Win clients over on a discovery call with this one tip
Freelancing feels awfully weird right now. I know in my key industries (science, environment, health, and biotech) that the world has gone topsy-turvy, thanks to a lot of the decisions made in the name of “efficiency.”
So when a client comes knocking, and the project is a good fit, and they want to hop on a call, it’s important to make the most out of that discovery call.
A few seasons back, TWC talked about how to ace your discovery call. But today, I’m going to add one more thing onto that action-packed episode: show your clients how you can solve their problems.
Of course, you have to be good at your craft. My pals Melanie Padgett Powers and Matthew Fenton just riffed on this very critical point on a recent episode of Deliberate Freelancer. If you’re not objectively good at what you do, all the negotiating and faking-it-til-you-make it when it comes to knowing your worth won’t take you very far, if at all.
When I say, show your clients how you can solve their problems, I mean it literally.
On a recent discovery call where the client wanted to hire me for fact-checking, I was thrilled when they offered to pull up the working document. Of course, I can’t fact-check on the fly and when I am actually fact-checking, I need it to be dead silent.
But once they began walking me through that document, I could see how I could help them bulletproof their report for accuracy. I could explain, in real time, how certain things needed to get annotated for fact-checking. I could walk them through my thought process when approaching trickier parts that might seem more subjective.
And in real time, I saw things click with my client because they saw immediately how I could add value for them.
Depending on your service areas, showing your clients what you can do might look different. Freelancers offering product-based services, such as graphic or web design, can probably benefit from a more hands-on discovery call like the one I just described. It might be challenging to edit, or create social media, on the fly, but the more you can show a client your work or thought process, the better.
Sometimes, discovery calls are just getting to know a client. But more often, someone has a very specific problem that they’d like you — or someone else — to fix. Don’t let that opportunity go to someone else. Show your unique approach by walking people through your thought process.
If you’re looking for TWC’s resource store, you can now find it over at https://www.wudanyan.com/resource-store. All former episode transcripts have also migrated over to www.wudanyan.com/