by Patrick Weill, CT
Would you like to improve your level of success in translation or interpreting? If so, I have a four-part philosophy regarding some recent experiences I have had as a translator that I would like to share with you.
The four S’s refer to skill, sales, self, and service. Developing these four areas allows us to unlock our potential and to move more freely both professionally and personally. I’ve grouped them into two pairs: the more technical “skill and sales” pair, and the more personal “self and service” pair. The elements of each pair, and the two pairs themselves, are mutually complementary.
The most recent installment, Part 1, discusses various strategies for optimizing our product. That’s really the foundation of any successful business: having a solid and useful product, but of course we should build on that by spreading the word about the product, and targeting the spreading to specific types of potential clients.
One first step in this area is having good marketing material that is directed towards a specific and specialized audience. For example, I have a new logo, business cards, a flyer for e-mail marketing, a tri-fold flyer printed physically, among other resources, all in both my source and target languages. Now that we are armed and ready for battle, our next step is contacting potential clients. In one of my two target markets I use LinkedIn; once I am accepted as someone’s contact, I send them a polite message with their correct name and title, attaching my one-page PDF flyer and a link to my website. When their profiles are in English I will usually attach a corrected version (most of my targets are not native speakers of English) in track changes as a free sample of one of the services I offer. I have built up a network of over 500 contacts in this way. I also do not hesitate to pick up the phone in order to request information or to ask if I can send the same marketing material by e-mail. People respond to the personal touch and in this way it is easier to get names or to be remembered when individuals receive my flyer.
I have heard that mass e-mailing is not an effective strategy but I beg to differ. It depends on how necessary your product is to the individuals who receive the e-mail. For example, in my other target market, I offer editing of scientific texts written by non-native researchers. I create comma-separated lists of potential clients’ e-mail addresses and send off carefully crafted and polite messages to these target clients. This has been a successful strategy not only because of the force of the sheer number of e-mails I have sent, but also due to the fact that I have identified a type of individual who needs a particular service and who does not have many better options.
Last week I attended my first client trade show, in a large industry. At this conference I visited 60 stands or more with my business cards and flyers ready. I hadn’t planned to start with a sales pitch; instead, my idea was to simply converse with these people (in Spanish, their native language) about their companies or to tell them that I was doing research for my translation business by collecting bilingual documentation such as flyers. In one case I even feigned/exaggerated my interest in using the product they were offering in order to get my foot in the door. However, I quickly learned that in this context, at this trade show, honesty was the best policy. People’s reactions to my ploys were less than favorable in many cases, especially the one in which I exaggerated interest. In this “second-world” environment (the pharmaceutical industry in Mexico) everyone was hungry for sales and they had little patience for false pretenses.
By contrast, once I began to open with “Hi, how are you? My name is Patrick Weill and I am here to sell not buy. I run a specialized translation service. Would you like to be my client?” things went much more smoothly for me. Another thing I should mention is that on the first day of the expo I dressed nicely, but on the second day I really dressed up, with my best shirt and tie and a fancy watch my mom had given me. I don’t know what it was that helped me most: the aforementioned attire or the energy that prompted me to wear it, but I got much better reactions on that second day. The actual financial results from this first foray into my potential clients’ industry have yet to come to fruition – I am just now writing to these new contacts this week based on the cards they gave me and the very short notes I recorded thereon in order to remind me about our conversations, with which I am able to remind the contacts about our conversations – but I have a good feeling about this sales visit.
On this same trip, I visited a huge university campus where I am registered as a service provider, using a strategy that I think will interest you. It’s about creating a win-win for potential clients and ourselves; we give them a presentation about something that they will find useful, in exchange for the opportunity to sell them something slightly different – the services we offer. I saw this recently at a medical translation conference where one (kind of shady) guy was selling a well-known CAT tool but gave a presentation ostensibly about CAT tools in general and how to use them. My strategy was similar: at two Mexican university research institutes I presented (at no cost) for 90 minutes on the fine points of scientific writing in English and common errors I have detected in my work, while my presence was really designed to spread the word about the service I offer – editing of scientific texts written by non-native researchers. I am sure that I will be rewarded for my time; I also visited about 20 other offices there at the university to make my name known, meeting directors and collecting business cards for subsequent follow-up and distribution of my marketing material.
All of the above has focused on direct clients but I do plan to continue to market myself to agencies, though I am increasingly disappointed and even disgusted with the practices of two agencies with which I have worked. Keven Hendzel recently posted an excellent blog entry entitled “Creative Destruction Engulfs the Translation Industry: Move Upmarket Now or Risk Becoming Obsolete,” which discusses the need for translators to specialize and what to expect in the process. I will continue to “sharpen the saw,” as my wise mentor put it, with respect to agencies and especially direct clients. If you are not familiar with this expression, it refers to a woodcutter who says that he is so busy cutting wood that he cannot stop to sharpen the saw, which is ironic, since if he DID stop to sharpen the saw he would be much more efficient and productive in his work. This applies to our business because although sometimes we are so busy with translation projects that we fail to do our daily marketing; if we DID do our daily marketing, we would have better options regarding clients and be able to be less busy, earning more and having more freedom and flexibility. I’d like to leave you with a few tips regarding sales:
– Sales can be hard because we get a lot of no’s, but feeling unsuccessful is not the same thing as being unsuccessful. Of course sales pays off; every successful organization has a sales department of some kind – it’s just a matter of following the process and being patient.
– It’s easier to sell a product that is innovative, specialized, and high quality (see Part 1).
– In order to be successful we must do what others are not willing to do.
Patrick Weill has been living in central Mexico for 12 years and has been translating for 11 years. He is originally from northern California, and when not staring at a shiny screen, he enjoys spending time with family, friends, and his dog Lulu, in addition to reading, sports, and, when possible, video games.
