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Before I start this discussion, I should preface my comments by saying that it has been some years since I have actually done any sales. I have in a sense been lucky, as I was able to work myself into a niche fairly early on, and have not had to do that much in the way of marketing to keep work coming in the door.
That said, I can remember having considerable trepidation when I first decided to resign from my in-house position and strike out on my own.
My first concern after figuring out how I was going to incorporate and get my office up and running, was how I would be able to find work.
In my own case I contacted a few individuals who I knew and who worked in fields where I thought I had a good possibility of getting work (in some cases my former employer's competition).
I also read a few articles on marketing, and although I do not consider myself to be a marketing person, they were very helpful. This brings me to the focus of my presentation, which is client oriented marketing.
The first topic I wish to discuss is an approach in finding work. So much of our academic training, and indeed for many of us our early business experience is frankly, focused on self-promotion. Getting the good grade, impressing the superiors, or even doing well on a test is a means of showing how much you know.
But I have found that in selling yourself, a client is really not so much interested in what you know, but whether you can solve his or her problems. And if you can solve the client's problems, you can get the client to pay you well. Which brings me to my next topic.
This quote is taken from an Article that appeared in the August 15 edition of Making Rain, a column authored by Elaine Douglass in the Legal Times, a publication designed for lawyers in Washington DC.
I would like to caveat this by saying that there is a difference between lawyers and translators in that lawyers are by definition credentialed, and translators frequently aren't. So in order to reassure their clients, translators do need to be more forthcoming in giving information about themselves. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference in attitude involved, in which your purpose is to find what the needs of the client are, whether you can meet them, what you need to do to be able to meet them, and finally, to reassure your client that you can meet them.
For this purpose:
Various books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" mention that people love to talk about themselves, and it is true. We do. And many of us tend to make statements rather than ask questions and listen, in spite of the fact that a question about someone's work is frequently a good opening to start a relationship.
It is frequently very helpful to ask a client about their business, what their needs are, what type of translating they want. It shows you are interested in what they do, are ready to learn, and want to help them improve.
Ask yourself are we actually communicating or only talking at each other. One individual mentioned to me that people tend to think that everyone's common sense is theirs, which is not true.
This makes communication important, both before you get in the door and after you receive work. Find out what their deadlines are and accommodate them if at all possible when you are taking on a new client. A rush overnight job is likely to be appreciated when it comes time to assign the next project.
Obviously if you have already taken the job, it is no longer a matter of accommodating the client. Not getting the job in when you said is missing a deadline, which can damage your career very quickly.
A further area of communication is to ask questions about the job when you take it on. This same individual mentioned asking for style sheets and glossaries before starting a job. We tend to feel that having the job is everything, but asking for this input can prevent problems down the road.
This was frequently an excuse that I personally made.
My only recommendation is to be honest with yourself. If you don't have time to market yourself, then you are as busy as you can be and don't need to do any marketing. Otherwise there must be some other reason that is preventing you from doing so. One possibility is that you may have some hesitation about whether or not you can in fact perform. Which brings me to my next point.
Although this is allegedly a sales and marketing presentation, my personal preference is to be a product person rather than a sales person: To try to follow the old adage of "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." I have found that with a little bit of effort, it is possible to differentiate yourself from possibly 90 percent of the translators in the industry. For the purposes of this presentation I have broken this category down into three sections.
We tend to forget this, but good writing is never done. Nor is good reading, both for those of us translating from a nonnative source language and those of us translating out of a nonnative source language. Although you do not need to be a physician to do medical translation, nor do you need to be an attorney to do translation in the legal field, you need to spend a considerable amount of time reading in these areas (in both or all of your languages) in order to build the requisite working knowledge that you need to generate a satisfactory product. In my own field of law, I have found the following magazines to be particularly helpful, although I do not follow them that closely anymore.
ジュリスト
自由と正義
金融商事法務
I also have numerous reference texts including the following:
図解による法律用語辞典 （自由国民社）
似たもの
法律用語のちがい （法曹界）
公用文の書き方
新法学辞典 （日本評論社）
University of Washington Japanese/English Law Glossary
ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/00INDEX.html
Scroll halfway down the page to find it. (search for "law")
Over the past few years, however, I find that I use the internet far more than any texts, so perhaps this is the wave of the future.
Having good reference materials in your own language is indispensable. On my shelf I have Black's Law Dictionary, the Chicago Style Book, Edit Yourself, Fowler's Modern English Usage, the Elements of Style and quite a few more books, and I refer to them frequently. I also make wide use of the Web, where you can find standard form contracts, briefs, court decisions government filings and many other documents written by the top legal talent in the world.
One translator I know of recently decided to specialize in biotechnology, and went out and bought texts in both Japanese and English which he then read to learn not only the vocabulary, but the writing style as well. And he reported that his efforts have paid off and he has recently set up a 有限会社.
This involves thought about how the languages interact.
One example is the following
The most natural way to say "I have a pen in Japanese" is simply 「ペンがあります」. And it turns out that an amazing number of "be" clauses can be expressed with "have" clauses in English. Little things like switching from passive to active voice, lifting sentences out of the 起承転結 style and into natural English, can go a long way towards turning well written Japanese, into well written English.
My experience in working with agencies is that they are pleasantly surprised that I know the difference between a tab, a space and an indent, that I can make tables and even do simple charts and diagrams. It is also my experience that direct-clients expect this. A little effort on learning how to format a document can go a long way. Also turn on the show spaces and tabs function, use the spell check function, and when the grammar checker indicates funny English, at least think about whether the sentence needs redrafting (in my opinion Microsoft's grammar checker is getting surprisingly good).
If you have time let a translation sit for a day and then come back and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes. Little things like extra spaces, missed periods, and poor sentence construction suddenly become far more obvious.
For more of my thoughts on the topic of translating as a craft, please see: http://www.jat.org/member/jtt/notpro.html
Once you are committed to providing the best mousetrap, the next issue is...
As I mentioned above I have been fairly fortunate in this task, but in the first year or so I did make quite a few sales calls to try to drum up business. The first place I started was with attorneys that I knew, and this has branched out into a network which has kept me quite busy.
One other individual that I contacted mentioned that he also sourced the competition of his former employer, and also joined societies of people who were engaged in the industry that he wished to serve (in his case patents and intellectual property). He also mentioned that he attended international conferences in this field, to meet with patent attorneys and other specialists, as opposed to other translators. In this manner he could interact with professionals in these areas, many of whom had never met a translator, and thus build contacts for future work.
Many have also mentioned joining JAT and having a presence on the web. Particularly the JAT List and Honyaku. This does have the advantage of putting you into contact with other translators who can give you work when you get overloaded, but will not necessarily help you find direct clients.
Others mentioned cold calls (to agencies) as a good place to get in the door. And for agencies of course having a resume is absolutely essential.
For further reference, see the following URL, where this issue is discussed.
http://www.jat.org/meetings/kansai/200206/index.html
We sometimes forget this, but several people mentioned follow-up as being important. In my own experience I used to travel to my clients every month to bring in my invoices. It was a good chance to get to meet with them, and to clear up any potential problems.
And once a job is done, occasional questions to clients about how they viewed the documents can both help you improve, and can let the client know that you care about their business.
I think again here the best course is prior preparation. In sourcing your clients, it is best to be upfront about your rates, and be careful who you deal with. This can save problems down the road.
Note: In preparing this presentation, invaluable assistance was received from Friedemann Horn, Zachary Braverman, Edward Lipsett, and Steven Venti, all of whom were very gracious in responding to various questions that I had. One issue I would like to mention as an aside is that not only are marketing practices different between Japan and other countries in the world, but that there are also differences between a foreigner selling in Japan, and a Japanese who sells in Japan. My purpose here is not to spark off a heated discussion, but rather to say that many of the ideas I have here may not apply to someone selling in a different subset of the translation market. I would be happy if some of the Japanese translators here would be willing to speak up during the comments section and mention areas of my discussion that they think would not apply to someone Japanese, or someone who is selling E2J services rather than the other way around.