Persuading Client That Freelance is better than In-house worker.

Ill help you out but please answer this question first.

Who says inhouse in NOT the way to go?

Just because YOU think it doenst make it so.

FYI. Someone in here ( i forget his SN ) is making a living off of
helping business set up inhouse experts. He trains and coaches them.

If you cant convince them to outsource, maybe you can train there inhouse
and make some money that way.

Reasons for outsource:

1. They need less then 160 hours of work per month(40 per week times 4 weeks)
2. Talented person costs too much to hire.
3. Need work for only a short period of time(say 6 months of SEO to get the site into a good position and let it sit)

Reasons for in house:

1. Control (this will always be their main reason)
2. Costs for full time work(160 hrs in house can likely be done cheaper by hiring someone vs. outsourcing to a company)

Basically the larger the company the more sense it makes to have this in house. Part of my job is doing this in house for a company. The other part is selling and we debate each year how much of my time to allocate to each.

But if they can give this job to a current employee they can likely do it in house for way less and have more control over it.

If all these people want in house have you tried offering coaching and training for their new hire? Maybe even offer seminars?

I wouldn't try persuading people, it's a losing battle. Especially when they are probably right in having it in house, that's what I would do. Every situation is different though.

How big are these companies that you are referring to? I can't imagine the point of having an in house SEO person unless they are huge.

I don't see how this would be possible - if you hired an in-house SEO person at $10/hr (and how good could they even be at this rate? - after payroll taxes (SSI, medicare, unemployment tax, workmans comp) - that would come out to well over $2,000 dollars a month. And what in the world would they be doing for 40 hours a week, every week? Wouldn't you rather spend that $2,000/mo on a knowledgable consultant or an reputable SEO firm?

Agree with Nameless here, just explain that you are a consultant and tell them why you are qualified. If they still think that it is still better to do it in-house then they are not worth wasting their breath on - Either because they are a huge company and it makes sense to have someone dedicated to this type of work, or they are a smaller company and just idiots.

You'd do a 160hr/month job for $2000? You'd freelance for $12.50 an hour? If so can I hire you? I can find you 160hr of work a month that I will charge clients at least $50/hr for.

You do realize that $12.50 an hour freelance equals out to a take home pay of like $7 or $8? You can work at Wal-Mart and make more but hell if you wanna free lance me at rates that low maybe we should talk.

The point I was making is that getting someone with knowledge and skills costs money. A consultant will get about $100/hr while I can get someone in house with benefits for way under $50/hr.

Consultants always make sense for specialized jobs where you don't need full time work but need quality. But if you need a consultant full time you can often hire a similar experience level person in house for less because he will work for less because of the security of a job and not being self employeed. Of course it is harder to get rid of an employee.

I know your point. But your point missed mine.

And often the guy doing the marketing is doing other jobs like I am to fill up the 40hrs a week.

Once a company gets to be midsized they will have at least 1 full time marketing person. Once a company gets near 100 employees the marketing department is likely 3 or more with 1 being an internet marketing specialist.

Hell some of these guys will even have in house web designers.

The reason? It is cheaper. Many people(most in fact) prefer to be employees vs. working for themselves. This means you can always hire someone for less than a consultant will cost.

You always have to weigh if it is cheaper to hire someone because you don't need a full timer. As you will notice my point was full time work(160hrs/month was what I put).

You are arguing the point I made before that on in favor of outsourcing(if it is less than full time work a consultant makes sense more). I gave both points based on how much work they need.

But if you got a medium sized business that has a lot of potential online you can easily make it full time work.

You have social media which requires hands on engagement.
You have SEO.
You have PPC campaigns.
You have promotions and coupon creation.
You have craigslist.
You have ebay.

We honestly limit what I can do during the summer because we need me selling vs. marketing. But even during the summer I would say at least 5 hours a week is spent just running the basics.

This fall we will discuss it again and I may be doing marketing(mainly internet marketing) full time to bring in more business.

Right now we don't do PPC. No real SEO.

We spend the majority of our time on ebay(we spend over $60k a year on ebay fees) and on social media.

Sure very small businesses don't need or have the budget for full timers but they may not have the budget for $2,000 a month either to a consultant.

Lots of businesses do this in house for the reasons I mentioned which come down to control and cost controls. And lots of other businesses need someone to do it for them.

I know I am not the only one here who took his side knowledge of this and got the company to let them do it internally. I've seen other posts by people in similar positions. I've also seen posts by small business owners here who do this all themselves. Each business is different.

Listen to this advice....^^^^^
I tried to wing it some time ago and lost a $30k client

Here is an excerpt of a previous post that I made that may be more suitable for this thread:

Don't waste your time trying to convince a business owner what is right for their business - after all, you could be wrong. Move on to the next prospect. The clients that you are looking for do exist.

beb I know those types. You'll never convince them to use you unless they trust you. And unless you are already friends IMO it is not worth the time to build that relationship. I just consider someone like that telling me we are not a good fit.

Though if you provide services like SMS or soemthing you might still make a sale. Or offer one on one training with them. But even then is it worth it? I think too often people doing this chase after the sale too much. Too worried about overcoming the objections vs considering rather it is even worth the effort to overcome the objections. Sometimes you need to walk away. Customers always have the power to walk away and I am a firm believer that sales people do as well. I walk away from deals all the time that don't make sense for the company.

Wrong angle. Sell them on YOUR expertise. What can YOU provide that an inhouse worker may not?

Social Security, Workman's comp, health care, benefits.................On & on.

Hugh

Chiming in along with some of the thoughts here. When I first began offline, I was solely focused on getting clients to hire me as a monthly consultant. However, there are many business owners out there that truly understand the need to be online and really want to make that move but their budget just doesn't allow them to hire someone at $500+ per month. But they are open to hire you on as a coach. Consultant or Coaching...same thing.

What would you rather have? Missed out on a client that would pay you $50-75 per hour for your coaching or no one at all? I guess you really have to weigh out the pros and cons on working with that client.

The beauty of offering hourly coaching services it allows you to build trust and eventually may turn into a full on monthly client. This takes positioning to another level.

I just decided to test the waters with this concept and have already acquired 2 new clients within a couple of days.

There are those out there that would not work with this business model but then there are those that would work perfect.

Your thoughts?