sites are going to be ready.) It’s much more difficult to schedule time to do the sales and marketing when I’m busy.
I’m trying to find a window that I can treat as a dedicated block of time for building my sales pipeline. Maybe it will be from 3pm to 5pm every day. Maybe it’s all day Wednesday. I’m not sure, but I feel confident that it’s a necessary step for the evolution of my business.
When I’m busy it will be tempting to say I can skip the marketing this week because I really need to catch up on building all these websites. In fact that’s what happened last week. I had scheduled some time to do some sales calls, and I decided to work on projects instead. The result? I can already see that the work I have right now is probably going to be completed before I have any new projects coming in. Oops.
Why Is This So Hard?
I usually want to complete projects as quickly as I possibly can. The sooner I finish, the sooner I get paid. It can feel irresponsible to spend a few hours looking for new business, when I already have someone willing to pay me as soon as I’m done with their site. Part of me also doesn’t want to start a conversation with a client if I’m already booked up for the next few weeks. There’s a fear that if I tell them they are going to need to wait until next month for me to get started, they will just walk away.
The truth, though, is that most of the clients I work with aren’t ready for me to start working until at least a week or two after our initial contact. (Some of my past clients have taken months to pull the trigger.) And even if I did say that it was going to be a few weeks, I think most of my clients would have been okay with it. I’m sure there are exceptions, but here is another advantage of this approach.
When I’m in feast or famine mode, I’m a little desperate to land a customer. Since I have nothing to do and no revenue coming in, it’s critical that I close every sale. With a steady pipeline of new business coming in, it’s not as painful if a particular prospect turns out to be a bust because they need a new website today instead of next month.
Does it seem like I’m onto something here? Does anybody else have any insight or tips for getting over the hump of transitioning from a feast-or-famine business to a steady-pipeline business?
Sep 20th, 2008
6:28 pm
I think you answered your own question – it’s simply about setting a goal for yourself each and every day, or each and every week, regardless of how much work you’ve got piled up. Feast or famine is a scenario that freelancers, including myself, create for ourselves by doing exactly what you described – when business is good, we neglect our marketing efforts in order to complete our current projects without overstressing ourselves. Once that load of work dries up, then suddenly we have nothing to do BUT get more work, and we’re desperate to get it because we’ve got bills to pay. One solution is to set aside a certain portion of time, whether it’s each day or each week, to conduct marketing activities, or to set a goal of inquiring about a set number of new projects each day or each week. Discipline! Another possibility is to manage your time better by outsourcing the activities that are outside of your core business activities, and focus solely on those. As a result, you’ll earn more money because you’ll be billing more hours of your workday, so you’ll be able to afford hiring another freelancer to handle other tasks, such as marketing or administrative duties. You could also use a portable employer of record; most of those agencies handle invoicing and collections, which alone is a huge time-saver. It also makes for a less stressful tax time! Unfortunately there’s no EASY solution, but these suggestions might help you create a process that works for your business.
Sep 22nd, 2008
10:10 am
@Angela: Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I’m interested in the idea of an employer or record. Do you personally take this route (or know anyone who does)? It sounds like it has the potential to make life a lot easier on a freelancer.