Redd: Hello and welcome to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers by sellers. My name is Redd AKA reddhorrocks.Adam: And I am Adam AKA twistedweb123. We’re joined today by a special guest host Wayne. Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself Wayne?Wayne: Hello there. As Adam says, my name is Wayne, Wayne Austin. I’m ozzieuk on Fiverr. I’ve been on Fiverr for around about three years and I predominantly sell in the online marketing category. I’m also a Fiverr super seller, a top-rated seller and Fiverr ambassador.Redd: Well, welcome Wayne. We’re very glad you’re here. So our topic today is how to say no. Anyone want to say it for me?Adam: No.Wayne: No.Redd: OK, that was the best podcast ever. Moving on. So when we talk about how to say no, Adam, what are we talking about here?Adam: When we talk about how to say no in relation to Fiverr, we’re talking about the customer service skills required to deal with difficult buyers where you can still say no but have a productive relationship. So an example of this may be if you’re asked to reduce your price and you don’t want to or if you’re asked to do some additional work and it’s about how you handle that but maintain a happy customer and still even possible future orders with that buyer.Redd: So Wayne, can you give me an example of a time that maybe someone came to you and they wanted you to go outside of your pricing structure? How does that normally look for you when that happens to you?Wayne: It happens quite often and I think it’s important that you get what you’re worth and if you don’t feel as though you’re being paid enough to do what the customer is asking, you just got to point out what you think your market value is and why. Remember that you’ve got to be objective and to kind of relate to the buyer, the market figures.Adam: So you would say to define that to the buyer, it’s quite important to be clear in what you do offer for the prices you have set.Wayne: Yeah, absolutely.Redd: So for me, I know for me it’s a challenging one because my services, they do start at $5 like everyone else’s and for me, my pricing structure is very rigid. I have a set number of words I do but I often have clients that come to me and like, “Oh, can you just do like 190 words? Can you just do this, that and the other?” I find it’s really hard to say no to them because I want everyone to like me and I want to be a good – I want to present good customer service. But you really do have to stick to your guns sometimes. Otherwise, it’s almost not exactly fair to your other buyers, right?Adam: Right. That’s exactly how I feel and that’s one of the things I would convey to a buyer if they say to me, “Well, can you discount a source file or can you give me this a little bit cheaper?” and I just turn around and say – personally I don’t find it’s very fair because there are a thousand other people who have paid the full price and that pricing itself is below market value and a lot of the time I actually find that people really – they just end up kind of kicking tires. They don’t really think they’re necessarily going to get a discount. But as long as you handle it well, they will go ahead and order anyway.It’s almost like a test. You might as well ask to see if you can get one. But if you don’t, you will probably still go ahead and purchase and it’s all about how you handle that person. I imagine if you had a poor response where you were quite rude and said, “There’s no way I’m going to give you any cheaper. Why would you ask that?” you’ve probably lost yourself a complete buyer there. But if you respond in a correct way and explain to them, then the chances are they will just order anyway.Redd: Yeah. It’s kind of like everyone likes opportunity to barter, right?Wayne: Yeah, sure.Adam: Yeah, definitely. I think especially as well with things like custom quotes nowadays and the custom offers. People always try to see if there’s a bit of wiggle room with the pricing and I think it’s important to have a way that you have a set way to deal with that and you have to be set because otherwise like you say, you can’t really charge one buyer one price and then another buyer another price. Because if that other buyer comes back to you wanting that price, then how would you explain the fairness in that?Redd: Yeah, exactly. I mean I know of course we assume our clients don’t talk to each other but you really never know when that might actually be happening.Wayne: In fact, I’ve had that same situation before when another buyer has kind of referred another one on to me and said, “Hey, you did the special price for XYZ buyer. Would you be willing to do the same thing for me?”It’s always difficult to kind of – to turn around and say no but sometimes you have to. Like I mentioned earlier, you’ve got to really get paid what you think you’re worth.Adam: So what’s quite interesting about there when you mentioned the special offer is do you and yourself Redd, do you give special offers? And if so, what are the criteria for that? Do they need to order a certain amount of Gigs or a certain value? How would you go about handling and deciding when to do that with a buyer?Wayne: Yeah. I do it quite often when a buyer will come to me and say, “If I place a high volume of orders,” and I say that high volume of orders is anything over 10 and they will usually ask for a discount. I will say, “OK. Well, if you buy 10, I will give you 3 or 4 orders free.” That’s generally how I work.Adam: So is that 10 – are we talking the base $5 order …Wayne: Yes, yeah, base $5.Adam: OK, that’s pretty interesting considering the amount of feedback you have at the moment. I mean you have thousands and thousands. So to know that you set the bar at 10 is probably really encouraging to the buyers from that because I mean personally I don’t count – I would have to be counting maybe 30 or 40 because I think I’m just maybe more stingy in that respect. So what about you, Redd? How would you handle that?Redd: So for me, I don’t offer discounts. I guess I’m the stingiest person of them all because I used to offer a bulk discount where people would buy – anytime anyone ordered over $50, I would give them a 10 percent discount.But the problem for me is with voiceovers, it takes me the same amount of time if not longer to record a larger item. So I try really, really hard not to do that anymore because I was spending so much time doing kind of free work that it was starting to impact the rest of my business. So I don’t really do bulk discounts anymore except for voicemails where I will do “buy nine prompts, get one free”. It’s what I do for voicemails.Adam: I don’t really offer discounts really at all. I mean I’ve had some people say to me – for example I make Twitter backgrounds. I’ve had them say to me, “If I order 10 Twitter backgrounds, can you reduce it down to the price of let’s say 6 or 7?” and I do the math in my head and I do the – like commission rates in my head and I look at it and then I look at my queue and I see I’ve got an order from a buyer for let’s say $50.Technically that one order there would be giving me more money than this discount I’m offering this brand new customer and I basically – I tried to politely explain to them that I just can’t do it because unfortunately, it is actually more work for less return and maybe if in the future we continue to do business together and we build up more and more orders, I will get to understand them a bit more. So things can be processed more quickly, less modifications and all this kind of stuff. But during the actual – that kind of initial phase, I always seem to say no. It just doesn’t seem practical.Wayne: What do you do when you do say no Adam?Adam: The thing I usually do, I would say, “Unfortunately that isn’t really kind of possible. Here’s why,” and then I will explain that it’s still cheaper than the average market rate. What I will offer is a kind of in-between. I won’t guarantee a quicker delivery. However what I will say is for example I will try and make this happen faster for you. Let’s say within two, three days as opposed to five or six as a compromise on the price difference where I can’t lower the price. Maybe I can expedite the delivery to you.Wayne: Right.Redd: The interesting thing too if you think about it, if we were working regular jobs and we were working 40 hours a week and we then had to go ahead and do overtime, so say that our boss needed us to come in and do an extra four hours, we would get paid more for that overtime.Wayne: Right.Redd: That would be a higher hourly rate. So why would we offer – it’s not like the boss comes in and he’s like, “Oh, I want you to do four more hours and because I’m giving you more hours, I need you to discount your hourly rate.” So that’s kind of the other thing that I think about when it comes to reasons why we don’t offer discounts necessarily because we – we have to do the work.Adam: It probably sounds maybe egotistical but I think when you become a top rated seller, there’s a certain onus on you to promote and respect the platform and a lot of the times, buyers may come to Fiverr expecting a really cheap deal. Now Fiverr is already below the market value in a lot of services and people can come away with a really good value built for themselves. But those especially who come on for a really cheap deal, I feel like it’s almost my duty to uphold the pricing to create the brand awareness that whilst Fiverr is below value of certain markets, it’s not a cheap place.Redd: Yes.Adam: And I feel like that is something that as a top-rated seller and especially an ambassador, that we should be maintaining to kind of get that across to the buyers.Redd: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think it just benefits the entire community if people aren’t undervaluing themselves.Adam: Well, especially if we massively undervalue ourselves, what does that mean for the level ones and maybe even level twos as well? It makes it even more difficult for them and more pressure on them to reduce their prices.Redd: Yeah, exactly. So what are some other examples of times we have to say no?Adam: I think another example is when it comes to modification requests.Redd: Everyone’s favorite.Adam: Yeah, you’ve got to be careful with the modification request because you may say – you might do let’s say two or three changes but you maybe give a bit of room to do three or four and then you have to wonder where does it end. So how do you handle modification requests Wayne? Because I know your service is quite preset. So how do you go about handling people who ask for changes?Wayne: Yeah, I don’t really get modification requests. Very, very rare and it’s usually only if I’ve made a mistake myself because I’ve got my service really fine-tuned. It’s generally if I have made a mistake and I kind of just honor them. Sometimes clients will come back and they will ask for modifications that they’re just totally outside of the service that I offer. So I deliver it. They will ask for a modification and 9 times out of 10, I can’t help them and unfortunately I do have to ask for a cancellation in those circumstances.If I can accommodate a modification request, then it’s not really going to take me a lot of time. If it’s say for, I don’t know, a $50 order, and it’s going to take me five minutes, then no problem. I will try and accommodate it. But if it’s for say like a $5 order and then the customer just wants another 25, 30 minutes worth of work, I’ve got to value my time and obviously for the other customers as well that I’ve got in the queue. Like I say, unfortunately I will always propose to refund the client.But what I will do when I do that is before I do that, I will look for another seller on Fiverr and I will suggest the buyer to use another seller and I will say, “This seller offers XYZ, really what you’re looking for,” and yeah, I will just recommend them to them and I will always give that seller a message as well and just give them a heads up that I’m sending a buyer over to them.Adam: So when it comes to the cancellation, is that something that you will action in because you want to maintain the customer – keep them happy? You want to maintain your rating. Because I imagine in that scenario where they request an extra work, you have done the work that you’ve been paid for up until that point. So canceling to that order is actually making you miss out on the money that you should be earning and you have done the time and spent the time to actually earn.Wayne: Right, yeah. And that’s when I say – I weigh the value of the order. If it’s a $5 order, it has probably not taken me that long to do. So I’m not really losing a lot of time and a lot of money in that circumstance. But if it’s a larger order, then of course I will always try and accommodate the buyer request. So long as it’s not really going too far outside of the Gig requirements.Adam: OK. So how about yourself, Redd? How do you go about handling modification requests? Because I know you’re in the voiceover category where I can imagine a quick reshoot isn’t really that quick.Redd: It depends on what’s going on. Modification requests that I get are usually either something – something wasn’t captured correctly in a tonal way. There may be a mispronunciation in the file. Sometimes it’s the pacing where my buyer may come back to me and say, “I really like this. It sounds good but it’s just a little bit too fast. Can you slow it down?”There’s a lot that I can – all of those I will take care of. I will just get those done as quickly as possible. Things like slowing down a file I can do in my editing software. So it doesn’t involve going back into the studio and doing a rerecord. So that’s not too bad and I also – I firmly believe that it’s my job to capture what the client is looking for and I’ve had a lot of practice and I’m pretty good at it. But once in a while, you just – there’s only so much information you can gather from the order details.So I will always do a rerecord if I just haven’t gotten them quite what they wanted. When I start to get into the sticky area is when they start to change the script, which is not my fault exactly and a lot of the times, I will accommodate the client if it’s something really, really small especially if I’ve got a relationship with the client, if they just need an extra line. I can record it with a mixing studio and send it over.But if it’s like a full redo of the script, I have to tell them they need to do a new order and some people don’t understand that and they do get frustrated but at the same time it’s – like I tell them I have to open an entirely new studio session. It’s not something I can just do for free. You do get to worry about buyer – for me I worry about the buyers abusing the system and deciding that they have placed their order and they bought a cheeseburger but what they actually want is chicken nuggets but they don’t want to pay for it.Wayne: I think we all get kind of clients like that where they abuse the modification system to get free work as well. I’ve got a question for you guys actually. When a client comes to you, and it’s something that you really can’t do, I think when you’re a low-rated seller say a level one or a level two seller, I think it’s easy to kind of just accept any job and just take it on, just because you’re desperate to get the orders through the door. What do you guys do in that circumstance, when it’s something that you really can’t do?Redd: There are a couple of things that I don’t – I don’t have it listed on my Gig description because my Gig description just isn’t big enough. But there are a couple of things that I don’t do. I don’t do adult content because I don’t want to voice anything that I would be embarrassed to hear back and then I don’t do phonics or Welsh accents because I just can’t do them. I’m terrible at them. I’ve tried and it’s a disaster.So a lot of the time when those orders come in, I will send a cancellation and be like, “I’m really sorry. I’m afraid this type of material is not something I can work on. I’m afraid this is outside of my skill set,” and I wish them the best of luck on their project and that’s pretty much it.Wayne: Right.Redd: And I generally don’t have a whole lot of backlash from that. Occasionally I’ve had someone argue to me before about the adult content thing because they said, “Oh, we’re not going to use it for this, that or the other,” and I’m like it’s not about how you’re going to use it. It’s about how comfortable I am in order to produce a quality – a level of work that is of high quality and stuff.The other thing that I come across once in a while is sometimes there are times when you just aren’t a good fit with your buyer and it’s really – sometimes you can spot it right away, either how they’re messaging you or how your interaction is going.There are sometimes I will get a buyer where I have messaged them back and forth 20 times and they still haven’t placed an order yet and those are the ones where I’m kind of like – this is going to be one of those things where we go through 17 modification requests and you’re still not going to be happy.So if I get kind of like a spider sense about those people, a lot of the times I will be like, “Listen, I don’t think we’re a good match,” and I will come back to them and say, “Maybe you should look for someone else or maybe you should consider sending your script to a professional scriptwriter,” or something along those lines.So I do have to occasionally say, “You know what? This just isn’t going to work,” and I think so long as you explain yourself and so long as you’re super polite about it, a lot of buyers understand that you’re not always going to find the perfect person first time around. I never used to do that. I would never, ever turn down an order into my first year on Fiverr and I muddled my way through some very funny stuff.Wayne: I think we’ve all done that.Redd: Yeah, but now definitely – now that I have a – I’m a lot less scared about losing a $5 order when that happens now and I think it’s just better for – it’s better for the buyers too. They don’t want to get work that isn’t good. That’s not why they’re ordering.Wayne: How about yourself Adam?Adam: For me in that situation, I do something quite similar to yourself Wayne where I will be open and honest with them and say, “No, I can’t do this.” A common request I receive is getting someone to the front page of Google and on a very small budget which has two issues for the fact that one, it’s not easy to do on a small budget and two, you can’t really guarantee the front page of Google.That isn’t something that you can – there is no set way of doing it. It’s no one yes sort of answer. So when I get requests like that, what I will often do is I will explain unfortunately I can’t do this but then I will do something similar to yourself where I will refer them to possibly another seller who could help them in some way that they’re looking for.But the only time I will do that is when I actually know the seller beforehand because I want to make sure that I’m recommending them to someone that I also would want to use myself. I wouldn’t want to send them in the wrong direction again.Wayne: Sure.Adam: So I often reach out – I would like to reach out to places like the forum or other areas on Fiverr to get to kind of know other sellers so I can know who I can refer the work to.Wayne: Yeah, sure. I’ve got a Gig actually where I do SEO reports and lots and lots of times I get customers coming back to me and say, “Hey, thanks for the great report. Can you make those modifications for me?” I really don’t have time. I can do it but I really don’t have time to do it and I will always refer them on. In fact, I actually refer them to you Adam.Adam: I was going to say I’ve had a few come through. Thank you very much. Coming back to that point as well about the buyer being happy in that instant, what I have learned and something I brought into my own process is to try and check an order as soon as possible after it has been placed. Let’s say I’ve got 20 or 30 in my queue. Usually I can always be a little bit delayed viewing like the 30th order before I come around and get to it.But I’ve learned to view it as soon as possible because I’ve learned that if you can’t do something, if you tell the buyer as soon as possible, they’re usually rather happy and they understand and they may come back to you in the future for something else.However, there have been a few scenarios where I’ve been absolutely swamped. I’ve not really checked their order and I’ve gotten on to it on let’s say the day or the day before delivery and I explain to them, “I’m sorry. This is not something I can do. It states in my Gig description,” for example that I can’t do it. So it’s very clear I can’t do it but they’ve placed their order anyway.But then they can be quite upset or annoyed that they’ve sat around for two or three days not knowing this. So I’ve learned to check the orders as soon as possible just to make sure that you can do it and if you can’t, they’re quite happy as long as they know as soon as possible.Wayne: Sure. In fact, that’s really good advice for myself because I generally have around about 200 orders in queue at any one time and it’s just really difficult to open every single order, check it to make sure that it fits my criteria and like yourself, I will generally deliver on the day the timer runs out. It’s just how I work. I just do just in time production and yeah, you are right. There have been a few occasions where buyers come to me with some requirements that I really can’t do and I can’t really refer them anywhere else either.The only option for me is to offer them a refund and that’s my way of just saying, “I’m really sorry. I can’t do it.” Instead of going ahead with the order and then being really unhappy with the results later on, yeah, I will always try and cancel it as early as possible. But for me, yeah, it’s really difficult to do that especially with so many orders in the queue.Adam: I can imagine.Redd: I generally don’t have an opportunity to check orders beforehand because my turnaround time is so short because I’m on the standard two-day with less some time and it’s really, really hard for me but there are a couple of things. Like one of the things I offer is video syncing and that’s the one where like if I see an order come through, I will usually check through my email and if I spot that, I will go and look at it because a lot of the time, people have ordered the incorrect amounts. So that’s something that I try to jump on right away because that can really delay a project if I can’t get the amount of funds that I need in order to finish the work.So a lot of the time, I do most of my video syncing but every so often I have someone else that helps me out with it and I don’t want to ever be delivering those Gigs late because I’m waiting for more money and then I’m waiting for my compatriot to help out with it.Adam: Well, the good news is you have that feature inside to send custom offers with time and money and extras now. That must be helpful for that scenario.Redd: Oh, it’s fantastic. I don’t know what I did before that. It’s amazing. Being able to add extras on to orders now and to open orders is one of my favorite features that we have.Adam: I suppose that’s quite a polite way of saying no as well in a way to the buyer where they may request something underpriced or they may actually say place an order under value and rather than trying to get personal about it, you simply state this isn’t covered. You have the option to be – having the refund or to custom offer to easily upgrade your order for you. So it’s seamless for the buyer in that way. I imagine it’s quite a nice way to go about it.Redd: Yeah, for sure. I have a lot of buyers that order the incorrect amount for orders and it has really revolutionized my workflow for that and it’s better for them because then they’re not waiting and waiting and waiting for their products while we go back and forth on updates and OK, now, they have to place a whole new order for it in order to add in those additional funds and all that good stuff. It’s just they click one button. They just click Accept and they’re done.Adam: It probably looks more legitimate as well when – I’ve heard of a few times when a buyer hears a price and they think, “Well, what do you mean? It’s Fiverr. It should be cheaper than that.” It looks more legitimate that you can upgrade the order within the order so they understand you’re not just talking different to everyone else.Redd: Absolutely. And then the other good thing about that too is at the bottom of your options where you can add on your pre-built extras, there is that option for a custom extra and a lot of the times it will be some – I will be able to use that and say like – something along the lines of I will add an additional like 37 words to your order because that’s how many you were short on or something like that. It’s a great system. I highly recommend it.Wayne: Do you find that your buyers accept those custom offers as well?Redd: I’ve only had one decline once and then I had to go back and explain why – again, why I had asked for it but I have never had a – like they have never declined. It has been great and before I would have orders that – I would have to go to them and say, “Hey, you didn’t quite put in enough,” and then the order would run out of time and then I would send them a refund because I don’t leave late orders in my queue ever and then it would just be back and forth or I would lose the order and I don’t lose nearly as many orders this way, which is great, because I won’t do work unless they have – unless it’s a buyer that I have worked with dozens of times, I won’t do work unless I’ve got the full funds for it because I’ve just been bitten too many times.Adam: That’s understandable.Redd: So gentlemen, shall we move on to the question and answer portion of the program?Wayne: Absolutely.Adam: Yeah.Redd: Fantastic. So our first community question – these community questions we have today are wide-reaching and they’re not from just one user. So they’re pretty good. How long after an order can your buyer leave a review? Wayne, why don’t you take this one?Wayne: Sure, OK. So once the order is completed, the buyer has – I think it’s 30 days to leave a review. After 30 days, that review gets locked and it can’t be left and after the review has actually been left, the buyer I think – is it four days Adam?Adam: I believe it’s around that time.Wayne: Four days that they can go ahead and edit the review if they need to.Adam: So the other question we have is, “How important is your user profile?” Do you want to handle that one, Redd?Redd: Yeah, sure. I think your user profile is very important because it’s a way for people to get a small snapshot into who you are. One of the things that it makes me sad when I see is when people have typos in their user profile. It’s about presenting a level of professionalism. So I think it’s a good idea for everyone to occasionally just go in and make sure that their profile is up to date and your profile is just – it’s your little bit about you.So for me, mine says that I’m a voiceover artist. It says that I’m originally from England and I live in America and it’s just all that little information. But I have found that if I’m looking for a seller on Fiverr, if I’m looking to purchase something myself and their profile is – has poor grammar or bad spelling or something like that, I tend to shy away. So it’s an important thing to use it as a way to create a professional appearance from the get-go for your clients.That’s about all we have time for today. Thanks very much for listening to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers by sellers. Thanks so much to Wayne for joining us. You can find him on Fiverr. His username is “ozzieuk”. We were edited today by Dansha. Be sure to join us next week. Our topic will be a special product update and you do not want to miss out on that.Transcribed by: Trans-Expert
