TCC Podcast #137: What Copywriters Need to Know about Sales with Austin Mullins

Copywriter and entrepreneur, Austin Mullins, is our guest for the 137th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve known Austin for quite a while now and the more we heard him talk about his sales process, the more we knew we needed to have him share his process with the club. We covered a lot of ground—especially about sales processes—in this one, here’s a good list of most of what we talked about: •  how Austin became a copywriter in high school •  why he thinks it was a mistake (for him) to attend college •  what he did to find good clients beyond Upwork •  the #1 thing he did to grow his business—it has to do with sales •  why he chose the niche he is in and how it changed his business •  how he split his time between three “jobs” at the same time •  his “ideal” client acquisition process and selling on the phone •  what to do to encourage referrals or testimonials •  the mistakes copywriters make on sales calls (and how to fix them) •  what it means to be a growth strategist—and how to “do” strategy •  what his process for working with content clients looks like •  an in-depth review of what the sales process should look like •  how to teach yourself to “sell” To hear this one—and if you struggle with sales you definitely want to hear this one, click the play button below or download the episode to your podcast app. Readers scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Accelerator The Copywriter Think Tank Danny Marguiles Joel Klettke SPIN Selling Austin’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob:   This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground. Kira:   It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently. Rob:   For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com. What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira:   You're invited to join the club for episode 137 as we chat with copywriter Austin Mullins about what he does as a growth strategist for B2B SaaS companies, how he attracts and closes leads, what it's like to build an agency, and the challenges of investing his time in more than one business at once. Welcome, Austin. Rob:   Hey, Austin. Austin:           Thanks for having me, guys. Longtime fan of the podcast, so excited to be here. Kira:   Great to have you here, Austin. As one of our former Accelerator members and now a Think Tank member. It's about time we had you on the show, so let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter and growth strategist? Austin:           Yeah. I started a bit early, so I first started doing a little bit of copywriting work in high school, actually. Stumbled across Upwork, which I know is often a dirty word around these parts but stumbled upon there and was interested in this freelancing thing. I had always been good at academic writing but didn't particularly enjoy it, but stumbled across this term, copywriting and started to do some really low-level work like helping people write reviews and such at first, and then gradually worked my way up to being a generalist copywriter, who would write blog content for all sorts of businesses, brochures, a little bit of web copy in there but not web copy done the right way with lots of customer research. Then did that for a while. Made the mistake of letting my family convince me I should go to college, and so, business dropped off. Then when I tried to get back into it, things didn't pick up quite as quickly as I thought they would, so I ended up telling myself, ‘Okay, I need to learn sales. I'm not good enough at closing new business.’ I went in-house at an agency as a sales guy, worked my way up the ranks there and then more recently, have departed that agency and I'm now working totally on my agency, which is focused on content marketing and SEO, as you mentioned, for B2B SaaS companies. Rob:   Okay, so I want to ask about the mistake of going to college. This is something that a lot of people don't talk about and an interesting phrasing. Obviously, it's not a mistake for everybody, but why was it a mistake for you? What was it about that experience that was wrong and what has happened since you left? Austin:           Yeah, absolutely. One reason it was a mistake is that I had a little bit of momentum. I was not earning a lot of money as a copywriter but enough to get by at the time, and so, allocating that much of my time to something else that wasn't really what I wanted to do but out of obligation to someone else, was not a great idea. It was understandable at the time but in hindsight, it wasn't a great idea. The other thing was, I was studying the wrong thing. I've always been interested in, how do you persuade people to do things, human psychology. I probably should have been a behavioral economics major or a psychology major and instead, I was there studying finance, which was not really where I wanted to go. I think even if I had finished, I would have gone right back to marketing, and so, it would have been a moot point. Kira:   Okay, cool. I love the way that you laid out the path and you started on Upwork. How old were you when you started on Upwork? Austin:           I believe I was 17, which I probably had to forge the forms on how to even join because I don't think I was allowed to be doing contract work yet, but. Kira:   Interesting and we have to burst you. Okay, so for people who are on Upwork because I agree, it's sort of this dirty word but it's not and it works really well for some people and gives a lot of people their start in copywriting. For a copywriter who's on Upwork right now, what advice would you give them to grow beyond Upwork? What are some steps they could take? Austin:           Yeah, absolutely and you also had a wonderful guest on, Danny Margulies, who gave some great advice on how to make that channel actually work for you but outside of that, there's a lot you can do. I think one of the first steps for a lot of people is getting their own website, something that's their own piece of media, that talks about the work that they're doing, can display the work they're doing and gives them the opportunity to have somewhere else to send someone other than just an Upwork profile or something like that. That's a really important step and something you can work on over time. I think definitely getting involved in communities and meeting other copywriters and talking about where are they getting work. Then also talking to people outside of a platform like that even whether it's in person, at networking events, whether it's online and you've found a niche you're interested in and you're talking back and forth with people on social media. All that sort of stuff is going to eventually lead to, if you're talking about your area of expertise, people are going to want to work with you at some point, and so, you don't have to drive them onto a platform like that. You can just start to engage with them outside of those platforms and build that up over time. Kira:   What did you learn from your time as a generalist copywriter, which is where a lot of us start and what are some lessons that you learned from that time? Austin:           Absolutely. I learned how to research really well. I ended up writing some really strange stuff sometimes. An example I like to use is, I once wrote for a company in Adelaide, Australia, that makes overland conveyor belts for Mines. Like 20 mile long conveyor belts to haul aluminum and coal and so on. I knew absolutely nothing about those ahead of time, so I had to go learn about how do they make these belts, what's special about them versus the two major competitors they have and write something that was a pretty big deal to them because so few people control that market share and this was a brochure that was going to be sent to those 12 decision makers that control the rest of the market. So really high stakes stuff but having to learn, how can I speak in the voice and sound informed on something that I didn't really know anything about ahead of time and that's served me well beyond that. Rob:   Austin, as you moved yourself off of Upwork and started working with clients on your own, what did those first couple of clients look like? How did you find them and what did you do to start that engagement? Austin:           Some of them ended up approaching me because of work I had done and so you get referrals over time, which has continued to be a really major channel and where probably the highest quality leads come from, the easiest to close, certainly. So, that was a real advantage. Then also, the other thing, aside from direct referrals there are networking with other writers, and they will send up the bat signal when it's something that they know you're focused on and know you're specialized in. I've had that done for me. I also do that for other people and that can be really powerful because their word generally carries some weight with the people that they're interacting with and might bring you in on. Kira:   I would love to know about what really helped you get into a groove. I mean, again, you laid out your path but what in there really helped you grow your business or feel like you really nailed it and had that clarity? I'm guessing I know what it is but I'd like to hear it from you. Austin:           I mean, there were a number of things.