Why “I Do High Quality Work” Is Both Good Policy and Terrible Positioning

In a relatively recent post, I teased writing about the “attractive nuisance” of freelancers and aspiring business owners branding their work as “high quality.”  And now I’m going to do just that.  I think this is important.

But I’ve got to say, sometimes it feels like I’m just swimming in contrarian hot takes and click-baiting my way to, well… to I don’t know what exactly.  I mean, it’s not like I have any real mission on this site other than talking about whatever pops into my head.

Still, though.  I swear I’m not just an aspiring middle aged edgelord.  There is a method to the madness.

High Quality Work Itself is, Of Course, Desirable

To prove it, I’ll make clear that I have no actual problem with the ideas of doing things well, mastering skills or taking pride in one’s work.  I wouldn’t advise you to do things poorly.

After all, just recently, I re-caulked my shower and never once thought, “meh, I’ll just spray this stuff at the seams until it’s everywhere and call it a day.”  Instead, I got out the rubbing alcohol, putty knife, painter’s tape, and worried at it until I had a smooth, symmetrical bead.

Off the cuff, I’d say situations where doing shoddy work is any kind of advantage, in a vacuum, are really quite rare.  Maybe rapid prototyping or something…?  With most work personal and professional, there’s no need to overthink whether excellence trumps mediocrity.  It does.

The trouble is that positioning your work as “high quality” is a much different beast from doing work that is high quality (which, I might argue is just table stakes for conducing business and not a differentiator).

Confused?  No worries.  I’ll explain.

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It Turns Out Your Prospects Don’t Like When You Assume They’re Stupid

I’ve been traveling a lot lately.  And, while this is good for the vagabond’s soul, it’s not good for recording videos.

So instead of continuing to treat you to niche case studies (those are coming, though), I’m getting back to my roots and writing.  I’m going to classify this, like all of my other recent posts, as “business of freelancing.”  But it’s really a bit of an interlude, since it’s not a logical continuation of my last post, which was about how to conduct market research to identify niches.

For today’s post, let’s assume that you’ve either found a niche, or else are just flailing around as a generalist, and you’re doing some prospecting.  I want to talk about prospecting — specifically, one great way not to do it.

What is Prospecting?

Perhaps before we go barreling too far down the road to business acquisition anti-pattern, I should define what I mean by prospecting.

I’m not talking about going out and looking for oil or whatever, and I don’t really have a formal, official definition.  Instead, I’ll explain what this means to me so that you understand what, exactly, I’m talking about for the rest of the post.

Consider:

• Marketing is the process by which you create awareness of your offering.
• Sales is the process of maneuvering leads (ideally, ones brought about through your marketing), through your sales process and to customers.

Clever readers may notice a gap here.

What if I don’t really have any marketing to speak of, and my phone isn’t ringing with inbound business?  How do I get leads into my sales process?

The various hustling you do to address this situation, dear reader, is known as prospecting.  (Please don’t confuse this with marketing.)

A Prospecting Example

If I were in your shoes, interested in learning about business concepts, I’d want a concrete example.  So, in true Golden Rule spirit, let me offer that.

My business, Hit Subscribe, is a specific kind of marketing partner.  We help dev tools companies make engineers aware of their offerings (usually via blog posts).  These days, I’m doing 2-3 sales calls per week, and here are the ways those come about:

1. Inbound leads through word of mouth.  Current customers refer people they know, or customer contacts switch companies and bring us along for the ride.  This is an instance of marketing.
2. People reach out because they read a guest post of mine somewhere or saw a talk.  This is another instance of marketing — specifically content marketing.
3. I hang out places where our customers hang out, introduce myself, and forge relationships.  This is prospecting.

In the loosest sense, I think of marketing as strategies to facilitate passive (from your vantage point) awareness.  If Hit Subscribe impresses a customer into a referral, or someone reads a blog post I wrote and reaches out, we’re expending no specific effort to reach this person.

But prospecting is active and tailored.  You’re identifying and targeting possible customers.

And because you’re initiating the relationship, you need to exercise a lot more care in how you do this.  Which brings me to the meat of the post.

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Conducting Market Research Calls to Identify and Validate Niches

Recently in this series, I wrote about how you don’t “pick” niches.  Rather, you discover potential niches, form a niche hypothesis, and then validate them.

I also recommended two pretty dependable ways to validate (and, if needed, tune) them:

1. Creating valuable content around the niche hypothesis.
2. Conducting market research.

Today, I’d like to focus on this second concern.  Let’s do a deep dive on scheduling and conducting market research calls.

Understand the Lay of the Land

Before I go into detail, I want to establish some ground rules to help you not be awful.

When people help you with your market research, there’s extremely limited upside for them.  Basically just the opportunity to have someone interview them and express interest in their opinions.  But that’s really it.

So make no mistake.  This is a one-sided exchange and they are doing you a favor.  As such, the least you can do is walk in the safe middle between these two extreme behaviors that will make them low-key hate you:

1. You claim to want to pick their brain but, bait and switch by begging them to pay you to do something.
2. You truly want to pick their brain, but have no focus or agenda, so you turn the call into undirected career advice and therapy.

Veering toward either one of these danger zones is a veritable blueprint for how to suck.  You need to stay in the middle by having a focused agenda, but with no expectation beyond the meeting itself.

And the easiest way to do that is to recognize that either one of the danger paths involves making the conversation about you and your needs.  This conversation is, instead, about them and theirs.  If you keep that top of mind, you’ll do fine.

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