A true but ridiculous story:
One summer, through no real fault or merit of my own, I lucked into a job as a well-paid management consultant. I did it even though I have no background or qualifications for such a position.
I was walking down the street, around the corner from my apartment, and I noticed a plaque on the wall with an impressive-sounding company name.
“I wonder what they do,” I said to myself. “I’ll check when I get home.”
It turned out the company built software for banks. So I sent an email to their public-facing email address, saying how I have a background in economics and software development (true enough), and that I’m interested in working with them during the summer.
An email came back two minutes later. It was from the CEO of the company. “When could you come into the office to talk?”
He hired me a couple of days later, at what was then a royal sum of money for me, to do some management consulting about how he should run his company.
Second story:
Back in 2019, a call went out among subscribers to Ben Settle’s print newsletter. A publishing company in the real estate space was looking for “A-list copywriters” to write VSLs.
For more info, interested applicants were to write to the CEO of the company.
I really wanted this job, but it took me about a week to finally write to the guy.
During that week, I’m sure 50 to 100 other would-be “A-list” copywriters wrote in to apply the same job with their best-crafted pitches.
But that’s not what I did.
Instead, I spent that week researching this publishing company, and writing two new leads for their current hot promotion.
I heard back from the CEO as soon as I sent my leads in. He was impressed I’d done that up-front work, and he liked the copy I’d written.
A few days later, he hired me for a big project. He later hired me for a second project. Not long after that, I got several referrals from him, which also resulted in lots of new work.
I’m not telling you either of these stories as specific strategies for winning projects. When it comes to copywriting clients, I’ve never had much success with cold emailing. And I don’t recommend just doing free work whenever somebody asks you for it.
The point I want to get across is simply this:
In any collection of 50 smart, hard working, gung-ho hares, I’m unlikely to stand out and win the prize. I’m just not very fast, or very ambitious.
On the other hand, in a race involving just me, a slow and lazy tortoise, my odds are much better.
Maybe your totem animal is equally uncompetitive. So instead of working to make yourself into a better competitor, my suggestion is to look for ways to make the competition a non-issue.
One last tip:
While I haven’t had much success with cold copywriting work, I have gotten two good clients that way.
And while I don’t recommend doing free work whenever somebody asks you for it, I have also done free work for prospective clients with great success, including some I cold emailed.
I talk about that in much more detail in a training I call Niche Expert Cold Emails.
This training doesn’t cost any money, but you do have to do something to get access to it. In case you are interested, here are the full details:
https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/