What to Do When People Ask you for Free Services?
This is a question that comes up from time to time for many of my clients. I work with service professionals – coaches, consultants, virtual assistants, web designers, and many of them get emails through their web sites asking for free services.
Does this happen to you? What do you do?
First of all, remember, people asking for free services are not your perfect customers. They can’t (or don’t want) to pay for your services. You are a professional, and should be compensated for your services as such.
What I recommend my clients to do in this situation is to have lower priced products, that they can refer their potential clients to. Many times when people can’t (or don’t want to) pay for services, a lower priced product is a great compromise. Many of my web site visitors wanted to learn online marketing for under $50, so I created the Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course. It sells for $47, but if I were to teach someone one on one all the information I share in the course, it would cost them thousands of dollars.
Another reason to offer a lower priced product is to give a customer a “taste” of what you are about, and how you work. Many of the people who bought my products came back to me with joint venture proposals, asked for more products or inquired about services. By selling a product, in addition to your services, you can reach more people and make more money.
So what is a product? It is an ebook, a special report, an audio CD, a teleseminar, a workshop, a course – there are many possibilities.
Want to learn more about creating products, and making money with them? Join me at MarketingSalad.com, the online business coaching group, where I teach solo professionals how to create their own products and market them online.
Biana Babinsky
Online Business Coaching for Solo Professionals