How to Not Sell Your Services Like a Big, Dumb, Stupid Idiot

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 365

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. Are you a freelancer, or are you just role playing as a big dumb stupid idiot? That's the question we're going to explore in this series that I'm doing for the next, maybe two or three episodes, I don't know how many this is going to be. But I've seen behind the scenes of high hundreds, low thousands of freelance businesses. I've seen everything from the multi-million dollar agency to the freelancer starting from scratch at zero dollars, and I've seen it every single level. All the things you do, they make you look like a big dumb stupid idiot. So this is going to be something like the Jeff Foxworthy You Might Be a Redneck series. For those who even know what the hell that is. Of me talking through a bunch of things, it says you might be a big dumb stupid idiot if you do this in your freelance business.

And I am not clean from any of these. All the ones that I have listed out for this series, I have fallen for most of them. So many of them start with me, and I see it in patterns amongst a bunch of different freelancers that we've worked with and that we have seen who want to work with us. So this episode will be the first in the series. It's eight signs you are selling like a big dumb stupid idiot. And my goal is for you to just hear these things that are kind of interesting, and you probably don't want to be doing any of these things, so that if you are doing these things, you can see what you should be doing instead of this. So before I get into this, hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is the Six Figure Creative Podcast. As I talk fast, so listen fast, I apologize for this, but we are a podcast for creative freelancers who want to make more money from their creative skills without selling their souls. If that sounds like you, you're in the right spot. Take a lot of influence from a lot of different industries within the freelance niche, out of the freelance niche, and I learn what's working, what's not working, and I try to distill it down to what makes sense for freelancers so that you can take it away, implement it in your business, and make more money. So that being said, let's talk about the eight signs that you're selling like a big, dumb, stupid idiot. Number one, I'm only gonna do this for this person. You might be a big, dumb, stupid idiot if you're selling like you're asking for a favor. I see Freelancers all the time, they have phrases like, I'd love to help out if you need something, or just keep me in mind, let me know if there's anything I can do, or sorry to bug you again, or no worries if not. These are all phrases that Freelancers use all the time. I use them myself. These are low status, they're needy, implies you're waiting around. And worst of all, it asks them to do the work. They have to decide if they want what you have to offer. They probably don't even know what you fully offer. They don't fully understand it. They have to decide when they're gonna need your help, how they might actually use you. And these sorts of phrases, they don't instill confidence in the people you're talking to, and there's nothing concrete that comes out of it. There's no pitch, there's no problem solving, there's no call to action, there's no clear offer for how you can help them. It's just like passively asking for the work. And if you do it, you might be a big, dumb, stupid idiot. So let's stop that. Let's stop hoping they'll pick you. Instead of hope, just make it easy to say yes. In order to do that, easiest thing is just use confident, low-pressure closing language. The reason we do this in the first place is we don't want to be high-pressure, especially when we're talking to new people that we don't have a great relationship with yet. Many times when this passive language comes up, someone has expressed that they might need your services, or they might need your help, or they might have a problem that you know you can solve. And so you throw these little easy lines out because there's no pressure, right? Well, you can use something with more confidence, with higher intent, that's still low pressure. So things like this, would you like help with this? Or here's how I typically help with this. When we walk you through what that would look like for you. Either one of those does the exact same thing. It pushes towards a discovery call. Notice how here's how I typically help with this. You've identified a problem that they have. You're explaining how you could typically help with that. Would you like me to walk through what that looks like for you? So much better that is than just keep me in mind. I'd love to help out if you ever need something. Let me know if there's anything I can do. See how much worse that is. One is you hoping you'll get a discovery call. The other is pushing to a discovery call. It's leading to a discovery call. So that's mistake number one, selling like you're asking for a favor. Number two, you set up a discovery call. Congratulations. These are the things that freelancers love to get because generally you love to get these because it usually is the thing that precedes the client. And if you're not doing discovery calls at all, I should probably put that in there. That's another sign that you're selling like a big dumb stupid idiot. Count that as number nine. If you're not doing discovery calls, it's usually because you're either doing something that's so button seat that there's no discovery process needed because it's easy to understand. Something like video editing. I'm going to edit your video. Your unedited video, I will make it edited. Probably not going to do a discovery call for that. But if you're doing a transformational service, you should be doing a discovery call. And if you're not, you're missing out. You're going to have lower conversions. You will close way more people if you have a discovery call process. But I digress. Let's talk about mistake number two, is getting on discovery calls with absolutely no agenda. You have no questions. You have no idea what happens next. You're just going to wing it. This is very common. I didn't realize how common this was until we started onboarding dozens of clients a month, reading through their onboarding questionnaires, asking them what their sales process is. One of our many questions we ask when we're onboarding clients. It's also something we ask in the discovery call process of our own. And half, a little over half of people don't have any sort of discovery call process whatsoever. They're just winging it on every single call. Let's talk about why this is stupid. Not only is the call aimless, it can be long-winded and go forever, or it can be too short because you didn't ask any questions. It can easily let the client take over the call and they start asking questions that are relevant to the project itself. And because there's no clear process, there is going to be no clear result. And I think the reason people fall into this is because you just wing it when you start. Most people do. I did. Everyone basically does when they just start out, they're just winging it. And you have this confidence that you're good at sales. So you're just winging it because you're only talking to really hot, really warm referrals. Friends, friends of friends, family, friends of family. Referrals from some of your best clients. People that are likely going to say yes, no matter how bad you are on the call, where you can be long-winded, you can be pretty aimless, you can come unprepared, you can have no process on the call, the client can't take over the call and you still close it. And so because of the Dunning-Kruger effect, you have this unconscious incompetence. You don't understand how bad you are. And once you start talking to complete strangers, people who don't know you, they don't like you, they don't trust you yet, and you're just getting this basically the first step in the long, hopefully long-lasting relationship, this doesn't work. You find it breaks down quickly. So instead, just follow a discovery call process. It's what smart business owners do. There's many frameworks out there. I have episodes on this. An easy one to follow is the Closer Framework by Alex Hermosy. It's easy, it's effective, it works for freelancers. But when you have a framework, by the way, it doesn't have to be scripted. It's just, I won't talk about these things. And I have specific questions about this sort of thing. Problems, let's ask about problems. Let's dig into goals. What goals do you have? I'm gonna have these questions for this specific client. It's literally just a list of questions. It's just a questions-based framework. When you have a good questions-based framework, you can constantly iterate it, you can revise it, and it'll start to work on all calls because the first time you deploy a new framework, a questions-based framework like Closer Formula, certain things will sound weird. You'll be like, that was so weird. I would never ask that again, or that could have been asked in a better way, or I should have asked this and I didn't. And after every call, you're making revisions to the process. You're iterating on it. Over time, you'll start to understand how most people answer or respond to certain questions, and you can change the phrasing to get a different response. But when you do it well, things go smoothly. The calls end up being roughly the same length, and you start to anticipate what the questions might be before they come up, or what the objections could be that could hold up the sale, and you can have those conversations before you even talk money. But pros have a discovery call process that's well thought out. Big dumb stupid idiots do not. They just endlessly float through calls. Let's talk about big dumb stupid idiot mistake number three, is thinking that sales is just explaining things really thoroughly. You probably heard the phrase, confuse minds don't buy, or if you confuse, you lose. I think Donald Miller kind of coined that phrase. And so you think, oh, if they're confused, it's because they don't understand every little detail about all the stuff I could do for them, or how my entire process from A to Z, and all the little intricate details. And so you're like, oh, okay, I'm going to create a sales process. Brian says, I need a discovery call process. Maybe even follow the closure formula, closure framework or formula, whatever he calls it by Alex and Mozi. And you have a good questions based framework, and you ask all these great questions, and then it gets to the pitch, and you're going to explain how your service works. And so it turned into a Ted talk.