Lots of freelancers get into freelancing because they possess a particular skill. Perhaps they have a flawless design eye and can create amazing logos in their sleep. Perhaps they have an uncanny knack for writing and can put pen to paper and generate prose like no one else. But selling? That’s something that many freelancers avoid like the plague… That is, until they realize that they’ll have to get a “real” job if they don’t start selling.

But how do you sell your services? It can be challenging to communicate your very specialized skills and deep passion for the job in a way that will motivate the customer to buy. But it is possible. Here are a few tips from the “sales 101″ playbook and they have been modified slightly for freelancers of all stripes.

SALES TIP #1: Features and benefits. This is a classic freelancer problem. You communicate your skills in the specialized form. For example: “I can create logos in 3 popular programs.” While that is useful information for the customer, it doesn’t help you to sell your logos because you’re just describing the features of the delivery. Instead, focus on the benefits; focus on what the customer gets out of the deal. An easy way to do that is to start the sentence above, then add the words “so what this means for you is…”, then finish the sentence.

So you’ll end up with something like: “I can create logos in 3 popular programs, so what this means for you is that I have a broad range of tools available to make EXACTLY the logo you want and to deliver it in EXACTLY the format you will find most useful.

SALES TIP #2: AIDA. AIDA is a classic sales formula when talking about or writing about your services. It’s a very simple acronym that stands for “Attention, Interest, Decision, Action” and it’s the steps you move through in any sales situation. First, you capture their attention (hint: with hard-hitting benefits). Second, you generate interest with enhanced descriptions, testimonials, and detail. Third, you offer them a decision to buy or not to buy. And fourth, you show them how to take action.

This acronym is useful in shorter forms of writing (like Google Adwords or even billboards or business cards) or longer forms of writing (like a web page, an advertisement, or a sales letter) or other non-text marketing. A compelling picture with just a web address follows the AIDA format: The picture captures attention and generates interest, the URL helps them make a decision, and clicking the URL is the clear and obvious action they need to take.

SALES TIP #3: ROI. This is another acronym and if you forget everything else you read today, remember this: ROI stands for “return on investment”. Every buyer looks for this before they spend resources (which may include any combination of time, money, and effort). Before you buy a car you weigh the potential return that the car will provide (convenience, comfort, and even jealous neighbors) on the potential investment of your money. Before you read a website you weigh the amount of time you will spend on that site against what you expect to get out of it.

Well, here’s a reality check: Your customers are doing that, too. They are looking at what you have to offer and thinking about how much time, effort, and money they will need to put into you and your deliverable before they get what they want. So the absolute MUST-DO task that you have whenever you meet a new potential customer is to show them how they will invest a fair amount of time, effort, and money and in exchange will receive a HUGE return.

I’m sorry to deliver the bad news but freelancing is a sales career. You might be an amazing artist, writer, virtual assistant, web designer, [etc., etc., etc.] but if you can’t sell then you’ll be out of a job very quickly.