The Everyday Designer #24 — Serve, don't sell

Do you remember the last time you were looking for a barber or hair dresser? Walking into the salon or barbershop, what did you feel when you walked in? Did you feel comfortable? Were you greeted by a receptionist at the front? Did you get offered a drink? Did it smell nice? Were all your senses activated in a positive way? Did you leave feeling like had a great experience? Would you leave that place a 5-star rating if you were asked?

Ask more questions

Those are the questions we should be asking ourselves if we want to acquire clients. Serve them. Make sure its the best experience they’ve ever had. Make an irresistible offer, have a conversation with them, maybe they really need it. Framing your work as a service, rather than a sale, sets you up to make a better and more natural connection with the person than if you came in cold-hearted, ready to make that sales pitch.

The doorbell rings…

Do you ever remember a time when you had a NICE interaction with a salesperson at your door?

I know I haven’t.

In fact, that’s why people install a doorbell camera and don’t even answer the door when they see a salesperson.

Serving vs. selling

Selling shoves things down your throat that you don’t need, to impress people who don’t care about you.

Serving asks you what your needs are, gives you time to think, reflect and respond to be able to make a decision your confident in and proud of.

Selling is a quick “fix” with a short term gain and a long term pain.

Serving is make sure to get to the root of the issue to be able to solve it from the ground up, with a short term pain, but for a long term gain.

Selling is cold, lifeless, irregardless of the person’s needs and situations.

Serving is warm, tenderhearted, empathetic to the current needs and situation of the person.

Remember why

Remember that most of the time, (especially with references) people are buying who you are, and how you provide a service, rather than just the service itself. There’s Fiverr, Creative Market, and plenty of other avenues that potential clients can take to get design services, but how are you differentiating yourself so that people will want to work with you?

“People are not interested in who you are and what you do. They want to know why you do it.“ — Simon Sinek

When was the last time you reminded yourself why you do what you do? Do you love what you do? Maybe by simply asking that question you can see how you make the shift from selling to someone, to serving someone. In turn you just might see your career progressing further!

Thank you

This was a bit of a shorter edition but still potent with a good lesson to learn to redirect your behaviour approaching your freelance design business. Whether it be branding, websites, coding, app dev, whatever the service your offering, it is just that…a service, and it ought to feel like one when your approached by a potential client. You never know, you might be one referral away from your next big client.

Thanks for reading this far, I appreciate each and everyone of you that has reached out to me whether by text, email, or in person to let me know you read these. It gives the fuel I need to be disciplined to keep writing these (and now even more as I announced that I am going weekly on the newsletter now), over the next couple weeks I’m going to be thinking and planning a restructuring of how I provide valuable content you guys.

**If you have any ideas as to how I can be doing that, please reach out in the comments, DMs, email me alex@alexpresa.com, text, call, smoke signals haha.**

Love you all. ✌️❤️

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