Web Worker Daily |
| 5 Tips For Making Better Use Of Your Time Posted: 25 Feb 2009 04:10 PM PST Written by Simon Mackie. Over the past few weeks, we’ve published a series of posts from WWD blogger Dawn Foster about the steps she’s taken to improve her time management. If you missed any of them, you should definitely check them out as they contain lots of useful nuggets of information: The series starts with Dawn’s realization that side projects are taking up too much time that could be used for paying client work, and some of her initial steps to counter “side project overload.” This post outlines some easy-to-use method for categorizing and prioritizing tasks. Harvest is a time tracking app. This review looks at how it can help you manage your time more effectively. Read this post to see how to get more out of Twitter while spending less time using it. The most recent post in the series looks at methods for getting all of the information you need from news and blog posts, without spending excessive time scouring the RSS feeds.        |
| Pencil: A Flexible Drawing Extension for Firefox Posted: 25 Feb 2009 04:00 PM PST Written by Samuel Dean. If you’re a Firefox user, you undoubtedly already know that one of the huge advantages of the browser is the big galaxy of useful extensions you can use with it. Last year, we mentioned a drawing tool extension called Pencil that went on to get an award from Mozilla for being one of the most creative of all extensions. It’s been updated since we last covered it, with more built-in tools, and I’ve been using it lately. Many web workers will want to get to know this extension. Here’s what it does. Pencil is, at first glance, a drawing tool that presents you with a document to work within, and tools, shapes and widgets to work with. Below, on the left, you’ll see a list (it’s scrollable, and long) of tools and widgets, and a blank document on the right: This extension is for much more than just drawing, though. Here are some of the features under the hood: * Built-in stencils for diagramming and prototyping Among other things, you can use Pencil for prototyping graphical user interfaces. Below, I have dragged a radio button and other widgets from a palette on the left to a document on the right, where I can begin to move these elements around to mock up a simple GUI: You would want to reach for a more powerful prototyping tool to arrive at a final version of a user interface you have in mind, but Pencil is great for on-the-fly sketching and prototyping. When I first used it, I used only the drawing features and associated shapes, but it comes with a large set of widgets and prototyping tools, worth getting to know. Pencil installs very quickly, and all you have to do is restart Firefox to get going. You’ll find a menu choice for it under the Tools menu in Firefox. Give it a try.      |
| Hard Selling vs. Soft Selling: Which Approach Do You Use With Clients? Posted: 25 Feb 2009 01:03 PM PST Written by Celine Roque.
Was he being rude or was it a sales tactic? I don’t know, but it worked. This got me thinking about my own approach to selling my freelance services. Could I get away with saying something similar to a potential client? I can imagine some of them getting turned off, while I can picture others saying “yes.” I wouldn’t dare try it, of course. The sales process is my least favorite part of online freelancing. Still, whether we’re providing products or services, we can’t escape being a sales person from time to time. This is why we need to be aware of the different approaches we could use when making a sale. Hard Selling Hard sell strategies are aggressive and usually put a high amount of pressure on the client. The clerk who sold me the shovel is a simple example. Other tactics include cold calls, forceful sales letters, and unsolicited pitches. You’re there to sell, they know it, and you know it — there’s no gray area. The main advantage of hard selling is that it gets straight to the point. This is especially important for clients who are ready to buy and aren’t looking around to do a few more meetings. The decision should be made now, and you want to step up and offer yourself as a part of their team. The problem with the hard sell is that when it’s done too aggressively, your attempt to help will be seen as an annoyance. This plays a big role, especially if you’re working with small businesses that are savvy to such sales techniques. No matter how genuine your offer is, it might come off sounding like a scam. Soft selling focuses on the relationship-building aspect of sales. You don’t put psychological pressure on potential buyers. Instead, you find passive ways to show them that you have the solutions they need. In online freelancing, this could be done through your blog, by providing a free ebook or white paper, or even by participating in online discussions. With all the available online tools for these, it’s no wonder that this tends to be the approach chosen by more tech-savvy freelancers. A study released by New Century Media in October 2007 showed user buying behavior after being exposed to informational and educational resources that were actually soft selling efforts from businesses. According to the study, consumers were 30 percent more willing to buy a product through non-direct advertising rather than media advertising. Not only that, consumers exposed to this method of advertising were 97 percent more likely to tell their friends about it, and 95 percent more likely to repeat their experience with the business. There is, however, such a thing as taking an approach that’s “too soft.” You might spend so much energy on updating your personal blog that you forget to use it as a platform for selling your services. Or you could be spending so much time Tweeting with your potential clients that you don’t make firm, actionable proposals that will bring you recurring revenue in exchange for your efforts. Being too gentle with your sales approach might also give clients the impression that you’re not too confident about your services, or that you’re just not interested in working with them. Soft selling may work in some cases, but it doesn’t make sense to apply those tactics to all of your clients, regardless of where they are in their buying cycle and what services you’re trying to sell. Find out the conditions that make soft selling work and apply it there, but don’t waste your time and effort using these techniques exclusively. Call To Action Whatever approach you use, there’s one thing you should always do at the end: ask for the order. From a simple “Will we be working together on this project?” to the more overt “Buy Now!”, there should always be a call to action at the end to indicate the start of a working relationship. Without it, your approach won’t even count as “selling.” What experiences did you have with hard selling or soft selling? Which approach works better for you? Image by Steve Woods from sxc.hu      |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2009 09:15 AM PST Written by Dawn Foster.  Photo by Scott Kveton Many of us are social beings who enjoy interacting with other people, and until you leave an office environment, you probably don’t realize how much contact you have with other human beings throughout the day. In an office, you run into people in the hallways, in the lunchroom, and at meetings. It can be easier to have social conversations or even to bounce ideas off of someone when you run into them unexpectedly. When you work remotely, whether you are a telecommuter or a freelancer, it is possible to go the entire day without ever seeing or speaking to anyone. However there are also plenty of ways to replace those interactions with new ones. Use technology to have conversations with other people. Instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites are the primary ways that I talk to people online throughout the day. I regularly chat with clients, friends, and peers in my industry using several of these tools. I’ll admit to not being much of a phone person, since I prefer to talk to people online or in person, but giving people a quick call to chat about work or anything else can help provide some additional contact with other people. Have lunch with old friends, peers, clients or other web workers. I spend too many lunches dropping crumbs onto my keyboard because it is just too easy to work through lunch when you work remotely. I make myself schedule a couple of lunches a week. It gets me out of the house, and I always end up having interesting conversations with people. Join or start a group exercise program. This could be as simple as planning a walk several days a week with someone you know in the neighborhood or joining an exercise class at the gym. Combine physical activity to get your butt out of the chair and social interactions! Take your work out of the house. I like to spend some time working in coffee shops with other people to break up the time working in my home office. I usually save up some work that can easily be done with some distractions (email, administrative tasks, etc.) while saving the client work that requires focused concentration for my home office. Attend local industry meetups. Find a couple of groups of people working in your industry and attend a few regular events. As Pamela noted, it’s a great way to meet new people with common work interests. You can also use these events to bounce ideas off of people or get feedback on some of your ideas. How do you connect with other people while working remotely?      |
“Are you going to buy this or what?” the clerk at the hardware store asked me yesterday, nodding at the new garden shovel I was holding in my hand. The frankness of the question put me off at first, but the urgency in his voice prompted me to act. I bought it.| You are subscribed to email updates from WebWorkerDaily To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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