1 Simple Trick You Need To Make Your Upwork Pitches Stand Out
I’ve been using Upwork to pitch potential new clients for a while now (3 years, to be exact).
During this time, I have learned a few key tricks for making your pitches stand out from the sea of other applicants — and I’d like to share one with you today.
You need to stand out to cash out
Upwork is a great resource for getting new clients. But it is also a competitive platform filled with eager and bright-eyed freelancers, just like you.
You can’t just send a generic pitch to an Upwork job and expect results. This technique will never land you great clients.
Like pitching on other platforms, reaching out to potential clients on Upwork is best done with personalization (and no, I promise this isn’t the tip — stick with me here).
But, the difference between Upwork and cold emailing or pitching on LinkedIn is that you often don’t get the opportunity to know much about your potential client — as most Upwork jobs are anonymous (for both client name and company) until you get a reply.
So, what can you do to personalize your pitch while also standing out within the first few moments of your client looking at your proposal?
Use this hack to get more pitch replies
I call this trick “The Upwork Review Treasure Hunt” — and it has helped land me plenty of client interviews and jobs (when paired with my 5-step pitch formula, of course).
This trick will not take you any longer than 10 seconds to do (yes, only 10 seconds), and will instantly make your pitch eye-catching to your client:
#1 - Find a job you want to apply for on Upwork.
#2 - Once you click on the job, scroll past the job description and preferred qualifications to get to the “Client Recent History” section. This is a list of their other Upwork jobs, including reviews and testimonials from other freelancers.
If the client is new to Upwork, there is a chance that this section will be blank. In this case, you cannot use this trick for this client.
#3 - Read through the freelancer reviews. You are looking for reviews that mention the client by name.
#4 - If you can find at least two reviews that mention the same client name, you can now confidently use that as the open line to your Upwork pitch.
#5 - Et voilà! Your potential client reviews a personalized pitch from you (that starts with their name, something that they are conditioned to recognize. You have instantly made your application stand out from the other generic proposals.
I have used this trick for years, and it works
Give this trick a try the next time you apply for a job on Upwork. You can’t always find a name — but when you can, you are setting yourself up for a greater chance at success.
Hope this helps, and happy job hunting!