Unconventional & Immediate Ways to Find New Business
Breaking the feast-or-famine cycle of being self-employed is a tough thing to do. That’s why I write this blog: to give you practical insight on how to sustain the momentum your business gains, and how to gradually build a reliable income doing what you love.
From time to time, though, you aren’t operating at quite the capacity you’re hoping for or outright need.
You need a way to get new clients quickly. The traditional methods aren’t working.
Trying to find new business can be stressful and daunting. We know enough to say posting on social media once in a while is not a strategy to land new clients. So what do you do?
Below are a handful of ways to find new clients that aren’t your run-of-the-mill pieces of advice. None of them are easy; some of them are uncomfortable. But I fully believe that if you tried everything, at least one of them would work out in your favour.
1. Reconnect with old coworkers or employers
Yep. You’d be surprised: reconnecting with old coworkers or employers just to say hello, see how they’re doing, catch up on life can be a great way to make it known that you’re currently looking for new business.
Especially if you’re self-employed in a similar field to the day job you left, go back and ask if they have any freelance work you can help out with.
As long as you haven’t burned bridges, you might be surprised to find how happy an old employer is to hire you for a time.
A word of caution: if your only intention when reaching out to old coworkers is to seek new business, be upfront about it. Do not message under the guise of genuine care and then pivot towards trying to make a sale (and, most offensive of all, drop off the face of the earth when they reply they have no way to help you). I have had this happen to me so many times and it is just insanely stupid. Do not do this, or you will indeed be burning bridges.
2. Ask your current clients to refer you
Assuming you’re not creating a conflict of interest by working with a competitor, ask your current clients—if they’re happy with your work—to make a personal recommendation to some of their friends about working with you.
The clients who currently find value in your services probably know at least 1 or 2 other people who might find the same for their own businesses.
More than reviews, portfolios, or testimonials, prospective clients trust the word of their friends more than anything. If your current client is willing to go to bat for you, this might be valuable beyond measure.
As a bonus, feel free to offer your current clients a finder’s fee discount if they successfully refer a friend. This isn’t always enough to get them to actually do the work of referring you, but it’s a very actionable way to show your gratitude if your ongoing client sent more money your way.
3. Do pro-bono work to expand your network
I’m an advocate for doing work for free under the right circumstances. This is one of them.
The operative term here is “to expand your network.”
When you’re hurting for business, look at what opportunity you might have to get your foot in the door with the right person, and then pitch some sort of exchange to them.
Let me be really clear: in order to have any chance of this succeeding, you must be providing much more value upfront to this prospective client or connection than they seek to give to you. It’s immediately obvious when a proposed business partnership is one-sided. It’s a gigantic turnoff. It almost always ends with a hard pass. Ensure that you’re not too pushy upfront, and that you’re providing value in exchange for their time or consideration. When you’re desperate for business, this is the only bargaining chip you have. Don’t think you’re above anything.
4. Run a promo or contest
Instagram contests are prone to scammers so just be careful. But running a sale on something or a contest is a really fantastic way to spread the network your business has fast in a short amount of time.
Especially if you focus on like + share contests (only if appropriate to your business), these can get your business seen by hundreds—if not thousands—of new people for very little monetary cost (whatever the prize for your giveaway is).
The goal is to expand our network, and this is a quick, “free” way to do it.
Use this sparingly otherwise people will become numb to it and you’ll start losing more money than you earn by giving away your product or service. But as opposed to spending a bunch of money on targeted social media ads, this is an untraditional way to spend your “money” in a meaningful way.
5. Pitch new ideas to your current clients
Clients love to know that you’re thinking of them when you’re not actively working on something, and that you have new ways to make their business better.
As long as your pitch is not just a thinly veiled sales call, you have a real opportunity to grow the size of a contract with an existing client if you can show how the value of the new service or product you’re providing will be a continued beneficial investment of their money.
Again, you can only do this so often with your clients. But in the past, I’ve found it to be really effective if done right.
Take your time. Warm people up. Be flexible. Offer to do some stuff without extra charge first. Then, when your client is primed and ready to buy, make the big pitch and try to close the sale.
6. Otherwise help your current audience
If you hopped on social media right now purely with the intent of, “I want to spend the next hour helping the people I follow,” What would you do?
You could host a Q&A. You could comment on posts and engage with your followers on their content. You could offer free 1-on-1 Zoom calls to work through a problem someone in your audience is having.
If you went online less focused on you and more focused on genuinely helping others, what amazing stuff could you accomplish?
Especially if the people you’re helping are on the peripheral of the services you offer, your audience might be really receptive. Any realtor can offer “free home evaluation!” which is extremely un-valuable because I don’t know a single realtor who would charge for it. We recognize the stakes are uneven because they have a higher likelihood of talking us into a sale than we do of exclusively receiving a home evaluation and walking away. Keep this in mind when trying to help others out there.
As is the general thesis here, the goal is to expand your network. You might not make connections with people who have cash-in-hand and are ready to give it to you. In fact, you very likely won’t. That’s ok. As immediate as I hope many of these tactics are, you have to understand that none of them are super great as your general marketing tactics. These are mildly “Use in case of emergency” type of tactics that can push people away if you’re overly aggressive, or do them too often.
Bonus: Start writing
You’ve heard me argue that the leaders in your industry are focused on education. In order to avoid having to use too many of these tactics too frequently in the future:
Use this extra time on your hands to start writing.
Don’t care if your “writing” looks like videos on Youtube, a book, a blog, a podcast, intentional + good educational content on social media. It’s mostly irrelevant (though you should have a master copy of everything somewhere).
Start writing today. Stop waiting.
The best time to start a blog was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
…a mildly modified saying about planting trees, but the same is applicable here.
If you find any other unconventional + immediate ways to drum up new business, I would love to add them to the list! Shoot me an email at aidan@hennebry.ca so I can hear from you. It would be an honour.
