You have finally gotten a client, and everything seems to be going perfectly. But your aim isn’t just to have endless discussions with your client, you want money from them. This is why you have to learn the end game of how to bill a client for the first time. Once you learn this endgame, you can always collect money from clients easily.
One of the major mistakes made is engaging in an endless loop of discussions with your client. The more you discuss some random issues, the more your chances of losing the client.
As a hustler, you should be strategic and plan every move, discussion, and questions you ask your client. That way, you move them slowly to billing them and getting cash from them.
In this post, I will show you some clear-cut steps to follow. Once you have gotten to the billing step, go ahead and billing the client. If they make these common excuses for saying NO, then it is time to discard the client, so as not to waste your time more than they have already wasted.
Perfect Steps to Bill a Client for the First Time
First time billing is always difficult, and if not done right, you will pass out a red flag, and the client will go with another hustler.
So, follow this clear-cut plan and stay ahead of the game.
Qualify the Client
For any client you are having discussions with, you should have a mental picture of the spending power of that client. Many hustlers are lucky to just quote a figure for their clients, and they pay immediately.
You might not be so lucky, so you have to be smarter than just quoting a random figure for your client, no matter the format you are using.
When having discussions with your client, try to picture the following
- Are they rich?
- Do they love spending?
- Are they risk takers or love playing it safe in life.
If you want some questions to ask clients, to know more about them, then you should read this post that talks about questions to ask clients.
Give Good Advice
I love to give my new clients advice that will make them see me as trustworthy. In the course of discussion, after asking some strategic questions, a client might tell me of his plans to invest in a certain market.
As a trustworthy friend, I will simply talk them out of the idea. To further solidify my reason, I can do a personal research and show why the investment is a poor investment.
This way, they can see me as loyal and also someone who is looking out for their best interest.
Buy Trust
To successfully bill a client for the first time, you will have to buy their trust. This is money, and people only send money to people they can trust and feel at ease with.
In most cases, I develop something that would make them see me as trustworthy. Either I give a testimonial of myself of how I helped someone, or I tell them how someone trusted me and I didn’t fail.
The idea is to create a scenario that will put you in a trustworthy spot. So anything that you can do to build trust, you have to do it.
Use a Billing Format
The next step is to have a billing format you intend to follow. For first time billing, I suggest you use a billing format that is simple to implement.
Oil Rig, Military, or Apartment billing formats are very difficult and complex, so you should look for easy billing formats to execute.
To bill a client for the first time, I suggest you use simple formats like Gift Card format or Birthday format.
Let the client know that your birthday is in a few days, and that you’d be expecting something from them. Make sure you say it jokingly but sincere with it.
Ideally, they should ask you what you want, so you can just go ahead and mention something that can’t be bought elsewhere.
That way, they will ask you for the price in cash, so that they can send you the money equivalent.
Choose a Low Amount
When they ask you for how much the gift is worth in cash, I suggest that you should start with a simple figure.
You already know the type of client you have. Therefore, you should quote a figure that you think they can pay.
For the type of gift, make it something that is educative and worth spending on. For me most time, I recommend saying things like
- “I want to register for a piano class in my locality”
- “I want to buy a new laptop to start another online business”
- “For the gift, I will appreciate if I can get a Camera Stand to enable shoot my YouTube videos professionally”
For these reasons, the client will be excited to spend on you because they believe they are investing in you. They can equally check the price and would decide if they can or not.
But make sure to remind them that they shouldn’t order it from their location. That way, you can negotiate for them to send you the money.
No Pressure
When you want to bill a client for the first time, have it in mind that they aren’t so comfortable sending money, so don’t apply much pressure.
Applying much pressure might make them ghost you, and that is the end of your relationship with them.
What I always do – depending on where I am chatting with the client, I usually send out indirect reminders like
- Uploading my birthday reminder on my WhatsApp status
- Changing my profile picture to a birthday reminder image – in the case the client doesn’t view my status.
Asides from these two option, don’t go remind the client directly about your birthday – unless on the day of your birthday.
Then should the client don’t play to your birthday billing, then you should consider the next step.
Have a Plan B
Sometimes, they might not yield to the birthday billing, then you should have a second plan.
I would suggest the gift card billing. If you are using the gift card method, then you should already see the example I gave to make the client send you some juice.
If the client doesn’t yield to the request, then it means you either didn’t do well enough or the client isn’t a good one for you. Discard and look for a well-paying client, they are many of them on the internet.
Conclusion
To bill a client for the first time and be successful takes skill and planning. Depends on what you are offering them, you should be strategic.
Overall, I always recommend that you don’t stick to just one client. You should always have like three or four clients at once. If one fails, the other three won’t fail.
In the game of online hustling, the more clients you have, the better.
