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Comment by thisisdallas | Hacker News Reader

Really good post.

The main thing that sticks out is that the author mentions how referrals are the number one source of leads for basically every freelancer. The problem is that he only mentions it. Ok, that's great. How do I get referrals? The issue is that none of the other stuff matters if you don't know how to get referrals.

The author did a good job with the post, but I can't express how important it is to be a people person when freelancing. In order to get referrals you have to get projects. In order to get projects, you have to leave your house and meet other local business owners. That's very hard for freelancers to do and I think the post would be 100 times better if the author spent a little more time on that aspect of freelancing.

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> In order to get projects, you have to leave your house and meet other local business owners.

And so we come to one thing that rarely gets explicitly discussed in articles like this - the location. I don't blame authors for that, your environment is usually something you take for granted.

But if I were to go and talk to local business owners where I live (eastern Europe) they would invariably fall in the category of extremely-and-then-some-price-sensitive.

So most of the contracting around these parts is done under the umbrella of various agencies or Toptal. These have ongoing relationships with foreign clients and take advantage of the fact that local market prices for IT folk are nothing compared to western Europe and (especially) US. Not a bad deal, but not as good as fostering relationships with the clients yourself (and these clients are usually at least moderately price sensitive, as otherwise they would probably hire contractors at their location).

I'm sure there are plenty of people that freelance without middlemen where I live, it just seems a lot less prominent than in better developed economies. I know maybe one or two.

>> In order to get projects, you have to leave your house and meet other local business owners.

> And so we come to one thing that rarely gets explicitly discussed in articles like this - the location. I don't blame authors for that, your environment is usually something you take for granted.

Isn’t that what conferences are for? Or content marketing? Patio11 went from not consulting to charging $10,000 a week while living in the Japanese equivalent of Iowa by writing blog posts but IIRC the best channel for his particular consulting was Microconf followed at some distance by cold emailing.

If you live in Romania you can afford to attend a Western European conference once a quarter, right? You can definitely afford to blog.

Sure, I did not mean to imply that it's impossible. I was kind of thinking out loud about how it's whole different kind of game when you have access to good clients locally compared to situation when you don't.

I personally haven't tried to seriously make a jump to freelancing but I have been thinking about it lately, so these kinds of considerations are on my mind.

Sure, the article is applicable primarily to US-based freelancers. YMMV in other places.

If it's any consolation, I live in a tiny town in the US and have rarely met my clients in person. Many of them have no idea where I work from or that I occasionally wear pajama pants on video calls, because my webcam is from the waist up.

> I live in a tiny town in the US and have rarely met my clients in person

This is awesome. I feel like it's more of the exception than the rule though. Just out of curiosity, I assume you primarily work off of referrals now, but how did you get your first few clients? Or I guess a better way of asking is how did you get enough clients to where you had enough referrals coming in?

2 places:

1. Premium job boards. AuthenticJobs used to carry much more freelance work, but basically I'd find places where people had paid to post a job, and I'd do my darndest to impress them with my opening email.

2. My professional network. A couple of old contacts referred me to excellent agencies. Those connections still pay dividends today.

Hope that helps. These comments are giving me ideas for "Everything I know, part 2".

'Everything I didn't realise I knew' :)

Just chiming in to add a similar but different experience. Been freelance for nearly 20 years and I've always lived in major US cities but very rarely do I take on local clients. This is absolutely intentional. I don't care if the client is on the other side of the planet or 6 blocks away, I work when and where I want with no expectation of "on-site".

Of course, if I happen to like the client personally, that's another story. But those visits are off the clock.

That's cool to hear :)

Thanks for the good article in any case, and best of luck!

When I started at University I wanted to work in advertising. I was curious at how these huge agencies got accounts - like how do the JWT's and Saatchi's of the world get their clients?

It was something that is never spoken about or really talked about at University, but so much of it is you just need to be in front of the right people and ask the right things.

For referrals, you have to leave your comfort zone and ask - "hey, you're a CTO at a mid sized Government agency and need my services...do you know anyone else I should be speaking with".

Like most things in sales, it's deceptively simple. It's a conversation. Probably over a beer or a coffee or lunch or something.

I'm not a consultant, and I'm not sure if this is illegal/not allowed in some way, but I can imagine taking a business contact out for a $200 dinner and leaving some nice chocolates at the end of the contract is a good way to squeeze out some referrals or ensure repeat business.

I think there are some rules (especially when selling to the Govt) but we frequently take people out for meals, give out nice bottles of scotch etc as a way to say thanks.

Good point. Sales can be really challenging for some that may not have it as an innate talent. What do you do if it isn't in your wheelhouse?

Sales is something you can (and should!) learn to do. We're all selling, all the time. Even now, over the internet, I'm trying to convince you of something - that's all sales is. Want to switch a programming language at your company? You'll be doing some selling.

Contrary to popular perception, sales (especially B2B sales) is not at all about using the "magic words" or "tricking people" into buying. Sales is about effective qualification - that is asking the questions that give you confidence that you'd be able to complete the project you're speaking about, while also ensuring that the person you're speaking to is convinced that you'd be able to complete the project.

If you have a technical background, you have a massive advantage over someone with "sales skills" when it comes to selling whatever your technical expertise is. You can answer the hard questions! You know how people in that role think. This is a huge advantage.

I have a technical background with many years in development but ended up working at a sales office late in my career. I worked with sales managers who did the "sales stuff" while I did the technical pitch. The very best sales people were not all that technical. But they were very good at understanding business needs, supply line management and handling mad customers. I was amazed more than once when we went into a meeting with senior management at an irate customer, took terrible abuse due to some failing in delivery or quality, and walked out with an even bigger order. One of the best sales managers was the nicest guy. He said that when you have a mad customer the worst thing you can do is avoid them. You have to stay in their face, let them beat you up until their anger is spent, and then proceed to solve their problems. I once saw him explain to a customer how they could recover from a major production line hiccup we had caused by rearranging some inventory and placing an earlier than planned order for additional pieces. He knew their production flow better than their own management. It was grueling and I thought we were done for sure at that customer. But we walked out with a huge order that more than made our office's sales quota for the quarter.

Leave your house, why?

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