#363: What Freelancers Get Wrong About Prospecting (and How to Fix It)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1.3 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries. You know what really got me thinking about today's topic? I had a conversation just a couple of weeks ago, actually a few weeks ago, right before the holidays, with a coaching client of mine. And she had been doing consistent prospecting for almost a full month, sending out emails regularly, following up the whole nine yards. I mean, she, you know, for what she had done, she had done it right, but she was ready to throw in the towel and she said something to the effect of Ed, I don't know, this isn't working. I've sent out over 40 emails and I've gotten nowhere. Maybe I just need to try something different or I need to completely change my approach. I'm a little exasperated. And here's what fascinated me about this conversation. She was actually closer to success. I don't know for sure, but I bet she was much closer to success than she realized. But like so many other writers, she was ready to give up right before the magic typically happens. So here's the thing. I really believe that it's in moments like these when it's so important to zoom out and look at your situation from a different perspective. So let me share something that might shift your perspective on prospecting, specifically in any B2B scenario. And by B2B, I'm talking about a business selling to another business. Your case is a B2B situation when you're doing marketing because you are a business trying to sell to another business. Now you may be selling to an association, a non profit. That's fine, let's just lump them all together. What I mean is it's not one consumer selling to another consumer. It's not a business selling to a consumer. So it's not Nike selling shoes to consumers. We're talking about one business selling to another. And in any of these situations, only about 5 to 10% of your prospects are either actively looking for someone like you or will be doing so in the short run. More specifically, the next 90 days. Let that sink in for a minute. And by the way, this has been proven over and over again. There have been a number of studies on this over the years. The exact percentage is going to vary, of course, but it's really that small. Only 5 to 10% of viable prospects you reach out to are actively looking or will be actively looking for a freelance writer, a copywriter or marketing strategist, et cetera. In the short run, that means that even if you craft the most brilliant prospecting easy email ever written, even if you have the perfect call to action, even if you follow up at exactly the right intervals, 90 to 95% of your prospects simply aren't in a position to say yes to you right now. Not because your email was bad, not because your approach was wrong, simply because the timing isn't right. The timing. Think of it like planting a garden. You carefully prepare the soil, you plant the seeds, you water them constantly, but for weeks, nothing seems to happen above ground. Now, does that mean that you're doing something wrong? No, it doesn't. There's tremendous activity happening beneath the surface. We can't see it. Those seeds are developing strong root systems that will eventually support the healthy plants. Things are happening. There's chemistry going on there. There's biology happening, right? Prospecting works the same way. Those emails you're sending, those are seeds. And just like in gardening, you can't rush the process. There's only so much that's within your control. And the idea is that if you do those things consistently and you do them well, you know that you're going to get some plants sprouting from the ground. You know, eventually you're going to get some fruit. Okay? You just don't know which specific seeds. And you also can't control the timing. So this brings me to what I consider the most counterintuitive truth about prospecting. A mediocre message delivered at the perfect time will almost always outperform a perfect message delivered at the wrong time. Now, I know that might confuse some of you, ruffle some feathers, especially if you're someone who prides themselves on crafting the perfect email, or you spent a lot of time in the past agonizing over the copy of your email, personalizing just right, finding the perfect prospects. When you see what they're doing, you're thinking, that is so right up my alley. When they get my message, they're going to be all over it. And look, don't get me wrong. All those things matter, right? Finding the right prospect, having the best copy, all those things matter. They do make a difference. But here's the thing. I've seen writers spend weeks agonizing over every word in their prospecting Emails testing different subject lines, tweaking their calls to action and all those things. They're important, optimization is important, but they're often missing the bigger picture. Timing trumps everything else. So let's talk about why that's the case, why this timing factor makes prospecting feel so frustrating. When you're sending out emails and getting nothing but crickets, it's natural to think you're doing something wrong. And who could blame you? Your inner critic starts having a field day. Suddenly he or she wakes up and is going, okay, great, we got ourselves a great subject here. I'm going to have so much fun today. You know? And you start wondering, oh my, maybe my positioning is completely off. Maybe my message isn't compelling enough. Maybe I should try a completely different approach. Maybe I'm just a fraud that I've suspected, I really am. And maybe prospects, you're seeing right through that. But here's what's really happening, because all that is fiction. Remember that 5 to 10% number I mentioned earlier? That means that in a batch of 100 emails, only 5 to 10 of those prospects might be in a position to even consider hiring you right now. Okay, now let's go further. Out of those five or ten, maybe only one or two will actually respond positively. Listen, I'm not saying that that is tried and true, that that's going to happen throughout, because I don't want to discourage you. You can get much higher numbers. I'm just trying to give you a worst case scenario because I want you to look at this from a totally different point of view. I want you to really gain some perspective here and not get lost in the weeds and not get lost in this negative self talk about how you're a fraud, because you're not. Okay, so out of those five or ten, only let's say one or two actually respond positively. Why just one or two? There's a number of reasons. Put yourself in your prospect situation. Maybe their inbox was full that day. Maybe they were traveling that week. Maybe they accidentally deleted the email. Maybe they got distracted and moved on. Maybe they started reading it and they were going, oh, wait a minute, we could actually use somebody like this. But then they got a phone call. Or maybe they got pulled into a meeting and then they just left your email and then it just got buried in an inbox and they just missed the whole thing and forgot all about it entirely. This challenge is worth what Seth Godin, author Seth Godin calls the dip. It's that valley between initial excitement and eventual success. And in prospecting, it's particularly brutal because the feedback loop is so long. But here's the fascinating thing about the dip. It's actually a positive signal because the dip is what keeps most people from succeeding. It's the reason why that client spot you want will eventually open up. Because most of your competition is going to quit somewhere in the dip. The dip is what keeps the pool of talent as clean as possible. I'm glad things are hard. I'm glad this business is hard. I'm glad being a self employed professional is hard because only so many people who attempt this actually stay the course. And usually that's going to be the better people, the more talented people, the ones with the right attitude, the right mindset and yeah, the right skills. And you kind of want that, you want it to be hard. But the people who quit quit in the dip by convincing themselves that prospecting doesn't work. Or, you know, there's another way of doing it. I haven't figured it out, so whatever, I'm just not going to do it or I just need to try something else. This is not going to work for me. This is too hard. Now let me share something that might seem contradictory at first. Email prospecting is simultaneously the worst marketing strategy when you look at the numbers and the most effective one by control. So let me explain what that means. Yes, the response rates are low for email prospecting. They are. In fact, any direct marketing vehicle is going to have low response rates, period, if you have any numbers whatsoever. Meaning like if you were reaching out to more than a few people, let's say a few hundred over a period of time, you know, you're looking at single digit response rates. Sometimes you might get into double digits, but you're not going to get 80% positive response rate. It's not going to happen. That might happen with lower numbers. Let's say that, you know, you start out, you've only sent out four, five emails and suddenly one of them is not only very interested, but they actually hire you and they turn into a retainer client. I say, well, GED, that was a 20% not only response rate but massive success rate. I, I think it's fine, I see that happen all the time, but it's, it's not the norm and it's not what you can expect with every set of five emails. That's not how statistics works. Past results are not indicative of future outcomes. Right, We've all heard that same thing here. It can feel like pushing a boulder uphill. It often does. And it can be exhausting. I agree 100%. But here's the thing. When you need to fill your pipeline quickly, nothing gives you more control over your outcomes than direct outreach, than email prospecting. Think about it. You can choose to send out 100 emails this week to direct prospects and agencies and possibly have a new client by next week. That's really, really powerful. Or if you're in good shape right now, I mean, you could use maybe another client, but you're okay, you can dial it way down and send just three emails a week for a maintenance plan of sorts. I don't know of any other strategy that's this easy to deploy and allows you to throttle your results at the same time. So I, I really want to stress this because as I'm reading posts on LinkedIn and comments on LinkedIn, Facebook and just talking to writers and solo marketers, I hear this all the time. Oh, that. You know, email prospecting doesn't really work, or it didn't work for me or hasn't worked for me. And you need a different perspective here. Yes, it's. The response rates are terrible. I mean, I wish they were better, but it's not because of the market. It's not because of the economy. It's not because of you. Any direct response vehicle is going to have low response rate, period. But what it does give you is the ability to dial it up or down, to be proactive in terms of who you reach out to. And that's really, really powerful. Most other marketing vehicles don't give you that. Okay, so keep that in perspective. Now, I'm not suggesting you or anyone should do heavy prospecting, heavy outreach forever. That's not sustainable and it's not necessary. Okay, so that's the good news. It's really hard, and it requires a lot of you, and it requires the right mindset. It requires you to develop strong habits, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But it's not something that you have to do forever. Once your pipeline is healthy, you can and should transition to a more balanced marketing mix. Maybe one that involves regular LinkedIn posts, speak engagements, maybe some strategic partnerships, guesting and very targeted podcast, regular and really smart, targeted, relevant networking. It could involve one or many or none of those things. And other things that I didn't mention. That's not the point. The point, and this is crucial, you have to commit to, to executing that balanced strategy consistently. And this is where I see a lot of writers get into trouble. They get busy with client work, they let their marketing slip and suddenly they find themselves back in panic mode when a project ends or a client leaves. So what happens? They scramble to find work. And this type of anxiety ridden marketing, the cycle of kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall with a lot of anxiety, that's all they know. So they associate marketing with those periods where they've had to really scramble. And when they do outreach, that's typically the only time and the only way they do it. So I don't blame you if this is your mo. I would be very resistant to doing outreach because my only association with it or my main association is these negative events and, you know, these negative emotions. So I get it. So let's talk about something since we're on the topic. Something it often gets overlooked in this conversation. Being a solo professional means wearing a lot of hats. And let's be honest, some of those hats fit better than others. You might be an absolutely brilliant writer, your client work might be top notch, but maybe with marketing and prospecting, maybe those things are not your strong suit. And you know what? That's completely okay. Here's the truth. You don't have to be great at prospecting to be successful at it. You're not expected to be great at every aspect of your business. And this is important. It's rare to meet a successful solo professional who didn't invest in their marketing, who didn't spend time, effort and resources marketing themselves, marketing their business, marketing their value, their services. And by invest, I don't just mean money. I'm talking about time, energy, and consistent effort. Okay, so if your experience with prospecting and marketing in the past has been negative, there is a chance that it's just not something that you like to do. Maybe it's not something that comes natural to you. To some people, it is a much more natural and enjoyable task than to others. And that's okay. Let's just get that out of the way. It's true. It really is. So I don't want you to feel like if you've had a negative experience that you know there's something wrong with you. There's not. There's not. And maybe you're just not great at it. We all have preferences. Maybe you don't really enjoy it and that's okay. But that brings me to something I see far too often. I see writers who are out there hoping that their LinkedIn profile will magically attract clients, or their website will somehow get discovered, or word of mouth will keep their pipeline full, or the right person will stumble across their portfolio and all Those things, or some of those things can happen. When they do, it's wonderful, right? We've all had these experiences. But you know what? Hope is not a strategy. You can hope for these things, but hope is not a strategy. Hope doesn't pay the bills. Hope doesn't fill your pipeline, and hope certainly doesn't create predictable income. So, all right, let's tie all these things together. You know, maybe you haven't been doing it consistently and you only do it when you need to scramble, which creates a vicious cycle and negative spiral of results. Because now you're not doing it right. You're filled with anxiety, you're not effective. So that's what you associate with prospecting. And then you don't like doing it. Maybe you finally admit that you're not good at it. So, gosh, is there even any hope for me? All right? And there is. So, you know, I'm going to give you some ideas and solutions. If you're not great at it, and hope is not a strategy, that doesn't mean you should give up. Not at all. Do not give up. Let me share something that's transformed my own approach to prospecting and has helped many of my coaching clients. You need to make prospecting as automatic as brushing your teeth or is working out. It needs to become something you just do without the mental drama. That's the solution. Okay, so if you can find a way to turn this into an automatic process or set of tasks, that is 90% of your problem. Because small, steady actions repeated over time every week, they beat talent any day. So in other words, it's about having a good system. That's really, really important, of course, but just as important, it's about executing that system consistently, week in and week out. James Clear talks about this in his book, which is wonderful book, Atomic Habits. And he lays out the whole book is. Is laid out this way. It's based on the four laws of behavior change. These are perfect for making prospecting a consistent HA habit. So let me break down those laws in practical terms. Law number one is to make it obvious. You need to create obvious cues for your prospecting work. Lots of examples of this. You could block out time in your calendar, same time every day. You could set up your workspace the night before. You could keep your prospecting template and tracking sheet easily accessible or maybe visible. Like, maybe you print it out and you put it on top of your keyboard. So it's just, you know, when you get there in the morning, it's the first thing you see. You get the drift? Okay. This is kind of the equivalent of laying out your workout clothes the night before. So when you wake up, go to the bathroom, it's right there, and you can't miss it. When everything's ready, you're more likely to follow through. Okay, so that's law number one, make it obvious. Law number two is to make it attractive. This is about reducing friction and creating positive associations. So for instance, maybe you start with just 20 minutes a day. Okay, that's attractive. Where you celebrate small wins, you find a way to just kind of celebrate each little win with something that's meaningful and attractive to you. Maybe you track your progress visually on a board, a spreadsheet, a poster. Or maybe you pair the activity with something you enjoy, like this just fabulous morning coffee that's more expensive than your everyday stuff, but you go ahead and brew it. Only when you do your marketing. The goal isn't to love prospecting again. It's to make it less daunting. Okay, so law number two, make it attractive. Law number three is make it easy. Now, I find that there's a lot of overlap between attractive and easy. Because if it's easy, that can be attractive. Okay? But sometimes there is a difference. One way to do this, make it easy is to break it down into tiny, manageable steps. You know, maybe you create a very simple protocol, which I'm big on, research three prospects, then send two emails, then do one follow up, then update your tracking sheet. This doesn't have to be all in one day. But the point is it doesn't become overwhelming. You have it broken down to a point where it's super simple. It just feels easy. Notice I'm not saying send 20 emails a day. Start small, build momentum. Then finally, number four, make it satisfying. You want to create immediate rewards, okay? And many different ways of doing that. You know, you could keep a wins journal. You could create a streak tracker, like a consistency streak, and track that. And basically, every time you do what you're supposed to do, you check it. And you don't want to break that chain, right? You don't want to break your streak. And it's visual and it's on your wall, and that way you don't miss it. It's there. It's obvious. It just feels so satisfying to, you know, check off that task. You could celebrate sending the emails instead of just waiting for positive responses. You can make that your win and feel a sense of deep satisfaction knowing that you are the kind of person who does what they say they're Going to do that can be extremely satisfying, at least to most people. So just remember the the habit needs to feel satisfying long before you start seeing results. That's the key element of this fourth law. So when you apply these four laws, something interesting happens. Prospecting stops being this huge, overwhelming task. It just becomes something you just do. It's like checking email or having your morning coffee or brushing your teeth. And when the magic happens, you just see it. Because consistent, imperfect action will always be sporadic perfection. Okay, that's the trick. That's how you get past this. I'm not good at it. I hate it. I'm not consistent. I forget to do it. I only do it when I need to. This is how you break through all of those blocks. Now, before we wrap up, I want to share two final thoughts that might help you maintain momentum when things get tough. First, stop thinking of prospecting as this huge, high stakes activity where every email has to be perfect and every response or lack of response means something about you or your business. Instead, I want you to think of it as an ongoing experiment, a process of planting seeds that will sprout when the time is right. Second, there's no such thing as a free lunch. So what I mean by that is if you don't do consistent prospecting, you have to do other things to market yourself well and consistently. There's no getting around that. Let me say that again. There's no getting around the marketing piece. You may not like that one type of marketing or the other type of marketing or prospecting or email or LinkedIn. Look, that's fine, but there's no such thing as a successful solo professional who never markets themselves. Because even if you're the most well connected person in history, guess what? You still have to reach out to others to see if they'd like some help, right? So no matter what, you have to do some sort of marketing. There's just no getting around it. This idea that I think many of us have, that if you build it, they will come, you hang your shingle, customers will beat a path to your door. You know, this is not that type of industry. We're not selling iPhones. We're not selling something that just everybody absolutely wants and you have overwhelming demand. The demand is out there, of course, but this is a different type of demand. You have to get out there. Even if you're just leveraging your network, that's still marketing. So here's what I want you to do. After listening to this episode. I want to make this actionable. Number one with any new or modified marketing strategy that you're implementing, I want you to commit to a specific timeline. Whatever it is that you're saying you're finally going to do this year, I want you to commit to a timeline before you evaluate results. So let's say you pick 90 days. I'm going to do a 90 day effort, 90 day sprint. I don't want you to quit too early and I want you to make that decision up front. Because when you're in the middle of it and then going gets tough, it's very easy to just arbitrarily say, oh, I think I've tried enough. This is not going to work. Commit to a time period before you start. Number two, set up your environment to make prospecting a daily habit. We talked about the four laws. Revisit those. Brainstorm some ideas for each of those four elements. Number three, in the case of email outreach, start small. Maybe just two or three emails a day at the most. Okay? Start really, really small. Micro actions. Step four, Track your consistency, not your results. Obsess over consistency. Obsess over doing what you committed to to do every day or every week, whatever the frequency it's going to be, focus on that. If you focus on what you can control, which is your actions, your consistency, the outcomes, the results will come. And finally, number five, celebrate the act of showing up. Okay? That's related to number four, just celebrate the fact that you're being consistent. There's nothing like feeding your identity with what you want it to be like. Okay? We all want to feel like we're the kind of people that we say we are and that other people see us as. So I want you to celebrate the fact that you're showing up every week. And don't worry about the responses, don't worry about the results. I know you're still going to, but try to take the focus away from the outcomes. So remember what we talked about at the beginning, that only 5 to 10% of prospects are at any given time ready to hire somebody like you. Okay? You can't control when a prospect will need your services. You can't control when they'll be ready to hire someone. But you can control whether you're on the radar when that moment comes. And that happens through a series of consistent actions, through showing up, through maintaining the habit, even when it feels like nothing's happening. Because here's the truth. The magic of prospecting isn't in crafting the perfect email. It's not in the perfect subject line. It's not in the perfect call to action, the magic is being there consistently, professionally, until timing works in your favor. And when you understand that, and I mean really understand it, prospecting becomes less of a high pressure sales activity and more of a relationship building process. And that's when things start to shift for you. Before you go, I have one more thing to share with you that I'm really excited about. If you are ready to take your prospecting effort to the next level, I'm excited to announce a new prospecting workshop that I'm doing starting next week. It's completely online and over 21 days. If you work with me on this, if you join the workshop, you're going to receive daily lessons. When I say daily, it's just Monday through Fridays, no lessons on the weekends. Daily lessons and assignments designed to help you build effective prospecting habits that stick. This workshop is all about action. It's all about accountability and results. And it's perfect for freelancers who are ready to transform their business. We're going to roll up our sleeves over that three week period and actually create your prospecting plan. I'm going to show you how to do it step by step. We're going to show you how to create your own individual assets and some really powerful habits. We're going to do all that together as a cohort. You're going to come away with everything in place, all ready to go and you'll implement the material, and this is so key, you'll implement that material daily, one day at a time as we move along as a group. In fact, there's some powerful built in accountability in the workshop that it's even a bit magical. As you see your peers poster homework indicate that they've done today's assignment. And this feeling of we're all in this together is really, really powerful in this workshop. And here's what's also exciting. The last few times I've run this workshop, participants were generating leads and landing clients during a 21 days together. And I have a ton of testimonials to prove it. So even though I, you know, this is not designed with that kind of promise that oh yeah, in 21 days you're gonna have all these clients that I don't make any of those claims. But every time I do it, it's remarkable the results that people get just by being consistent and committing to the process. And it's really exciting and super motivating for everybody. Look, this is a tough market. It is what it is, okay? But markets like this call for strong prospecting systems and habits, period. And that's what I'm going to help give you in this workshop. This is not a course. This is very much hands on do daily actions. It's not a big commitment every day. And if you commit to the process, you do the work every day, I'm telling you, you're going to have a very, very powerful system and set of habits that are going to take you far. If you'd like to learn more about the workshop, just send me an email to edblauncher.com and we'll reply with all the details. The workshop begins very soon, next week, Monday, January 20th. So don't wait, don't overthink it. This is a very, very affordable workshop. You get a lot for what you pay for here. Huge value. It's one of the most powerful things I do every year and I think the timing is perfect right now to join us. So thanks again for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time. The Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.