Through Twitter recently, I have started following a lot of freelancers – web designers, web programmers, etc. All of these people are effectively micro-businesses. Some of them are no doubt better that others but I wonder how good many are good in front of customers.

It’s the same with any business – customer facing people are amongst the most important people in the organisation. Without them in the business-to-business (B2B) service sector (which the UK economy seems to be mainly built of these days) you don’t have any business – it doesn’t matter how good you are.

People People

I’ve had a lot of new business meetings this month and each one is different. If I can’t adapt, if I can’t understand the clients requirements / issues, I don’t deserve the business and experience tells me that I won’t get it.

Think about sales people. In the UK, we are great at putting them down but having run a business now for over ten years, I can honestly say, that they are:

1. Worth their weight in gold
2. Few and far between

Commoditised Services

Now, if I reverse the point that I am following lots of freelancers on Twitter – each of them competing against each other in their marketplace – I would imagine that over time, the cost of production will fall – it has to. I will be able to choose where to place the actual work I need to produce – whether it be design or code – and buy it very cost-effectively.

So, when I take that into consideration, what do I really have available to me when it comes to how to make money? Surely, people will only use someone like me (or you) because of…

Empathy

I can sit down with a client or prospect and empathise with their business issues / problems and can offer a relative solution. I understand business and industry well enough to see the macro situation, but can also delve into their specific problem. Empathy in the B2B service sector is essential.

Value

I offer value for money because of my knowledge and experience and I can prove it. This helps keep my prices high enough for me to make money. What’s inside my head is a commodity that’s worth paying for.

But, I do need to work out how to scale that otherwise my opportunities to make money are limited to the amount of hours in a day. So, as my value increases, my prices must increase and I MUST invest the time into myself to get better and better at what I do.

Another option of course is to bulk sell my knowledge through publishing.

Communication Skills

My communication skills need to be good enough exceptional to engage people on a sales level. This includes the way I market myself and my business, but also, more importantly, the way I interact with people face-to-face.

For me, this last one is the key and why I spend so much time developing my inter-personal communications skills.

So, to finish off, I have one small message for all the web design/coding freelancers out there. When I started The Escape, the web didn’t exist the way it does now and it continues to change rapidly. How will you be making money in ten years time? Indeed, how will I?