Design Selling 101 Newcomers to the freelance life often believe that the success of a graphic or web design business lives or dies with their design skills. This is partially true. After all, if you are not a good designer, you’re going to have a hard time being successful on your own. But the truth of the matter is, your skills as a designer are second to how good a salesperson you are. Because if you cannot sell, you might as well give up your freelance dreams. Get hired somewhere and earn an hourly salary to design all day, while someone else handled the selling part. There’s nothing wrong with that scenario. Many designers spend their entire career working for someone else, and they’re delighted doing so. Running a home-based design business is not for everyone. However, if you do give it a go, you better feel comfortable selling because your business will depend on your skills as a salesperson. Have you ever heard the saying, “Good marketing can sell a bad product, but bad marketing cannot sell a good product?” The same applies to home-based or freelance design businesses. Someone good at selling, but a mediocre designer can still make a living as a freelancer. However, a fantastic designer that has no sales skills will have a difficult time staying afloat. Become a good seller. So how do you become a good seller? Like with everything else, it comes with practice and experience. Although being a people person does help. Let’s break it down. First, you need to get the notion out of your head that selling is about making a sale. It’s not. The sooner you realize this, the better you’ll be at sales. Selling is not about the exchange of money for services, it’s about giving a client relief and lowering their anxiety when it comes to spending their money. Clients come to you because they need something. It’s that “problem” that your job as a designer is to provide a “solution.” However, even though the client realizes they need something from you, they feel a reluctance to part with their hard-earned money to get it. If you can put them at ease with that notion and make them realize what their money is buying, they’ll be more willing to spend what is necessary. Putting the client at ease. How do you put a client at ease? The core principle of successful selling is making the client feel cared for and appreciated. When someone feels cared for and appreciated, they let their guard down and open up, and become much more receptive to ideas. If you offer a client a solution to their problem, and you make them feel cared for and appreciated in the process, it becomes much easier to lead them through the sales process. The sales process. Let’s break the sales process into basic components. Imagine the sales process as a video game. In a video game, you can’t just turn on the game, jump to the final level and expect to win. Video games are designed, so every level along the way equips and better prepares you for that final level and victory. The same principle applies to the selling process. You can’t win over a client by jumping to the final level of the sales process (which is price by the way). Before you discuss price, you need to lead the client through the various levels of the sales process. Think of these levels as objection points. Obstacles to overcome before moving on to the next level of the “video game sales process”. Level one is: Trust. If you cannot get a client to trust you, there’s no point moving forward because you’ll never make the sale. Think about it. What was the last thing you purchased from someone you didn’t trust? I can’t think of anything. However, I can think of several things I did not buy because I didn’t fully trust the person doing the selling. It’s the stereotypical used car salesman. No matter how much they smile and say the right things, you always wonder what they are not telling you. So the first level of the sales process is getting the client to trust you. How do you do that? There are many, ma