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If you don’t know now, find out fast. Clients aren’t your friends – they just want the job done properly. On time. By someone who knows what they’re doing.

If you don’t know now, find out fast. Clients aren’t your friends – they just want the job done properly. On time. By someone who knows what they’re doing.

If you want to them to hire you, now’s the time to figure out what you’re selling. Are you the flinty-eyed hired gun who specialises in their industry? Are you the ‘go-to’ guy for, say, packaging design for whoever? Hmmmm?

Take a look at your portfolio. What kind of work really lights your ring? What kind of projects are you best at? What kind of jobs do you mostly actually do? Where these groups overlap is your sweet spot.

Have a think about what industries you prefer. FMCG? Telecoms? Automotive? Who has the most need for your services? Agencies? Corporates? What kind of clients do you really want?

Now it’s time to get savvy. Which kinds of clients are currently underserved? Maybe you can corner a market. Which projects pay the best? It might be worth spending more time chasing a few big scores. How good are your contacts? Work those connections to bust into the industries you fancy.

Once you know where to aim, it’s time to prepare your ‘creative toolkit’. Put together a suite of documents designed to convince prospective clients that you walk on water, you know their industry inside out, and you’ll make all their troubles disappear.

Include industry-specific case studies and portfolio items, and rework your CV for each prospect to position yourself as the very person they’re looking for. If you’re not a designer, get one to help wrap your toolkits up in a pretty package.

Of course, getting the word out about how awesome you are is just as important as deciding what your particular brand of awesomeness is. That’s where representation by The Pond can really make the difference. Once you decide who you are, let us run around and find clients who want what only you can offer.