The Ruby Freelancers Show 050 – Better Prospecting for Freelancers with Steve Kloyda

Summary: Panel Steve Kloyda (twitter facebook linkedin youtube The Prospecting Expert) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:03 - Steve Kloyda Introduction The Prospecting Expert The Prospecting Minute 02:38 - Being a good prospector Never stop prospecting Passion 04:42 - Prospecting and Selling To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink 08:10 - Marketing and Sales Cliff Ravenscraft 12:05 - Prospecting Tools Email Text Messaging Video Social Media The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk 19:25 - Audience Connect Educate Engage 24:54 - The Wizard of Oz Purpose Who Game Plan Solution Next Step 34:03 - The Best Next Step 38:31 - Referrals Fear of rejection Psychology Centers of Influence 46:51 - Keeping the sales process simple Ask for the business Objections  Picks Indie Game: The Movie (Eric) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) Parade of Homes (Chuck) Evernote (Steve) Evernote Hello (Steve) Evernote Food (Steve) Nozbe (Steve) How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger (Steve) The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin (Steve) Next Week Bookkeeping and Business Expenses with Scott Sweeney Transcript [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing - Developer Edition Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 50 of The Ruby Freelancers Show. This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. I just want to remind you that you have one week left to go sign up for Rails Ramp Up at railsrampup.com. And we have a special guest and that is Steve Kloyda! STEVE: It's great to be here, thanks for having me. CHUCK: Oh it's great to have you! I met Steve at the New Media Expo. He was hanging out with the bunch of us from Cliff Ravenscraft's "Podcast Mastermind", and it turns out that he knows a lot about prospecting for potential clients. And it seems like that's one of the hard things that we have to do as programmers - to find new clients. So I invited him to the show and we are happy to have you. STEVE: It's really great to be here. And yes, we are all searching for new clients at point or another and it's probably one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales people face on a daily basis. So I'm really excited to be here to talk about it because this is my passion. CHUCK: Awesome! You're also the podcasting expert at thepodcastingexpert.com, correct? STEVE: Yes "theprospectingexpert".. CHUCK: [laughs] Sorry.. STEVE: It's alright. Theprospectingexpert.com is my website address and then I have a podcast that I do every week called "The Prospecting Minute" podcast. CHUCK: Is it longer than a minute, I take it? STEVE: Actually it's 3-5 minutes. Sales people tend to have a very short attention span, and some of my -- I do interview some people and sometimes I go 25 or 30 minutes, but the average show is between 5 and 7 minutes in length. That'll like to give them quick,