Selling Language Services

The first article I published in a national journal at the start of my university teaching career was on motivation in language learning. It was based on three selling principles I had been taught at a top insurance company training session. According to my trainers, people buy for one or more of these three reasons:

1.  The price is right.

2.  They like you.

3.  Their friends recommend the product or service.

Will these three principles still work in today’s world? Will they help us sell our translation or interpreting services to new direct clients? To translation agencies? To corporations? To non-profit organizations? To local, national, or international prospects?

You will find answers to these questions in the dozens of strategies suggested in these pages.  Not all of them apply to all of you, but I believe they will also be of interest to you, as over the years they have been to me and to many of my most successful colleagues.

My father, who by the way was head of production at an insurance company in his native country, taught me that “the only wasted effort is the one that is not made.”  

I would urge all of you to make whatever effort you need to make to grow the translation or interpreting career you are so passionate about.

If not you, who? If not now, when?