You’re a freelancer in Sales Development. How can you ensure you’re doing it right?

Run every sales development project like it is the only company you work for and that your life depended on it. Give it your all. You became a freelancer because you were the best of the best somewhere. Here's an opportunity to be among the best of the best in the world. Keep learning, applying, experimenting a little bit, especially with tools and processes.

By focusing on understanding the market and clients, setting clear goals to stay motivated, and prioritizing relationship building with prospects, I can ensure reliability. Additionally, committing to continuous learning and being receptive to all feedback are important.

You need to understand what your product is solving for your potential customers, write down the main 3 points that you have while your competitors don't, and understand your product features, benefits and insights, afterwards, you can do a comparative analysis to fully identify your value proposition and try always to quantify your value, this is super important try to find out how your product impact your potential customer, reduce their costs, increase their market share their revenue.

In my experience, you need to know inside out, upside down, exactly what your client expects to achieve with you on the team. Freelancing or not, you're an extension of their team and so you're as invested, if not more so in the results. To ensure you're doing it right, find the pains and gaps, call them out, validate them and prioritize how important each one is now, in 3 months and in a year from now. Then work your tail off to solve those pains and crush expectations.

Build your credibility in terms of creating long term value for your customers ,key differentiators versus what your competition offers which also addresses key business problems your customers are not able to adress but are part of your product offering, adopting platform based approach which will help customers with solutions with seamless integration and solutions which have high sustainability index ,as long as we work as coach with best interest of customer in place ,build on creditability with use cases and references of successful implementation by adding tinge of voice of customer .

Each area has a broad value to most companies and if they use freelancers then they know their ceiling when it comes to rates. If you feel you are worth more then prove yourself but have it in your contract that depending on success you will re negotiate. To be fair if you are good then they will re negotiate for the right talent. To get the money in the first place make sure you have the contacts and background that will make the role easier. Companies are buying who you know as well as what you know.

Staying proactive is key to success. Don't wait for opportunities to knock—go out and create them! Try different channels, relationships can do wonders, and when it comes to pitching clients, be an attention grabber and try always to keep your important stuff in the first 5 or 10 minutes of your presentation, customers decide to keep listening or to mentally move on during that period. Expand the disparity, people will only move if they see themselves falling behind, show them what are they missing, and always position yourself as an advisor or consultant and be fair, show them your value proposition afterwards, and always try to quantify your value, people understand numbers much easier than words!

Know where your customers buy and how they buy. There is no point looking for niche markets when you can make high volume sales in proven areas. If you rely on a certain channel such as social media yet your customers dont use it you arent going to attract sales. Always ask questions about what they read, what channels do they use, who do they trust etc. Build a pitch you can refine and one that looks personal to each person you reach out to. If it is too generic it will get lost amongst the rest.

Use all the tools you can to provide focus. Calenders, CRM Tools, meetings all prompt you to keep a focus on what you want to achieve. Find ways to reach the most people with outreach that is relevant to the audience. Try not to generalise it or use material for two types of customer. If the messaage is different reflect it properly in the content. There is so much material available on any sales subject so take time to see what is currently popular. Also think about what you would write or advise if you were being asked.

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