By Joe Dyton
Once you decide to whom or where to sell your freelance writing services, the next step is to figure out what to say to freelance writing prospects so you actually make the sale. Regardless of how you contact prospects, (email, phone, etc.) you may not have much time to make your pitch. You might have a few sentences in an email, or just seconds on the phone. It’s important that you make those few precious moments count.
So how do you get someone’s attention who doesn’t know you or why you’re contacting them about freelance writing opportunities? You ask them for it. Let’s take a look at the various ways you can sell your writing services and lay out what you should say to freelance writing prospects regardless of your pitching method.
Email is perhaps the most common way to pitch freelance writing prospects. And for good reason—once you have a template in place, you can send out a lot of pitches in a short amount of time. You can also inquire about freelance writing opportunities and share samples in one shot (versus a phone call where you’d have to send samples in a second correspondence if the prospect is interested). Plus let’s face it, email is a lot less intimidating than getting on the phone and hearing (potential) rejection.
When you send a cold email, get to the point of why you’re writing as quickly as possible. People don’t spend much time looking at emails from people they know—how much time do you think they’ll give an unsolicited one?
Your short and sweet email pitch should look something like this:
• Introduce yourself and why you’re writing to the prospect
• Your experience and how it can help them
• Link to 2-3 samples
• CTA
This might seem short, but that’s the point! You want the prospect to get to the end of your pitch. Besides, while this template may be short, it has everything you need to introduce yourself and ask for freelance writing work: why you contacted them, how you can help, samples of past work and how they can contact you. If the prospect needs more information, they’ll respond and ask for it.
Phone
Cold calling prospects can be intimidating, especially if you come from a background that didn’t include a lot of phone work like mine. I still think it’s good to mix phone calls in to your pitching strategy though because emails can get lost or ignored. If you’re able to get a prospect on the phone, you have a better chance of knowing sooner whether they’re interested in your services or not.
When you make your calls, try to find a direct contact if you can rather than call a company’s main number and asked to be transferred to the “marketing department” or wherever you’re trying to get to. Who knows how many times you’ll be bounced around and you’ll be wasting precious pitch time sitting on the phone waiting to be transferred to the right person.
Once you’ve got someone on the phone, get to the point just like with email. Say who you are and why you’re calling. When you get to why though, ask how often the prospect works with freelance writers rather than, “Do you use freelance writers?” If you ask the latter and they say, “no”, it’s hard to keep the conversation going.
On the other hand, if you ask how often they work with freelancers, you have a few options depending on the prospect’s response:
• If their response infers that they use freelance writers (“Every so often”, “When we need extra help”, etc.), let them know you’d like to be added to their freelance roster and ask where you can send your information for further consideration.
• If they say they don’t use freelance writers, ask what they do if they have more content to produce than writers available (someone’s on vacation, recently resigned, etc.) The typical response is they work through it. Ask to send your information so they have it—just in case they do find themselves in need of an extra set of writing hands. If they do, you’ll likely be their first call.
LinkedIn is another great way to secure freelance writing work, but the approach involves more subtly than email or phone calls.
Pitching via LinkedIn connection request
When you send a connection request to someone that works at a company you want to freelance for, don’t get too sales-y in the note. This is where you just want to make an introduction—explain that you write about their industry and like to connect with people who work in that industry and that you’d like to connect.
If/when the prospect accepts your connection request, you can send a note thanking them for accepting and then mention you’d be interested in freelancing for their company if there’s a need and ask who you should send your information to.
Pitching a current LinkedIn connection
It is easier to pitch your freelance writing services to someone you already know. If you’ve built up a solid LinkedIn network, go through your connections and see who works in the fields you’d like to write for.
Once you find some prospects, send them a direct message using a template similar to what you would or an email pitch. It will vary slightly depending on the connection—if it’s a friend, family member, former co-worker, etc., there’s not as much need for an in introduction. If the person is someone you met through LinkedIn, at a networking event, etc., explain in your message where you know them from before going into your pitch.
You also don’t have to go into as much detail about your experience—it should all be laid out in in your profile. Instead, you could include a couple links to your samples; it’s even better if the samples are on your LinkedIn profile so they don’t have to leave the site to see them.
Then, include your call to action letting them know what you’d like them to do next (reply via LinkedIn, email, call, etc.)
Pitching via Twitter can be tricky, but not impossible—it definitely forces you to keep your pitch short and sweet! Follow the companies you’d like to write for on Twitter and then you can pitch them one of two ways:
• Send a tweet to their attention: “Hey, @Company, I’d like to write for you on a freelance basis. Where can I send my contact info and samples?”
• Direct messages: If the company’s DM’s are open, you can send your pitch that way. You’ll have a lot more room to do so—the character count limit is 10,000 for a DM versus 280 in regular Tweet.
I included Twitter here because it’s a quick way to let a company know you’d like to freelance for them, but I wouldn’t use it to often compared to the other methods. I’d also recommend reaching out to smaller companies on Twitter for freelance writing opportunities, as your tweet is more likely to be seen.
Whether you’re pitching via email, phone, LinkedIn or Twitter, it’s important to know what you plan to say before you make contact—not during or after. People don’t have a lot of time to read a long, meandering email or listen to you stumble through your phone pitch. Take some time to create templates that are short, but also include all the info the prospect needs to determine if they want to hire you as a freelance writer. When you know exactly what to say to freelance writing prospects before you contact them you increase the odds of securing another client.
Thanks for reading.
Joe
Joe Dyton (@JoeDyton) is the President and Founder of Dyton Writing and Editing, and a freelance insurance, real estate and personal freelance writer. He’s written for Connected Real Estate Magazine, GEICO and Student Loan Planner. He can be reached at joe@dytonswords.com.