It happened again this week: I completed an assignment for a new client, and pretty much immediately, I had three more assignments and another three potentially in the pipeline down the road.
This isn’t an accident. It’s a strategy that combines wanting to be of genuine service, having my strategic thinking powers recognized, and knowing that it’s far easier to get more work from a happy client (especially while they’re still glowing over the work you just did for them) than from a new prospect.
Here’s the cover letter I sent when I turned in the first job. Can you spot the phrase that led directly to more work?
Hi, [client’s first name] — see what you think.
I’ve upped the marketing quotient, demonstrated the benefits more clearly, smoothed out the language, reorganized some sections, made it a LOT more personal, and avoided making any absolute claims yet without using “weasel words.” (For instance, rather than say that after completing a particular module, they won’t make the mistake anymore, as your original states, I say that they will understand how to do it right–you don’t want to be liable for their forgetfulness or bad habits). I’ve also fixed some minor grammatical issues and gotten rid of inappropriate capitalization (particularly for words like preposition and module). Note that I don’t speak French and have not made any attempt to examine the French portions. Since I was rewriting and reorganizing so much, I didn’t turn on Track Changes.
The letter uses “I”, “my”, and “me” more than I typically do, but I decided that in this case, talking in your own voice as the friendly expert and not some faceless corporation was a good thing in your draft, something I wanted to maintain as it creates personal rapport. I did add lots more “you” language as well.
Please be sure to read the embedded comments. I will probably need to make some minor adjustments once you’ve addressed them.
You might also give some thought to naming the product. (I can help with that, too.)
We are coming in under budget ($600 before any reworking). I would strongly recommend that you also have me prepare a response once someone has used your freebies, that you could send either by email or LinkedIn Messaging. Hire a temp to get the names into the spreadsheet (and once that’s done, spend a few minutes a day keeping it updated), but you want to be responding *quickly*. Leads age and lose interest very quickly. This first batch, you’ll send off all at once–but after that, you probably want to be following up within 48 hours.
Did you spot it? In the last paragraph, I say, “I would strongly recommend that you also have me prepare…” That paragraph identified two problems and then pointed him to solutions: hiring me for one and a data entry temp for the other. If you guessed, “(I can help with that, too.)” in the previous paragraph, you’re also on the right track. These are magic phrases—but only once I’ve established my expertise, as I do in the first two paragraphs where I explain what I did to fix his draft, and why. Notice that I didn’t go on about my credentials. I simply fixed the irritants.
My favorite upsell phrase is some variant on “I couldn’t help noticing _______________ [problem statement]. Would you like me to fix that for you?”
It’s useful not just for copywriters and marketers but for website coders, graphic artists, health professionals, even hair salons—pretty much any service business and many product businesses as well.
This kind of framing makes it amazingly easy for the client to say yes. I’ve found that nearly all responses fall into:
- Yes, please!
- Yeah, I know. I’ve already hired someone to fix it
- Not right now, but could you help me with this other thing?
Two of those three likely responses lead immediately to more work. And even if you get the second response, you’re establishing yourself as someone who looks out for your clients’ interests and are likely to get other assignments. Using this strategy, I’ve turned several clients who came in for a small job in the few hundreds into mid-five-figure lifetime value. One eventually hired me to ghostwrite two books!