Cross Selling More than Just Your Services

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Credit: james.gordon6108 on Flickr

As freelancers, the main thing we can sell is our services. Clients come to us because they want a particular project completed and we have the right skill set to accomplish it. But the truth of the matter is that we have a little more room to maneuver, at least when it comes to what we sell. We can upsell and cross sell our services to further establish our relationship with our clients and improve our bottom line.

Selling the Next Step in the Process

If, for instance, you create websites for your clients, you’ve probably been asked to arrange for domain names and hosting in the past. Actually acting as a hosting provider for your clients may not be at the top of the list of things you want to do, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t sell them hosting: many hosts offer the ability to resell their packages, as well as set up domain names through them. You don’t have to worry about actually handling the hosting, but you can still be in on the deal.

The same goes for other products that help your clients achieve their end goals. Many freelancers have long worked with printers and other companies to offer clients a one-stop service. You can do the same — although, if you want to stand out, it’s worth digging a little more into what your clients ultimately need.

Selling the Products You Recommend

A writer may be brought in just to write the content for a client’s email newsletter, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t get asked to recommend the software necessary for actually sending out the newsletter in question. Many such tools and products have affiliate programs that make it easy to sell to your clients, and receive a benefit from the purchase. You can also set yourself up as a reseller of such products, depending on how much time and energy you’re willing to put into the project.

Selling the Training Your Clients Need

Setting up a blog for a client isn’t going to do either of you any good if she doesn’t know how to use it and keeps calling you for help. By offering training materials, like ebooks or videos, you can head that problem off before it actually becomes an issue. There are many products available that you can resell or, if you’re really familiar with the tool or work in question, you can make your own.

There is a benefit in creating your own products to sell, in that you get to keep the entire sales price. Of course, you will have to invest time and money into creating a product worth selling in the first place, but, depending on your freelancing situation, that may be relatively simple. Go through the numbers and see what you think you can make before committing yourself to creating your own product.

The Secret to Selling More than Freelance Services

If selling a few things beyond your services appeals to you, there are certain steps you have to take. Most importantly, you need to make sure that everything you even consider selling is a good fit with the types of projects you already take on. By being the best freelancer your clients have every worked with, you’ve already established yourself as an expert in their eyes. But that expertise only extends so far. If you’re recommending certain products, you want to make sure that your clientele will understand that you’re the right person to buy products from — it’s a direct connection from your expertise as a freelancer.

It’s also important not to promote products over your services. In most cases, you won’t be selling products with such a high margin that each sale is more lucrative than landing a new project. Cross selling a product should be a follow up — a softer sale — to your own services, which will bring you the most money up front. There’s a careful balance that you have to strike.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by james.gordon6108.