Hello, Joshua Boswell here, founder of Copywriter Marketer. How do you have confidence to go after the next level of client,? And all of us want to go after the next of client, whether you’re just starting out and you have zero, you definitely want the next bigger client, whether you’re in the middle of your career, you want the next bigger client. And I promise you bigger clients pay better and they give you more respect and they’re easier to work with and they’ll chew up less of your time. So how do you have the confidence to get those kinds of clients? Well, to understand that you have to understand the psychology about why bigger clients will hire you.

And then you need to know this one very simple technique. And I’m going show you exactly what the psychology is behind this, and then I’m going to show you one very simple technique, one simple technique that I learned about, I don’t know, six, seven months into my first year as a writer. And I learned this technique, in terms of how I communicated with the prospects and I communicated confidence, and it literally changed everything almost over night. Within a few short months I had more clients than I could deal with. So how do you do that? Let me show you that.

First of all let’s look at the psychology behind why they would want to hire you. And it’s very simple. It’s going to be summed up in this one simple word. They have confidence in you. They trust, they trust that you can solve their problem, meet their need. And the bigger solution you bring to the table and that they trust that you can bring to the table the more they’re going to be delighted to pay you and to respect you and to work with you. So bigger clients simply have bigger needs, bigger problems to solve, bigger fish to fry. And when you can prove that you can handle that level of projects through the way you approach them, then of course they’re delighted to hire you. So how do you do that? How do you have that kind of confidence in presenting those kinds of big solutions?

Well, there’s one very simple thing that you can do, which I’ll show you in just a minute, and explain how it works, but first, let’s look at what doesn’t work, what won’t work at all.

First of all what doesn’t work is this. It doesn’t work to beg for mercy. What I mean by that is it doesn’t work to go to them with a posture of, “Hey, I’m a brand new writer. Can you help me out, pal?” Or, it doesn’t work to be like the guy standing on the street corner like, “Will work for food.” Or like, “I’m really desperate. Please, can you just give me a job?” That doesn’t breath confidence. It doesn’t communicate confidence.

The second thing that doesn’t work is, it doesn’t work to be reactive. It doesn’t work to send out emails and just sit and wait for them to respond. It doesn’t work for you to post a whole bunch of content online and just hope somebody’s going to come banging at your door and talk to you. It doesn’t work to be on a call or a writing up a proposal and just say, “Whatever you want, I’ll go ahead and do that.” You can’t be reactive and always be waiting for them to lead out. 

So what does work? Well, the two attitudes that do work is number one, providing solutions, okay? Providing solutions. So instead of begging for mercy, present solutions. The second thing that works is instead of being reactive, be proactive. Be the leader. You lead out.

It’s your dreams and goals, so you provide solutions, you lead out, you follow up, you set the appointments, you direct the conversation. And when you’re a leader, you will transmit power and confidence. If you’re a brand new writer, like I once was, and like you might be today, or if you’re in the middle of your career and you’ve sort of plateaued, like I did once, and like you might be doing today, how do you transmit confidence in your conversations with the prospects and show them that you can get the job done, and get them to trust you that you can deliver?

Well, here’s where we come to the one simple technique. And it really is just a technique. And this one simple technique, if you’ll implement this, it will really change up everything about how clients perceive you and it’ll dramatically increase your confidence level.

What’s the one technique? The one technique is very simply this, ask quality questions. Look, when I first started I would get on the phone or I’d get emails back from people and I discovered that they would ask me questions. And I found out that the person asking the question controls the conversation. The person asking the question controls the conversation. So I found out that if they were doing all the asking, like, “Well tell me about who have you written for? And do you have testimonials? And can you send me some samples? What kind of experience have you had? What’s the response rate been on this, that, and the other?”

I found that I was always being reactive, like oh, well I’ve done this. And I’ve done that. And I’ve blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was constantly juggling these questions. My mentor, Bob Bly, calls this being the dancing monkey. Just you’re constantly reacting to their questions. And I found that as long as I was doing that, they didn’t have very much confidence in me or very much respect for me.

So I had to turn the tables around, and I had to figure out how to be the one asking the questions. And what I found was is that when I was asking the questions, they were like, “Man, this guy knows what he’s talking about.” Or, “He’s really interested in us. He’s really taking a concern in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. He must be a professional.”

See, professionals ask questions. When we go to a doctor, they don’t just sit down without looking at you, without talking to you, without asking anything, just fill out a prescription, they ask questions. “Tell me how you’re feeling. What’s your temperature? What did you do? When did this come on? Blah, blah, blah.” They ask all these prescriptive, diagnostic type of questions. And every professional in the world does this. So you need to learn how to do this. Let me give you three, what I call golden questions. And I learned these from my other mentor, RC Peck. And these literally have radically changed up my business and my ability to close clients and to breath confidence in those clients that I can deliver on solutions. Three golden questions.

Number one:

What do you want? This is the first question I ask all of my potential clients, all of my prospects, all of my existing clients. Can you tell me what you want? And this shows up in lots of different ways, like well, what project are you working on right now? What’s the next big promotion that you’ve got going on? What did you do past that worked? What exactly do you want? What are your goals for this campaign? So the what do you want question, that’s the first question. What do you want?

Number two:

Question number two of my three golden questions. Second question is why do you want that? Okay, so I understand you want an email campaign going out, tell me, why this is important for the overall big picture of your business? Tell me, why you need this product to sell right now? Why did you decide to promote this service at this time? Why, why, why, why, why? I ask a lot of why questions because I want to know what they’re thinking.

Number three:

Third question: What does it look like when you’ve got it? Hey, Mr. Prospect, so you need some emails, you’re going to promote this product because it’s your best-selling product and it fits into this dynamics of your sales funnel, so if you were to have a perfect response rate, or a perfect outcome for this campaign, what would it look like? Tell me about what that looks like when it’s all done and perfect.

Now there are a lot of different versions to these questions, no doubt about it. But when you figure out how to ask those three kinds of questions, what do you want, why do you want it, and what does it look like, then what you do is you’re gathering information, you’re presenting yourself as a professional, the information you gather will allow you to be empowered to be a of better service, which will make you more valuable and allow you to present better solutions. And the whole thing is just a big upward spiral of communicating confidence that you can get the job done.

So if you want to communicate confidence and you want to build your business successfully and rapidly, even as a new writer, then what you can do is learn how to master the art of asking effective questions. Now I’ve given you what I call the three golden questions, what do you want, why do you want it, and what does it like when you’ve got it. And you can learn to master versions of that. So this week, right now, today, as you’re talking with friends and family and associates, why not start asking them questions? “Hey, what is it that you want?” You could ask your spouse, or your lover, or your friend, or somebody important in your life, ask them the what do you want question. And then find out why they want that, why it’s important to them.

You’ll be amazed when you start taking this level of interest in people, you’ll be amazed at how they respond back to you. And if you do this with clients instead of always leading with begging for mercy or being reactive, when you be proactive and provide solutions by asking effective questions, you’ll be amazed at how they respond to you. You’ll get hired more. You’ll make more money. And you’ll have time and money to fill your life with things that matter most.