The ability to work from home for yourself or even at your own small business offers freedoms unlike any other job. There are some self-employed entrepreneurs that are happy with the size of their business and would rather it stay small than expand. The other portions of these entrepreneurs want to grow their business immensely and dominate their niche. Growth has to be a consistent effort rather than always trying to land one huge contract.
Those huge contracts will come if the smaller contracts end well with the client happy with the work that has been completed. The following are tactics to continue growing your income and growing your business when self-employed.
Spend Time Daily Pitching New Clients
Work can be overwhelming when trying to get large projects done but you should still spend time daily pitching clients. This could be via email with the hopes of getting them on the phone or meeting with them in person. A great tactic that can save both parties time is that of a client questionnaire so you know what the client is interested in. The questionnaire can also help qualify a client as they might want to sign a small contract below what your minimum monthly spend is. The time spent managing a client with a very small budget sometimes is far more valuable when spent on larger clients and keeping them happy. Allot a specific amount of time per day to do this as constantly growing a client base will increase income immensely.
Get A Loan To Invest In Marketing
Competing in certain niches is going to take a huge spend on marketing which might require an entrepreneur to take out a loan. Bank statement mortgage loans are a great option to fund this as all you have to do is show your personal or business bank statements leading up to applying for the loan. There are other requirements for this type of loan but it is an option to consider. Finding a good digital marketing company or freelance team can help save money on a marketing budget versus hiring a team in-house. Ranking at the top of search engine results could not be more important as people rarely go to the 2nd page if they find what they were looking for on the first. Building up the website for your business can help generate leads through search results when implementing an efficient content marketing strategy.
Grow A Team That You Can Outsource To
The most important thing about growing a business is scaling that business to grow without issues in processes. Building a great team to outsource certain tasks to will help you scale as freelancers can be a valuable resource. The ability to do something like have a thousand articles written in a month by various freelancers is extremely valuable when running a content creation company. Grow your team of freelancers or companies to outsource to slowly as you want to ensure the quality of their work when it is being delivered to clients. Platforms like Upwork are great for outsourcing talent as each freelancer has ratings on jobs that they have completed in the past. Saving money without sacrificing quality of work is an incredibly positive business scenario which you should strive for.
Reach Out To Former Points Of Contact That Have Moved To Other Companies
Usually when working with a larger company you have a point of contact or two that you handle business logistics with. These points of contact can be quite valuable when they move to a new company. You get to keep your current client while having a new contact at a sales prospect that might have decision making power. LinkedIn is the perfect way to monitor whether a former colleague or contact has moved on to a company you would love to work with. Stay engaged with your LinkedIn connections as staying present in their minds through likes or comments might lead them to reach out if they need a project done.
White Label Other Self-Employed Professional’s Services
Building a network among other self-employed professionals in your niche can help expand your business. The ability to white label or use services offered by a company labeled as your own can be extremely profitable. All you have to do is take money off of the top and allow the other business to complete the work. The one thing that you have to make sure of is that the businesses that you partner with hit deadlines and deliver only the highest quality of work. Otherwise this could reflect poorly on your business leading to long time clients looking elsewhere to have their projects completed.
Growing a business that you have started is going to take consistent work. Do whatever it takes to add one customer per month while retaining a high percentage of your current customer base. This will help you grow at a higher rate than you could have imagined.