I’ve had some questions about my roofer and his DVD. 
I said:
One day, just after lunch, I was on my way to attend a couple of client meetings. The doorbell rang, and a tradesman handed me a DVD. He said: “We’ve just restored the roof on Number 10 across the road. When you get a chance, watch the DVD. Give me a call if you’d like a quote.”
The entire interaction took a couple of minutes. In that couple of minutes, the roofer made several thousand dollars. From me. I handed him my credit card a couple of weeks later. I wasn’t thinking about the roof, nor was I thinking about spending money on it. The DVD sold me.
Why did that DVD sell me? That DVD was just a home movie. Nothing glitzy or professional about it. It showed the roofer climbing around the roof of an older house (in scuffs! Couldn’t be more casual… ), and showing/ telling why the roof needed to be fixed. Then it showed the roof restoration, step by step. Then it showed the restored roof.
The DVD was around 20 minutes long. Purely show and tell.
You can use show and tell too.
Use show and tell to get freelance clients
Think about presentations you could make to your clients. What could you show and tell?
BTW, you certainly don’t need to make a 20 minute video. You can make a one-minute screencast, or just a slide deck.
You could use:
* (free) Jing to create short screencast videos;
* (free) Slideshare to create slide decks.
I cover this and more in Freelance Writing Pro Secret: How to Get More and Better Clients Today.
Big tip: no one wants to THINK.
I don’t want to, you don’t want to and your clients certainly don’t want to. Therefore, when you tell a client that you can write his Web content or whatever, he doesn’t care. He’s not thinking about how and why Web content could help him. It’s your job to show him his pain (what’s not working) and how your Web content can help.
SHOW AND TELL. Make it a habit, and you’ll get great clients. I’m always telling you that top-paying clients are easier to work with than the other kind… Show and tell will get you better clients. It can take you from making a couple of hundred dollars on a gig, to making a thousand dollars or more per gig. It’s worth it.
To repeat again… Show and tell.
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