What to do if you're struggling to find clients.

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It can be incredibly frustrating when you find yourself in a client drought.

First, you begin to question everything.

What am I doing wrong?

And second, you remember that you still have the constant, looming, existential crisis of needing more clients!

Now what do I do?

Before you throw your hands in the air and quit, and before you do anything too radical, let's look at the levers you can pull and the variables you can actually influence. There are only a few questions to ask yourself.

Getting in front of clients

Let's start with the obvious. For you to do a client project you need to things: 1.) a client and 2.) their project (or need).

So, initially, your problem is one of client acquisition. How do you get yourself and your abilities in front of more potential clients?

There are three common methods of acquisition:

1. Creating your own client pipeline (direct-to-client)
2. Working through partners
3. Joining a marketplace

It's totally up to you to determine which strategy (or strategies) you want to pursue in order to get in front of clients. Let's talk about each of them.

Creating your own pipeline

Creating your own client pipeline is certainly the hardest path, but it also has the most long-term value.

You can think of this in two ways:

1. Building a network through direct, one-to-one relationships
2. Creating content that builds an audience

Last week I wrote about how to decide whether or not creating content is for you. Again, it's a big time investment and a lot of work – but it creates a lot of value for you long-term, too.

Not only do you create your own channel of getting your message in front of potential clients, but you have deeper relationships, higher loyalty, and higher margins too since you aren't giving a cut to a partner.

But even if you don't create content, even traditional "networking" will allow you to build your own means of distribution through personal relationships.

Working through partners

The most common way freelancers and service providers work with partners is through subcontracting. Agencies of all sizes will often subcontract parts of projects out to external partners.

Let me give you an example – sometimes a web development agency will sell entire website projects and subcontract the copywriting, photography, etc.

There are some real benefits here. If you have relationships with partners who bring you in on projects, you get to save the time in finding clients yourself. That's more time to dedicate to doing the actual work!

The downside is that you relinquish a lot of control over your own destiny. If your partners aren't sending work your way, where will it come from?

And even on the projects they do send you, they are earning money from YOUR work just by sending you the lead.

Joining a marketplace

A lot of freelancers will get started on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Flexjobs, and SolidGigs.

This is a great solution for a lot of freelancers, because there is seemingly endless work that can be done.

But marketplaces can be difficult to get started and build a reputation.

In the beginning, you will need to apply for a lot of potential positions, and not a lot of them pan out.

And all the while, the marketplace will try and push your prices down, making you work harder and harder to maintain your income.

What to do if clients aren't biting

Once you choose a client acquisition strategy (and you can pursue 2 or even all 3 of those strategies at once) you'll start hearing feedback from potential clients. They'll either hire you (woohoo!) or they will pass on you.

If you find yourself in the position we talked about at the beginning where clients or partners are passing on you, there are only a few possible explanations:

1. Your sample size is too small
2. You have the wrong product or service
3. You're using the wrong message
4. You're asking the wrong price
5. You're targeting the wrong clients
6. You have bad timing

Let's talk about each.

Your sample size is too small

Sometimes (often) your issue isn't really an issue at all. Your issue is simply not actually putting yourself in front of enough potential clients.

You can't expect every lead to actually become a client. In fact, only a minority of your conversations will turn into paying clients.

Start tracking your close rate. What percentage of potential clients end up working with you? One in five? One in ten? One in twenty?

Whatever it is, that's your starting point to start improving upon.

Once you know that about 10% of your meetings turn into paying work, that means that you can expect nine rejections for every "yes" you get.

Before you panic, ask yourself if you've been rejected enough.

You have the wrong product or service

Sometimes the market doesn't actually want the service you provide.

This is rarely actually the case.

For most service providers, you are probably aware of competitors offering similar services to you. That indicates that there is a market need for the service that you're offering.

For example – if you are trying to sell social media management services, but clients aren't biting, you can still be confident this is a service people need. Why? Because lots of people are already paying for it.

So don't worry about this potential explanation unless you feel like you are offering something totally novel and don't have competitors. If there are other people offering the same service you're trying to sell, it's not an issue of the wrong product or service.

You're using the wrong message

Much more frequently the issue is one of messaging and communication.

If you are failing to effectively convey your work, people won't understand what you're offering (or how it can help them)!

If people don't understand what you're offering and how it can help them, they certainly aren't going to pay you money to do it. Why would they?

You're asking the wrong price

If the market has a need for your service, and you're explaining it effectively to potential clients, and they still aren't taking you up on it...you have a price problem.

Is your price aligned the value the client expects to get from working with you? Does the client even have enough budget for your price, even if they want to work with you?

I see this a lot with service providers who want to work with startups.

It's fun to work with early stage companies and their founders, don't get me wrong!

But often, these companies have very limited budgets. And even if they want to pay you what you want, they may not be able to.

PS: Sometimes you are actually pricing yourself too low. Imagine pitching Wal-Mart a new ecommerce website for $5,000. They would laugh you out of the room.

If you are so far below the expectations of the client, they may not trust you to do good work and get the job done.

You're targeting the wrong clients

If the client you're targeting either doesn't have the need you expected or can't afford the rate that you want, you may be targeting the wrong clients.

I'll stick with the startup example. Let's say you're a graphic designer that creats incredible brands – brands that some medium or large-sized companies would pay thousands of dollars for.

If you're targeting startup companies who are telling you that your prices are too high...maybe you should stick or pivot to the larger companies who better recognize your value, agree with your value, and can afford your value.

Or maybe you have offerings that you think are applicable to colleges as well as corporations. You may come to find that corporations are happy to pay you, but colleges aren't.

You have bad timing

This is also rare, but may be the case now in the middle of a global pandemic.

Sometimes you have everything right: your service, your messaging, your price, and your target clients.

Sometimes you just have bad timing. Maybe the client is having a bad quarter, is slammed with a current priority, the economy is in the toilet, or people are ordered to shelter in place.

But beware of clients who say it's a bad time simply as an excuse to reject you for another, more true reason (budget, interest, etc.)

So what do you do?

Knowing that you only have 6 possible explanations for why clients aren't signing the contracts, it's time to get scientific.

Your goal is to isolate the most likely root cause(s). And you can only do that by trying some experiments.

Think back to your science classes – to isolate a root cause, you can only change one variable at a time.

So in your outreach, start changing things up:

• Explain your services in a different way
• Try different pricing
• Pilot a different service
• Target a different type of client

Run these as controlled experiments so you can start to see what changes the results. When a new message is more effective, you can see it on peoples' faces and hear it in their voices.

You can see nonverbal reactions to a price you quote.

If you try to adjust one variable at a time, you'll find a solution.

In rare cases, you can change your services entirely. But I wouldn't start here.

Remember: more often than not your problem can be solved with having more, higher-quality conversations.

Chances are, you're right on the cusp – it's just a few last, small adjustments to be made.

Want to dig in deeper? Click here to check out my Selling and Marketing courses from Freelancing School.

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Jay Clouse is the creator of Freelancing School, which provides the training and community to help people make a living freelancing. He is also the founder of Unreal Collective, a community for founders, freelancers, and creators that runs a 12-week accelerator program.

Jay hosts Creative Elements, which interviews high-profile creators who have made their own independent living.

You can connect with Jay on Twitter @jayclouse or sign up for his Sunday newsletter for creatives at jayclouse.com.