One of my main business goals for this year is to work with more direct clients. Although I have a number of agency clients who pay well, have interesting projects and are very easy to work with, I find that I really enjoy the greater degree of autonomy and higher income that direct clients usually offer.
So far, most of my direct clients have found me through word of mouth; one was a hand-me-down from a friend who closed her freelance business, another found me through the Colorado Translators Association directory, another came through a friend who now works in-house for the client. Now, I’d like to expand my marketing efforts to clients in Europe and specifically in Paris, partially because a colleague and I are planning a marketing trip there at some point this winter.
The marketing technique I’m considering is the sample translation/free trial offer (as described by Chris Durban and other translators who work exclusively with direct clients), whereby you find either a poorly done translation or something that isn’t translated at all (i.e. a page from the potential client’s website, their brochure, advertisement, etc.), translate or improve it, and send it to the client along with an offer of your services and some other informational material such as a copy of ATA’s brochure Getting it Right.
I’ve found that it’s not at all difficult to find potential targets for the free trial offer. Many high-level entities in France have beautifully designed, splashy websites with a much-promoted English version that reads like a machine translation post-edited by someone who took about two weeks of high school English. It seems to me that the key issue is how to draft a successful letter pitching your translation services. My sense is that it’s best to start with a compliment (“Congratulations on reaching out to potential visitors/clients/residents who don’t speak French…”) and then cut to the chase (“During a recent visit to your website, we noted that the English version of your website does not convey the quality of your products and services as well as it could…”). I think it can also be helpful to include some statistics that show how a good translation can benefit the potential client’s bottom line; for example the fact that France is the world’s number one international tourism destination.
Readers, any ideas on this? Has anyone else used the sample/free trial offer with success?
I think this is an excellent idea and something I’ve been tempted to do a few times. Are you planning on contacting them via email/phone first, then try and arrange a meeting for when you go to France?
Corinne, I am really happy to have stumbled upon your blog! Back in 2006 I decided to make the shift from agency work to direct clients, for many of the same reasons Corinne describes in her post. I tried this idea, carefully targeting relocation companies working in France (I had previously worked in relocation myself) as I saw a potential need for translation/rewriting of the informational materials they give clients. I chose six such companies and sent out postal mailers with a very carefully drafted letter, a short rewrite/sample, and “Getting it Right”. I followed up by phone (after some coaching from a marketing consultant) and had a lot of trouble getting past the receptionist. In the end, I got zero contacts out of my mini test campaign. In hindsight, I think my targets were poorly chosen. Most relocation firms are small to medium sized businesses where the owner often makes a lot of operational decisions (and where translation is not likely to be a high budget priority because the clients feel their English materials are “good enough”). I feel this idea would work better targeting C-levels in larger corporations, something I would also like to try. Today I have made the shift to direct clients (with some comm agencies in the mix) but marketing is an ongoing thing and this idea is definitely a good one! Has anyone successfully done this targeting corporate C-levels? How? By email? By snail mail? What were the results?
Thanks for another great post, Corinne! Until now I’ve enjoyed quietly following your blog, but today I’ll step out of my shell and chime in a little.
One suggestion I would add to the idea you’ve outlined is to write the potential client in French (and have a French colleague review your letter, of course). We get a little spoiled by seemingly everyone we work with being able to get around pretty well in English (I work in FR>EN too), but I’ve found that when I speak to my non-Anglo clients in excellent French they feel immediately more comfortable and they have all the more confidence in me and in my product.
I definitely think Getting It Right is immensely valuable and can only be an asset as part of your pitch package, but I think your main letter should be in the potential client’s own language, for the same reasons the English version of the website should be in flawless English.
Another suggestion: If you’re improving an existing translation, you can also use Word comments to explain your changes (again, in the source language) and various nuances. This will help make it clear that you’re not just making “stylistic changes” (though that’s a can of worms of its own) but substantial, necessary, highly value-added changes.
Just my two cents. Looking forward to your next post!
Thanks everyone for your very helpful comments and suggestions! Specifically:
@Celine: We’re planning to contact them by postal mail and reference our upcoming trip to France for a possible meeting.
@Sara: I agree that a lot of small to mid-size companies, unless they’re in the communications business, have “good enough” translations that work for them. We’re aiming for larger (or maybe not larger but just more publicly visible) types of places. Hopefully we’ll get some positive responses and then I can tell you who they are!
@Theresa: Great point, I should have said in the post (because as you mention it’s critical!) that all of this will be happening in French. We have a trusted EN>FR colleague who helps us write the letters and we enclose “Faire les bons choix,” the French version of “Getting it right.” In my experience, a lot of translators ignore the need for good active source language skills (i.e. being comfortable speaking and writing in your source language) and I agree that it’s a big deal to clients, even if these skills are not necessarily related to translation.
As you may have noticed over time, Corinne, I seldom win prizes for tact or subtlety. Nonetheless, fond as I am of frontal assaults in business, I’ve found that the “look what crap I found on your web site” approach tends not to hit the mark but instead insults the niece of the business owner who used her best grammar school English in the effort. Interest the prospect in your services by other means, and don’t mention their crap unless they ask. If they have such awful stuff on the web site, there’s not much chance they’ll recognize quality even if they step in it. Credentials and references – especially the latter – may get you farther.
Also, do not neglect the FR>EN market in other European countries. You might be surprised how often I’ve seen requests for it in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, and rates in both those countries seem to be better. For my pair at least I have yet to see a French company worth talking to – they have all been a bunch of low-ballers. With the pound as low as it is I wouldn’t bother with the UK for now, though clients there are generally quite nice to work with.
Hi Corinne,
Thanks for your post. This is my first time reading your blog and I already find it very interesting. Congrats on the great work!
I work for a lot of direct clients myself and I have to say, I agree with Kevin on this one. If your prospective client already has very low quality language on their site, then they clearly don’t understand the value of a professional translation. Criticism, even when constructive, has never been a good way to sell in my opinion. In fact, I worked in sales when I was in college, and if there’s one thing I learned back then it’s that people respond better when you tell them what’s great about you, what you have to offer, what you can do for them.
I made most of my direct clients by first doing a lot of background research on them and then preparing a sales technique that focused on all the relevant benefits of choosing my service over my competitor’s services. It takes a lot of hard work, but it’s almost the same amount of work that it would take to provide constructive feedback on bad translations anyway.
Best of luck on your future endeavors and I’m really looking forward to your next post!
Best,
Paula
I think the idea may be successfull, but you must be sure to adress to the right person inside the organization. The risk, if you are not able to find a direct contact of the person managing texts and communication inside the company, is to be rejected. Anyway, the thing could be more successfull if you have the opportunity to attend a trade fair and introduce yourself personally.
Marina
This is all precious information, I wouldn’t have thought that anyone would reject constructive criticism, especially in the professional world. Don’t we all want to improve our business? But this means that the “your website’s translation could be so much better” approach, which I though would be effective, could backfire. Very interesting.
Hi Corinne,
Those of us who work mainly with direct clients tend to have to invest more time and energy in marketing to generate a sufficiently large pool of “qualified prospects” likely to contract our services in the future.
From late 2007 to mid 2008, I tested this approach, selecting about two dozen French companies (either large corporations or prestigious niche smaller firms) whose English language materials (IMHO) cast umbrage on their corporate image and reputation. Some of these documents even included egregious translation errors that may well have cost company X money.
I spent time researching the companies, their target audiences in EN, and identifying the appropriate contact person.
For each, I prepared a three-column document — the French source text, their on-line English translation, and my suggested revision.
Without criticizing (ever!), I explained my corrections and rewrites and highlighted the benefits they might offer — and even gave them permission to use the revised English copy for free!
I sent these off, along with a carefully-crafted letter in French and a copy of “Traduction: Faire les bons choix”, and made my follow-up calls about 10 days later.
The only positive response I received was from someone I had met at a function a few months before (who, it is perhaps important to note, had lived abroad for many years).
The other 23-odd frankly did not give a hoot about whether their English sounded like a monkey wrote it — not even the company for which I identified and corrected a potentially costly translation error (whose director replied during the follow-up telephone conversation:”Mais qu’est-ce qu’on en a à foutre?”).
I suspect this type of approach works best when some direct or indirect contact was established first. It is also cultural, Americans being more accustomed and open to such cold marketing techniques than most French seem to be”Le réseau des bancs d’école” remains powerful here; the key is to tap into and leverage those networks.
I have to support Kevin’s comments here. Certainly in Germany, the “look how bad your translations are” tactic will mostly misfire, badly, because the cultural environment differs significantly from the Francophone world. At German corporates, many of the people who deal with translations and translators are convinced that they “can English” almost as well as the native speakers. Many corporation job profiles require “Englisch fließend in Wort und Schrift” (fluent written and spoken English), so anybody who has successfully obtained such a job is only rarely – and always off-the-record – going to admit that their English is less than native standard. Equally, their bosses are not going to admit that they recruited somebody whose English isn’t flawless. Essentially, at many corporates and similar organizations there is an institutionalized myth that “we only need translators because we don’t have the time to do the translations ourselves.” So, any attempt by an unknown translator to point out that a particular translation is less than perfect is probably going to have exactly the opposite effect of the original intention – if you haven’t insulted the person who did the translation in the first place, you’ve probably insulted either the person who commissioned it, or their boss, or both.
While I certainly agree that much of what Chris (Durban) writes and says is interesting, it should always be borne in mind that it’s generally anchored in a specific context, i.e., FrenchEnglish translations, and that while what she says may hold true for this particular market, it does not automatically transfer to other languages and cultures.
Another point worth considering is that, under German law, “cold call” e-mails (as with phone calls) are technically illegal. While most unsolicited e-mails will simply be deleted, you do run the risk of being reported to the prosecuting authorities, with a resulting fine, by somebody who’s massively pissed off at getting what they regard as spam.
A related area that suffers from cultural interference is that of translation pricing. German consumers are notoriously unable – or at least unwilling – to distinguish between “cheap” and “value for money”. Price competition on the German retail market is so cut-throat that even Wal-Mart had pull out of the country, and hardly any of the remaining retailers generate margins that would be regarded as satisfactory by international standards. Quality is not a driving force in consumer buying, and German consumers are often willing to accept poor quality as long as it’s cheap. This psychology may also extend to buying decisions at corporates (and not just for translations), I suspect because the individuals involved transfer their “cheap is good” retail consumer behavior to the corporate environment.
The fact remains that, in many cases, German corporates are happy with mediocre translation quality as long as the price is “cheap”. Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to obtain premium prices for premium-quality translations from German corporates and other direct clients, but it does mean that the arguments you present as a translator have to take a different route (proven subject-area expertise and personal recommendations are a major factor, for example).
Perhaps cultural aspects of translation pricing and quality perceptions are an area that deserves closer examination.
Hello Corinne,
Great idea! Well, as some of the previous folks have stated, yes, the approach could backfire…not because it is a bad idea, but it really depends on the exact approach used. One cannot expect the same result from a telephone call or a face-to-face meeting with an anonymous email.
I have been doing this for years. In fact, all of the North Recreation Center signs (in Spanish) in Boulder contained grammatical mistakes. So, for a particular event held in October, I made a video highlighting those mistakes.
I plan to post it on youtube.com.
Cheers,
Omar (aka: Well Translated LLC)
Hi Corinne,
I enjoyed both your post and the comments. This being one of those clients-with-hair-on-fire days/weeks, just a few quick points:
– with a “free trial”, the rewrite of (a few paras) of the poor translation is the easy part; it’s in the cover letter that most translators miss the boat. More on that in a minute.
– as far as I’m concerned, the contact person is the CEO. Full stop. You want him/her to react and issue instructions to the underlings to get something done about the problem you’ve identified (preferably through you, since you are offering a solution). So you address your carefully crafted rewrite and letter to him/her directly (NB be sure to spell his/her name right).
– note, too, that this is a good way to get in above “purchasing departments” and their price scales and all that jazz; the boss reads your comments and wants you. Bingo.
– I’m sure somebody out there is going to insist that “CEOs never ever have time to read correspondence like this!” Well, they are wrong. Full stop. 🙂 I’ve checked this out myself with CEOs of some major listed companies, both in France and elsewhere; I’ve actually asked them. There is that little genuine feedback; they are always interested.
– well, let me temper that; they’ll read your letter + reworked text (or not) depending on your cover letter. If you include indignant huffing & puffing or “lookit the crap on your website”: no, that’ll probably send it straight into the can. So your cover letter is important. More on that in a minute. ☺
– a not-so-minor solidarity issue: feedback being so rare, it’s equally important to congratulate companies that get it right. So if you go down the free-trial road, be sure to also write at least one letter a month to the CEO of a company that’s got itself a good translator producing good texts. (There is some nice work out there, people). Make your msg short and sweet, but put it in writing.
– as mentioned here, your rewrite + cover letter must be in the client’s own language, and be absolutely flawless (obvious, right?)
– send a copy of the original + the first poor translation + your rewrite by snail mail, not by email. This is not just to avoid the “illegal cold call” issue Robin mentions; it’s because the CEO will have an easier time reading it & comparing the versions. For the same reason, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use “track change” to highlight your modifications (looks too cluttered and reader unfriendly).
– FWIW, I suggest the free trial technique in each of the SFT’s day-long “Réussir son installation” seminars, and always offer to give participants an opinion of their draft cover letters. This has been very illuminating, as I’ve now got a dozen samples. And despite what I’d always thought was my crystal-clear explanation of the approach to each group… well, hmm, I guess I’m not clear. Either that or a lot of translators have an incredibly hard time finding the right tone and content for their missive: 80% of the drafts people have sent me are simply inappropriate. Too humble, too pleading, too aggressive or too wilfully eccentric or something. So maybe they shouldn’t be targeting direct clients after all (just a thought).
Here’s a list of the important stuff to keep in mind for your letter:
– Make it short, and set it out on the page so that it is easy to read (never more than a page, and certainly not worth listing specific errors in the cover letter; makes it look too daunting to read)
– Don’t refer to your diplomas
– For content, use the sandwich method: nice/stick the knife in (gently)/nice.
– Concretely: say something specific about yourself + a ref that shows you know who the company is & admire their products or service (etc.) /// a sentence referring to the flawed translation (“not an accurate reflection of the quality of their exceptional products/services” etc.); be sure to slip in an sentence indicating that errors happen (something that will let the perpetrator off the hook (a little), e.g., “Deadlines for documentation for trade fairs are often ultra-tight, which may well explain how the errors crept in.” That takes care of the niece, etc. // But then your confident, friendly (not arrogant, quirky, wise-guy and/or finger-wagging) explanation that you’ve taken the liberty of producing a new version that you think is closer to what they need, and inviting the soon-to-be new client to show both versions to a native X-speaker.
– the tone to take is definitely confidence that once you’ve pointed out the problem, they will obviously want to correct it.
– last but not least: say you’ll call them next week to talk about their translation needs. And be sure to call them.
– once you’ve crafted a very good cover letter, you can recycle it with only minor tweaking.
– Kevin & Robin: nope, I simply don’t buy the “it won’t work here in [insert country name]. French businesspeople are under every bit as much pressure as Germans to pretend they speak English fluently, and I have had positive responses in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and other countries. Gentlemen, you’ve slipped into “yes, but…” reasoning. Fire Ant & Worker Bee have something to say about that. ☺
Clarification of above (sorry, it was late):
CD “I’m sure somebody out there is going to insist that “CEOs never ever have time to read correspondence like this!” Well, they are wrong. Full stop. 🙂 ”
**They** here refers to the somebodies who claim that CEOs don’t read the letters; the point is, CEOs *do* read the letters.
Back to the wordface for me.
Interesting suff. As someone who works exclusively with direct clients, I’ve heard about this technique, but it won’t work in the EnglishSpanish world, primarily with Mexico, where I grew up. There it is certainly not acceptable to point out an obvious mistake in a straightforward manner (I know, culture!), and, as suggested by Kevin (I think), won’t work that well there. It is indeed very possible that the wife’s cousin’s niece translated this, and you want to be sure not to offend anyone.
This has all been anectotal data until Patricia took the time to tell us in detail about how she fared with her representative sample of 24, and that’s certainly not good news. Thanks for sharing the data, Patricia! How’s this for antecdotal data: at all the companies I ever worked with in-house, the CEO never looked at anything, delegated to his secretary, or hit the “delete” button as soon as she saw something unsoliticted (and there is a lot of unsolicited everything both in hard copy and electronic media). It’s just not realistic to think that the CEO of Siemens is going to read through an unsolicited pitch — there isn’t enough time or interest in anyone’s day to listen to another sales pitch. Just because this stragey has worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s a good one or that it can be universally applied. It’s certainly worth a try, but I am all for what I always preach: qualified leads, qualified leads, qualified leads. Folks are much more likely to read an e-mail from someone whose name they recognize. Find the real decision-makers. Many CEOs are master delegators. I am a firm believer in working with communication departments, marketing, etc. – they will make the pitch on your behalf to the CEO.
All in all, an interesting strategy that’s been proven not to work by the one person who has presented actual data (Patricia). There’s anecdotal evidence that it works; but from an MBA perspective, it’s not enough to invest any serious time in it. And don’t even get me started on giving away your work for free, but we can certainly agree to disagree. Keep the intellectual debate coming!
For the record, when we see awful translations, and we do every day, we post them on our German-language blog for everyone’s amusement and education. http://www.uebersetzungsfehler.com/
@RobinB: Amen on the “we only need translators because we don’t have the time to do the translations ourselves.” If I had a dollar for every time someone has said that to me, I could have bought another house during the Vegas housing boom. Or not. And yes, correct, there are lots of privacy laws in Germany/Austria that we frequently cite to people who cold-call/e-mail us trying to sell us stuff, so that’s certainly not a good idea in those countries.
Hi Judy,
Thank you for your comments.
I don’t think we can establish a definitive assessment on this marketing strategy, there are way too many variables, not least of which are timing (did your letter arrive at just the right time?) and visibility (the likelihood that your reader may have heard of you before). In any event, no marketing campaign ever bats 100 and this one is time-consuming. But I may try it again at some point.
To flesh out the data on my sampling from 18 months ago:
– For medium and niche companies, I sent my care package to the CEO or Managing Director. When I made my follow-up calls, it was one of those big guns who quipped, “Who cares?” That told me all I needed to know: not all potential clients would make good clients. Mostly, I got the run-around. Boss’ secretary who thanks me profusely for my initiative and my time, swearing she passed it on to whomever deals with such issues (with or without providing a name), with a promise of contact soon. After two more follow-up calls, I stopped.
– I agree with you, Judy: my personal experience also suggests that CEO do not have the time to read all the snail mail sent to them. Most of the time, it does not even get to them, that is what personal assistants are for! I sent my missive either to a member of the management board/committee responsible for corporate communications or to the head of the communications and/or marketing departments. During the most maddening follow-up conversation, one of these individuals thanked me heartily for correcting some major bloopers, which he would flag immediately to their translator/translation agency! Gee, isn’t that swell?
– I did have one positive response, and the client has been faithful since. But as I mentioned in my first post, I had met the person to whom I had sent the revision at a function some time before and I knew the company was searching for qualified service providers. Two key variables came into play: timing and recognition.
This test’s ROI, therefore, was positive. But I could have achieved the same result without sending off the other 23 letters.
Client or prospect education is key, of course. But whether you are speaking about translation, exercise, healthy eating habits or quitting smoking (I smoke..), the person has to be receptive to the expertise you are striving to share. If they don’t give a hoot and their okol’e (Hawai’ian word for butt) isn’t on the line, you probably won’t get very far. (Note: someone else within company X may recognize the importance of excellent translations, don’t close the door!)
The best marketing is that which entices prospects to come to you. It takes all sorts of creativity (and perhaps generosity) to provoke that first dialogue!
Wow! I think that this is now officially the most active post ever on my blog. Thanks to everyone for contributing your thoughts and experiences, this is like an open-source course in direct client marketing!
Sending potential clients short free samples has worked for me a few times. A couple of months ago, I came across a website homepage which was obviously translated into English by one of the company’s French employees. I rewrote the first two paragraphs, sent in my revision, and crossed my fingers. They recently asked me for a quote for a different and longer text, and I’m pleased to say that I was assigned the task.
Although the process is time-consuming, I’ll continue with this approach since I want to work with direct clients as much as possible.
Thanks, Catherine! It is great to hear from someone who has used this strategy successfully; let us know how it goes in the future.
Translations is very important it is a way to communicate with other people, specially those people that has a different dialect, translators well be the frontliners to communicate with them, and to have communication.
Hi Corinne,
Thank you for maintaining a great blog. I am reading through your book, “How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator.” I know this is a very old post, but I had a question related to the post.
I just got started on becoming a freelance translator, so I do not have a lot of translation samples from actual work I have done. I do have a good number of practice translations I produced out of articles and videos I found on the web.
Since these were just practice translations, I did not get the copyright holders’ permissions or anything. Do you know if it would be legal for me to post a small selection of the practice translations as translation samples on my Proz profile and my webpage, or would I be violating copyright laws? I am trying to find a clear answer to this question, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Thank you very much.
Hi Corinne, i believe sample translation actually establishes some level of faith in potential clients.In this highly competitive market, some things will eventually gain more weight than cheaper price. Two thumbs-up. 🙂