The freelance guide to closing client meetings

7 effective techniques to get the contract traded home

Imagine spending a lot of energy establishing contact with a customer, getting a meeting scheduled in the customer's busy calendar, preparing a long and thorough presentation, preparing a good and value-creating offer - and ultimately being chosen from in favor of a other provider.

As freelancer is the feeling of missing out on an agreement with a customer whose business you could really strengthen and which would make a good financial case, among the absolute worst.

And we will help you avoid it. With this guide, we teach you to close more customers, retain them, and have boats better and longer collaborations with them.

Here are the 7 most important things you need to be aware of in order to optimize your opportunities to close customer meetings.

1: Go in with good intentions

The longest and best customer relationships are those that are mutually valuable. Those where your work creates value in every way – and the customer can see this value and compensates you for your work.

When you go into a customer meeting, you must therefore bear in mind that your greatest ambition is to help the customer. You want to strengthen the client's business and will not accept the task at any cost - only if you can see yourself filling the role that suits your niche.

In other words: Yours intentions are good - and the customer can sense this completely unconsciously through your body language.

And what does such body language look like?

1a: Positive body language: 3 quick tips

Entire books can be written about body language and the effect it has on the receiver, so by no means should you view this section as a complete list.

Instead, see it as the 3 most important elements, you must have a handle on if you want to optimize your chances of success for the customer meeting.

1. Smile and maintain eye contact

A sincere smile and pleasant eye contact is the shortest way to a good connection between two people – even when those people are customers and freelancers.

2. Open yourself up (never cross your arms).

If you are sitting with your arms crossed, you might as well stand up and say "I don't want to be here - and you must not get to know me". Instead, focus on opening up your body, and feel free to gesture with calm hand and arm movements that drive your points home.

3. Involve everyone involved – take turns looking at people when you speak.

There is (almost) nothing more boring than sitting in a meeting where you feel a little indifferent. If the customer e.g. is represented by three people at the meeting, it is important that you make sure to speak to and look on all three – so that everyone feels welcome and useful.

2: Have one game plan, which you follow

What is the goal of the meeting?

To sell, to get to know the customer, to match expectations – or something completely different?

Be clear about your desired benefit from the meeting - and have a clear plan for the meeting so that the chances of achieving the benefit are as great as possible. A plan for a sales meeting could, for example, look like this:

• Good, strong opening with lots of smiles and a polite introduction of yourself
• Introductions – the customer talks about his company, you talk about yourself
• Need coverage – what does the customer need?
• What is the customer doing right now to meet that need?
• How can you meet the need in a better way?
• What similar cases have you had and what was the price of those cases?
• Presentation of price estimates and initial offers
• Agreement is concluded

It is important that you know where you want the meeting to go - and that you are ready to take the lead to get it in that direction.

However, be ready to deviate from the plan if the mood calls for it and you can feel that it has a good effect on the meeting.

3: Listen and learn – get the customer to tell you exactly what they want

Get the customer to talk - preferably a lot. And remember to regularly ask what the customer is saying, so you are sure that you always have the right understanding.

After that, it is important that you use the information the customer gives you. Only in this way can you ensure that your solution is exactly what the customer needs – and will spend money on.

Maybe you end up selling something completely different than what was on the agenda. Maybe you end up selling exactly what you expected.

But the chance to sell at all something can be improved by (approximately) 100% if you listen to your customer.

In other words: To close customer meetings, you must go after the customer – not the sale.

Also, make sure to address barriers to buying from you. Feel free to make it part of your preparation to note and visualize possible objections to your service in general and you as a provider specifically.

3a: How to build trust with the customer

If you are genuinely interested in your customer and you want the best for the customer's business, your customer will be able to feel it.

Do not pressure the customer to say yes. Present your solution and your price, and then let the customer make up his mind.

You neither can nor should you force your customer to do anything. Instead, let it be an independent decision where the customer wants you as much as you want them - and preferably more.

This provides the best cooperation in the long run.

4: Preparation time is well spent

The worst customer meetings are the ones where the salesperson is floundering and doesn't know who the customer is or what they need.

Therefore, it is simply essential that you are well prepared for the meeting. You need to know the customer's business – how they make money, how big they are, what they dream of achieving, what role the person you need to talk to – and you need to tie all that together in your solution.

Always have an agenda and/or a specific one presentation clear. It is often good to have a PowerPoint presentation prepared that sets the structure for the meeting.

However, be aware that the presentation itself must be clear - and not 25 densely written pages that you then sit and reproduce verbatim.

Have as few slides as possible with as little text as possible from which you can tell openly.

5: Show the customer who you are

As a freelancer, you are not the only one with your service. You know it and the customer knows it. Therefore, together you must reach a place where the customer can feel that you are different from the rest of the market.

At the same time, both parties naturally hope that it will be a long and fruitful collaboration. And the most important component in a long collaboration is, in addition to professional competence, that the chemistry is present.

Therefore, show the customer a little personality. Tell about yourself, without it coming over. You can easily weave some personality into your story about your business – how and why you started, what is your background and how are things going today.

Give something of yourself to the meeting.

6: Make confirmatory sales

Go for a “yes” at the end of the meeting.

When the meeting draws to a close, you must summarize what you have talked about. The customer wants this and that - and you can offer this and that at that price.

If you can get a yes already at the actual meeting, that is of course best. But if it is the first time you are meeting the customer, and you are "just" meeting to find out whether your service can be relevant for them, it may not be the most obvious thing to go for a sale right there.

On the other hand: If the customer is obviously interested in you and your service at the first meeting, the next natural question is of course: "What does it cost?"

If you can give a price already at the meeting, that's fine. Often you can give an estimate and say that you have to calculate (freelance price calculator? Look here) a bit on it to make a detailed offer. Here it is fine to say that you will follow up via email with a more detailed offer.

7: How to follow up on a customer meeting

It is generally fine to follow up on the meeting already on the same day that you have had it.

Write an email summarizing the most important things you talked about. Remember to focus on the good things – that the customer had a need for your solution and that you had the capacity and skills to deliver. When it's time to deliver, remember to keep track of yours as well freelance contract.

If the customer responds to that email, you can take it from there. If the customer does not respond, you can follow up again 3-7 days after the meeting.

Remember: Just because the customer doesn't respond doesn't necessarily mean the customer isn't interested. Far from. This can mean busyness and 1000 other things, and most people actually want the seller to keep in touch and manage the project.

Both you and the customer are interested in getting started - keep that in mind.

Bonus: the list goes to 8 – what about the digital meetings?

With the digital meeting, we are entering a completely new world - and most of us have gradually gotten used to it Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and all the others play tricks on us every now and then.

All of the above points also apply as such to the digital meeting, but there are still some new things that you need to pay particular attention to.

These are the most important:

• Get the technical stuff under control - good camera (and get it raised so you don't talk "down" to the camera), good connection, no background noise. Remember that you must not interrupt, especially because of the delay. This creates an unyielding dynamic in the conversation.
• In digital meetings, the possibility of body language disappears (almost – you can accommodate it a little by standing up and presenting). This makes the smile and "eye contact" with the camera even more important.

But otherwise the other rules apply: Get the customer to talk, listen actively and ensure that needs are well covered.

Don't be afraid to take the lead and set the structure for the customer meeting - but get the customer engaged right away. In digital meetings, if possible, it is even more important that there is a clear structure and that you get the customer to open up.