 Hi, this is Robert Gephardt again, freelance translator and person who hires freelance translators. Today I wanted to talk to you about sales. When you're approaching prospective clients, potential clients, how to sell yourself and your services. This ties into a book I'm reading right now. It's called New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. I haven't finished it yet. So far the book's good and I want to share a couple points that I can relate to what I've been through and what I've seen and that's about selling yourself and your services. Most people, when they sell their services, they talk about everything they can do and that they can offer, all their skills. They'll say something like, why can translate 4,000 words a day? I have been the translator for 20 years. I have this certificate and that certificate and I've translated this, that and the other. Now that's fine, but it's not good. It's definitely not great because when the potential client is going through potential translators to hire, it's not what's most important to them. What's most important to them is how their lives can get better. It has to pass the sell what test. I can translate 4,000 words a day. So what? I've been doing this for 20 years. So what? Those don't really pass the sell what test and in fact you need to get to the sell what. That means talking less about your skills and more about benefits. You need to talk about how you can benefit the client. So what benefits can you provide? This will depend obviously on what your specialization is and what the potential client does. Something along the lines of, I can make your website pop. Correspond this will flow smoothly with new translations in XYZ language. Do you want a competitive advantage in dealing with customers in this country or that country? Are you embarrassed about bad translations in the past? You don't have to worry about that anymore. Or just something like, do you want a friendly client or translator to deal with? If that's your strong point, then by all means, it differentiates you and it shows a benefit to them. You need legal and financial if those are two things you do or someone who could do translation and transcription or simply do you just want peace of mind? All of these offer a benefit to the end client rather than just talking about yourself saying, I study and so and so and then I lived here for many years and my mother speaks that language, my father speaks that language and I can translate X number of words a day. It's useful, but it's not what will catch their eye. If you do have these skills, by the way, I'm not saying you shouldn't mention them, but you should wait. If a potential client needs a new website done, they say, Hey, do you want a website in this language that can reach all these people that live in that country and do you want it to pop and be localized? And so it attracts their attention. But yeah, that's exactly what I want. That's exactly what I'm looking for. And then you get on to what you can provide. And even when you're talking about what you can provide, it's not just what you can offer. Like I can do X number words day, blah, blah, blah. You need differentiators. What makes you different from the other people? My clients come to me because or clients have chosen me because my current clients stick with me because it gives validation to what you're saying. If you can give an anecdote or a story yet, as long as you can keep it short and sweet, then that helps as well. So it's just a better way to approach the client. So yeah, that's what I got from this book. Once again, it's called new sales simplified. In fact, let me share some of the examples that they have in the book. Obviously, the book doesn't deal with translation per se. The example here is security services provider. The ones where they talk about the benefits. The examples he has here are potential clients say building owners look to us when they're seeking a competitive advantage by offering the finest security available to tenants and guests be frustrated that their current system is not doing what was promised when it was sold to them or see facing excessive liability exposure and so on and so forth. You get the idea. These are things that the person reading them might relate to and say, Oh no, I'm in that situation too. They can feel drawn in and then you can talk about your offerings or differentiators. I'll read a couple of those as well. We are a true one stop shop that provides real integrated solutions. We offer in-house financing and leasing options. We are quote unquote vendor agnostic just things that differentiate them from other companies that these potential clients might be talking to. I hope that helps. It's just something to keep in mind. Please let me know if I missed something out in the comments below. Feel free to subscribe for more videos like this freelance translation tips. Also, let me know if you like this spiffy blazer I'm wearing. That's about it. If you found this useful, please click like because that always helps and I'll talk to you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.