Articulating your value clearly

As a creative freelancer, you will be asked time and time again - why you? So, you need to be able to have a good answer for that every single time.

I’ve got a question for you - what’s in your value prop? Your value proposition is how you differentiate yourself from other qualified freelancers. It's what keeps you progressing in your career and earning more money. It's how you become a memorable creator and how you gain credibility.

A strong value prop is made up of 4 key components:

• Relevancy = how well the value proposition aligns with the needs of the client

• Benefit = the positive outcome your product or service will have on the client

• Energy = the amount of effort your client will or will not need to get results

• Risk = finding the best way to make your offer as risk-free as possible

If you can overcome these objections sooner in the discovery phase, you’ll be able to your boost your conversion rate.

So that we’re all on the same page, let’s break this down further…

Relevancy

It seems like a no-brainer that what you’re offering has to be relevant to the person you’re pitching it to. But actually, this is the first hurdle that creative freelancers often fall over. The foundation for this is identifying who your target client is. However, to achieve relevancy you need to look individually into the specific prospective clients that fall in that bracket. For example, some clients with in-house creative teams may not be responsive to working with freelancers, others may be. Your detailed research here, will then help you to articulate your offering clearly. Why? Because you’ll be able to point out specifically what their pain points are and how you can solve them.

Benefit

If there’s one thing that you should fundamentally know about prospective clients, it’s that they don’t care about what you have to offer. What they care about is how what you have to offer them, adds value to them. Weave them a story in which they are the hero and you are their loyal guide supporting and showing them the way to overcome their pain point. Placing yourself as part of their story, will help to reinforce why they need to work with you.

Energy

As a creative freelancer it’s likely that any work you do won’t be done in isolation. It’ll be done in collaboration with the client to some degree. You need to be very realistic with the client in terms of what level they're involvement particularly in terms of time and effort in order for the project to be a success. This will help set expectations early on and build a relationship of trust, because they know what part they have to play.

Risk

As with most things in life, there is an opportunity cost to it. What you need to be able to outline to prospective clients is that the risk of not working with you out-weights the risk of working with you. What will they be missing out on? This where you need to flesh out how you work and why you work that way. For example, your processes which enable you to produce the quality work that you do or the greater vision that you may already have for the client’s brand or business. The idea is to show them that there are virtually no risks to working with you, just major benefits all round.

Get these four elements clearly within your pitch and the client will have a much better understanding of what your fee is composed of. This way you can strategically position yourself for new business.

It’s critical that you can say with confidence, this is who I am, this is what I do really well, and this is the result. It’s foundational to many other things in life too. When you know the value you bring and why you deserve a seat at the table, you fill prospective clients with the value-based confidence they need to hire you.

I challenge you to clarify what you bring to the table (please do it sooner rather than later).