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Many translators forget about learning sales skills. They mix sales with marketing. Marketing is your steps to attract clients, then comes sales, where you try to convince the client to work with you. Part of the translator’s job is to sell, not just to tell, his/her translation services, whether to agencies or direct clients. I like to view selling as a game that just needs persistence and trial and error. I started to learn these skills 2 years ago, and it worked (Yes, it did!). This post is about some of my experiences and will be happy if you share some of yours too.
1- Do your home work: as you graduated from college does not mean you do not have home work to do any more!. To get your clients attention you have to dig for information about them. Check every page in their website, social media profiles, press releases and Google their names. I do this with each new client and you can not imaging how valuable are these pieces of information. Sometimes, I see what sales gurus call “trigger events”, such as a new branch to be opened by the translation agency I like to work for, or a new contract signed by a direct client I am targeting. I use this information to start a conversation with the potential client (Prospect). So, do not just send your CV/profile with an email asking for work, always know something about your client to start the chit chat.
2- Keep asking questions: questions are the essence of the first stages with your client, whether it is a translation agency or a direct client. Start the conversation with a question and keep asking by end of each email you send to your prospect. By doing this, you are driving the sales process forward. You know the difference between selling and telling? Telling you say “I am a translator, I have 5 years experience, I am a member of 4 associations, ……..etc”. while a part of the selling process is asking the client about the required qualification he needs in a translator. You keep getting information about the client needs by asking questions, then you can tell the client how you are a good choice for them by just rephrasing what they said and applying that to you. By end of each email ask a question like, “what is the next step in your recruitment process testing or signing papers?, “When shall you get the project I am quoting for?”, Will you need specific CAT tool for the project? Of course asking questions has an end, but this happens after you get the translation project, or you get approved in the clients database. But may be the next phase requires a different kind of questions!
3- Learn how to reply to objections: have you ever contacted a client and he said “Thank you we have a (your language) translator/supplier right now, and we are good with him” or “your price is very high compared to other translators in your language pairs”. These are what sales people call “sales objections”. You have to learn how to reply to these objections. Some times when a client say “your price is high”. I ask him about his offered price and what he expects the price will cover, like translation only, or translation and editing. When I explain to the client what my price includes, like a translation and editing by another colleague he may reconsider my prices. This is just an example that may work and may not. As translators, we face a group of similar objections, and we can master how to reply them.
4- You should have a CRM: This refers to Customer Relationship Management system. In this system you keep track of your sales efforts, the name of the agencies/direct clients you contacted, intend to contact, declined working with you or just a classification for your current and future prospects. Your CRM can be a spreadsheet, a calendar or a Google Drive document, or an official CRM platform. I am currently using Google Zoho CRM. It is inexpensive and can be customized. One of the best things I have added is the classification of the current prospects database. The classification includes “Contacted, attempted to contact, declined and not contacted”, this way I can export a report of the contacted or not contacted only prospects to measure my progress. Also, I managed to add where did I find my prospects, Proz, Linkedin, Translators Café, magazines, or general Google search. This way, I find out the best prospecting channel.
These are some of the principles I mainly work with, let me hear from you. What additional sales principles you think as important for us as translators?
