Many people have lost their jobs due to retrenchments and find themselves freelancing. After my interview with Peter Ndoro on SABC Media Monitor, I have received messages from journalists and other people asking: “I lost my job and am unemployed. What must I do?”
The short answer to that question is that you must put on your Sunday best, take your portfolio, get into the streets and market yourself until you find a job.
But that is easier said than done because the unemployment rate in South Africa is 29% which means 1.6 billion people are looking for jobs. So how do you stand out from the crowd and make a success of being a freelancer?
First impressions matter
When you meet someone for the first time that person will form a solid impression of who you are within the first seven seconds. What you wear, how you stand, your facial expressions – these are all things that people see before you even get a chance to say something.
And because many ‘first meetings’ happen on social media these days your various profiles must be professional and create a favourable impression at a quick glance. Make sure your profile picture shows your face clearly – and remember to smile for the camera. Use the same profile picture on all your accounts. Choose a cover photo that speaks to your personality or skills. Complete all your social media profiles as comprehensive as possible. And most important, keep your public content professional.
Showcase your skills and experience
Having a professional portfolio that presents evidence of your skills and experience is important. It does not matter what profession you are in – whether you are a painter, a plumber, a journalist, or an accountant – you need to be able to show a prospective employer or client examples of your work and how your work has benefited other businesses.
Get LinkedIn recommendations from people you have worked with. If you are a journalist, show how your articles performed on social media (how many comments did your article get?). Perhaps you are an accountant and you can present evidence on how your skills contributed to reducing a business’ overhead expenditure. Or if you are a plumber you could show how your skills in detecting water leaks saved a household R500 per month.
The important thing is that you must be able to demonstrate that the work you do or the service you offer, will add value to your potential employer or customer.
Think like a salesperson
Salespeople usually work for a commission. That means the more product a salesperson sells the higher their income will be at the end of the month. That is why many salespeople are so ruthless in trying to close a deal. Most times a salesperson will also have a sales target for the month. If the salesperson does meet that target, it often means that the commission is forfeited. Salespeople who constantly exceed their sales targets often get bonuses paid to them at the end of the year.
To succeed as a salesperson you must have a list of potential clients. You need to research the companies that can benefit from your products or services and keep a database with their contact details. Making cold calls or sending cold e-mails to those contact people is a crucial first step in the sales process.
You can also use social media very successfully to reach out to potential employers or clients. Just remember that a company’s social media is often managed by a team of social media managers and your message to the company’s social media platform will be lost. Reach out to a ‘real person’ who works at the company and who has decision-making power.
Set yourself an income target. If you want to earn R12,000 per month as a writer, and your fee for writing one article is R1,000 it means you need to ‘sell’ 12 articles in the month to reach your income target. To sell 12 articles you may need to send quotes to 24 companies. And to send 24 quotes you may need to reach out to 48 companies through cold calls or emails or social media.
If it is the 20th of the month and you have only sold 8 articles you can run a promotion offering a discounted rate so that you can attract potential buyers to reach your target.
This is a very simplified explanation and it takes a lot of practice and discipline, but it has proven to be successful. If you are really good at selling yourself and you manage to ‘seal a deal’ each time you reach out to a potential client, you need to only reach out to 12 companies. If you are still learning how to seal a deal and you only manage to sell to every 10th company you contact, it means you need to reach out to 120 companies to make your income target. But practice makes perfect!
It is not all sunshine and rainbows
Working as a freelancer is not all sunshine and rainbows. It is very hard work but just as rewarding when you get it right.
My advice to anyone who has lost a job and is hoping to make it out there as a freelancer is: “Stay positive, never give up, and go at it with all the energy you can muster.”