DH004 - Brennan Dunn - Freelancers: How to demonstrate extra value and fill your sales funnel

Digital Hustle

**Intro:** Hello everyone and welcome to the SendOwl Digital Hustle podcast. And in case I don't see you - Good afternoon. Good evening. And goodnight. Don't worry. We are just getting started!

I’m James Milliron from SendOwl, and if you don't want to listen to me, you should listen to my guest today: Brennan Dunn. Brennan is the number one authority in the whole world on helping freelancers increase their value. The advice he's giving on this podcast can be applied to almost any business.

This podcast is hosted by SendOwl the leading digital sales and delivery app for entrepreneurs who want to increase their online sales conversion rates, to provide a seamless checkout experience for their buyers, and for those who want to get setup up and selling in under 5 minutes.

You can learn more about SendOwl by visiting [SendOwl.com/pod](www.sendowl.com/pod) where you will find a 30-day free trial waiting just for you.

Thanks for listening. Let's get into our topic. We are going to be covering how freelancers can demonstrate extra value and fill their sales funnel.

**James Milliron** Brennan how are you today?

**Brennan Dunn:** I'm good James, how are you?

**James Milliron:** Tell me a little bit about yourself and your business.

**2:00** – Introduction to Brennan Dunn and DoubleYourFreelancing.

- 2006 started freelancing
- 2008 started an agency
- 2011 we peaked at 11 employees
- Exited the company to start a SaaS, Planscope.
- To sell it I decided to create content for agencies and freelancers.
- That turned into a book and some courses.
- What meant to be a training business eclipsed Planscope's revenue 10 fold.
- 2016 sold Planscope and since then have been full time on DoubleYourFreelancing.
- All of the resources were consolidated under this new brand.

**3:40** - It's interested to hear that the training courses exceeded the revenue of the SaaS company.

- The SaaS model can be a hard sell. Especially with a complex product. It's hard to get people to make the switch.
- If you can give someone a clear value prosition about how you can help them with a course, it's a much easier sell.
- I'm able to affect people differently now than I ever could with a SaaS.

**6:45** - Freelancers should be able to negotiate the terms of their value and what they are providing with their life's services.

- How it's done is the most important part.
- How can you deliver a better product and charge more.
- It's not about getting more skills, but rather focusing your efforts on the business problems that people have.
- If you want to price higher, you need to sell a higher value product.
- Get away from commoditizing your services.
- Solve business problems. I lay out strategies for how people can increase the value of their services.

**8:00** - Do you see freelancers right now building products online and selling them?

- Absolutely.
- They usually aren't using them as primary revenue sources, but as a stepping stone to more business.
- It's easier to hook people with an initial product and then upsell them than it is to try to sell them directly on your core services.
- Last year I built a course on Marketing Automation. Today most of my consulting projects come from people who had signed up for that course.
- When people see what you teach and like it, they will come back to you for more help.
- A better way to build a funnel is get people to sign up for an email list. Then pitch them on a $30 ebook. Then let people self-select what they are interested in before you pitch them on consultation services or projects.
- This is an effective way to build and nurture a pipeline.
- Sometimes people don't trust you enough yet to jump into your core services.
- Building a course or a drip campaign can build trust and move people closer to buying your core services.
- This reduces risk for your clients and now they want to work with the expert that taught them.

**14:00** - This keeps customers from scouring the whole market for someone else who can do the same thing as you.

- It becomes risker now for your audience to look for someone else than to work with you. Now that you've established yourself as the expert. You're the most trusted and thus the less risky option.
- I'm willing to pay a premium for someone who has already proven their services.

**16:40** - There are stages of inbound marketing where you can catch a potential buyer. Freelancers can create courses or resources and make them available online so that once they are hooked, they don't have a choice but to stick with you.

- A $30 product that you offer is super low risk and can be an impulse buy. It's easier to grab their attention with a product like that then try to sell them straight away on your core product.
- Don't be afraid of giving away some value. Once you establish yourself as the expert, it takes more work for people to do it themselves than to hire you.
- Focus on getting people in the top of your funnel. Do the broadcast stuff to get them into the funnel. They will walk down the funnel on their own.

**20:50** - What categories of freelancers can take this approach?

- It only doesn't work for people who are doing something really B2C, like a freelance DJ.
- When you sell yourself as a swinger of tools, you will have trouble with this.
- Don't let your work become commoditized by being one step away from selling a service that a computer could do. You must add extra value.
- I hired somebody just like this. I got an email from a subscriber once who agreed to help me product my courses. But he added a ton of extra value and I hired him because of the extra services that he was able to provide. His understanding of my end-goal is what made it valueable. I paid him 20x the local people because of the extra value he communicated.
- How can you give your clients a better product.
- Don't focus on the features of your products. Focus on what the buyer needs.

**29:20** - If I'm a freelancer developing a course, what are some steps I need to take to go from zero to selling a course?

- Build off of stuff you have already done.
- I turned existing content into DoubleYourFreelancing
- Go through your notes from previous clients and find content you can make and deliver based on those notes.
- You can determine whether it should be a paid product or a free product based on notes from your past customers. How much do they need this?

**32:50** - How much time does it take to go from no course to course?

- My course has been done and redone two dozen times.
- Start with something and you can build on it.
- Send out surveys. You will get a lot of data.
- Ask people why they signed up for your course to begin with. Listen to what people want.
- You're not aiming for perfection on day one.

**35:50** - So, get the first course out there and then get feedback.

- Most content tends to be a monologue. Every time you talk with a new prospect or lead you can learn about new needs.
- When you uncover needs, figure out how you can solve the problems in a scalable way.
- This helps prepare people mentally for your services.
- With this funnel you then only need to focus on getting people into the front of the funnel.

**38:50** - Why do freelancers generally struggle to make the money they should be making?

- The typical way freelancers determine what they should be paid is to look at what they used to make at their full time job.
- Sometimes they use online calculators.
- These methods are wrong.
- What you should do is understand the value of your services to the businesses you serve.
- Understand the amount of return you help your clients get. The return on investment that you can provide determines how high you can price your services.
- The smart freelancers are the ones who know what they can do that the typical employee can't and how to come in as a consultant not just an implementer of tools.

**41:40** - So you can stop the cycle of reducing the cost of your services by focusing on business needs and goals of your clients.

- You're still doing your core business, but what is being bought is different.
- They're no longer buying a commidity from you, but a thought-out service.
- This also gives freelancers more creative freedom, which everybody wants.

**43:15** - Q&A with SendOwl

_In Owl Language_ “What tools can people use online to distribute courses and campaigns?”
- Put a post script in your newsletter to gather feedback about how much interest there is in your service. Let your customers determine how they want to buy your offer.
- You can use SendOwl or another ecommerce tool to gather purchase funds from those that buy your tool.
- The important thing is to figure out early on how much people will pay for your course or campaign first.
- You can take preorders if your course isn't ready yet.
- I put together a Trello board and invited my potential customers to comment on what they want out of my lesson plans. That even helped in creating the lessons.

**48:00** - How can freelancers reach you for help?

- [DoubleYourFreelancing.com](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/)
- Reach me on Twitter! @BrennanDunn

**49:10** - Wrap up additional resources and contact information

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