Selling and negotiating are two skills people don’t think about enough when wanting to become (or excel at) freelance UX, user research, and or consulting.

These two skills are critical to success as an independent. The definition of “sell” is to "transfer (goods) to or render (services) for another in exchange for money”. Negotiate is “to have formal discussions with someone in order to reach an agreement.”

You need to sell…

• Your design and or user research expertise, both your hard and soft skills, to land clients and projects

• Confidence in yourself to instill buy-in from stakeholders throughout the process

• The value and impact of your work to be considered for additional work

You need to negotiate…

• Prospective and existing client culture and politics to ascertain how (or if) you can be successful 

• Their UX maturity, or lack thereof 

• Contracts (payment amount, method, installments, start and end dates, work hours, equipment, and other terms and conditions)

• Team egos, resources, budgets, skill sets, and tool stacks 

• Key questions, constraints, and project scope

• Confidence/fidelity level desired

• Methodical approach, recruiting strategy, and sample size 

• Study/design timelines and format of final deliverables 

• Team meeting cadence

• Stakeholder expectations, changes in the roadmap, and competitive considerations

• Internal relationships, roles, responsibilities, and perspectives to identify allies and opponents

• Unplanned delays, conflicts, errors, and other surprises

Please join me on Saturday, January 28th from 10am-12pm PT if you are interested in learning more about freelance and independent UX and UXR consulting AND OR hiring independent talent. I'll share the most popular questions people ask me about these topics and my thoughts, tips, and lessons learned with anyone who is interested!

Learn more about this casual event and register via the link below.

*** YES, this will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recorded replay.