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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

“How do I keep quality as I scale?”

That’s been keeping me up this week.

Our quality is great. But to scale I need to clone myself.

And 6 years in consulting made my bar for quality absurd.

So if you want your teams to hold your bar for quality this is for you:

I dug through 310 pieces of feedback I gave our team on our biggest deliverables.

And found the 5 biggest mistakes that ruin your quality.

This is for you whether you’re in client service OR you want your internal teams building your plans right the first time.

Examples:
➟ Designing SOPs, training, or marketing plans
➟ Building client documents
➟ Making recommendations

Anyway. I’ve ranked these 5 mistakes to get increasingly harder as they go (# 5 is the hardest).

But nail all 5, and you’ll get your deliverables done right the first time.

Let’s get into it.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

For my friends: What’s going on with Brian?

Tomorrow, I leave Colombia 😔

It’s bitter sweet. I’m off to Buenos Aires!

I’ll finally meet a partner we haven’t publicly announced yet. I’m so excited to cement the partnership.

Also in Buenos Aires I’m meeting 3 founders who replied to this newsletter so if you’re in Buenos Aires reply so we can get coffee!

At TalentHQ, we officially welcomed our sales rep to the team. We’re growing fast.

He has a TON of energy, spent 3 years in sales for other recruiting agencies, and worked at Apollo building email sequences. Exactly what we needed.

Reply with “Sales” if you want us to help you find your sales guy too.

Let’s get into it: 👇

The 5 biggest quality mistakes holding back your deliverables

These examples will come from our work with clients. But any time you see the word “client” swap it in your head with “leadership” or “stakeholders.”

Whatever makes sense for your business.

Here we go: 👇

💥 Mistake #1: Missing clear formatting

Ready for a quick, simple upgrade?

When clients (or leadership) ask for multiple things (in our case, 3 - 5 traits in candidates), they want those things addressed.

My team thought:
If I explain those traits in a paragraph that’ll be fine, right?

The problem - that puts the work on the client to make sure each request is taken care of.

People won’t do that work. They’ll feel you didn’t address their needs. And that’s a horrible client experience.

So be obnoxiously clear on addressing client needs.

Easiest way to do this is in bullet points.

Here’s a real example:

We have a client looking for specific experiences for a graphic designer.

Before feedback:

Can you find the experiences our client asked for?

Not really, right?

Now, after feedback:

See how much easier it is to quickly understand that the experience matches what you’re looking for?

Be obnoxiously clear to address requests.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

This is a great example of clear formatting, but it’s missing one additional problem that we’ll cover in the last problem (#5).

Stay tuned.

💥 Mistake #2: Missing specificity

People read general statements and don’t understand how it applies to them.

So cut out general words. Choose words that apply to the client.

Here’s an example:

We presented candidates to an email marketing agency and I saw this phrase:

“Candidate has worked with large databases for email marketing”

See the word “databases?”

What’s a database? It’s a place where you store a ton of information.

Why does an email marketing client care about a candidate having experience storing information?

What they care about is their ability to manage big/complex client accounts.

So we need to get one level more specific.

What type of information within the database does the client care about?

The size of the email list the candidate managed.

❌ ”Database”
✅ ”Email list”

They read the word “database” and think

“This doesn’t apply to me.
Do they even understand my business and my needs?”

Swap out general words with more specific words. Clients will feel you actually understand their needs.

And they’ll trust your judgement.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

I was about to hit send on this newsletter.

Then I got an email with another example of specificity I had to share with you.

This morning we sent a client update that we have two new candidates.

Great. But what’s missing?

These were the two best candidates from 926 applicants!

That changes how you feel about these candidates doesn’t it?

Use specific numbers.

💥 Mistake #3: Not telling the client why they should care

People are reactionary.

They see a sentence and jump to the first conclusion.

That conclusion may not be the one you want them to make.

Make the jump for them. Tell them why your suggestion is so important.

In other words:
Always add a “so what?”

Let’s re-use the example from the last problem:

“Candidate has worked with large databases for email marketing.”

So why should the client care?

This candidate has worked with large mailing lists.

This means they have experience managing BIG clients.

Big business have more complex needs that small businesses don’t so they’ll need a more advanced skillset.

The “so what” is that if you need to work with big clients you’ll need to hire talent that has the advanced technical skillset and the professional polish from big company experience.

Much more powerful than just saying they’ve worked with large mailing lists, isn’t it?

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Okay here’s one more examples of this mistake that I came across:

“This candidate has worked in agencies”

So what?

Well a candidate having agency experience means a few things:

1) Used to a fast-paced environment
2) Client service professionalism
3) Managing multiple clients

The reader could jump to any of these conclusions (or no conclusions at all).

So which one applies the most to the reader?

In our case, during onboarding our client we heard them complain previous hires were too slow.

So we changed this sentence to:

“This candidate spent 3 years in a fast-paced agency environment. His speed is a great fit for your culture.”

Much stronger “so what,” isn’t it?

💥 Mistake #4: Weak reasoning

So in mistake #3 we fixed: not having a “so what” at all.

But when that “so what” doesn’t apply to the reader then we have a new problem.

Here’s an example:
For context, this client is looking for someone who will not miss small details and keeps files organized (so things don’t get lost).

My team analyzed their candidate like this:

“Having worked with different cultures gives her an understanding of different methods of working and organizing herself to achieve her goals.”

This is the problem:

How does working with different cultures help her not miss small details?

It doesn’t clearly address the client needs.

Instead you need to ask:

What are examples of what your client actually needs when they say attention to detail?

➟ File organization
➟ Keeping track of deadlines
➟ Deliverable formatting (fonts, titles etc)

A strong “so what” is anything that pushes your reader’s goals further.

Proof of organization, deadlines, formatting etc would be a strong argument for pushing client goals.

If it doesn’t obviously improve client goals, change the reasoning.

💥 Mistake #5: Not including trade-offs (i.e., risks)

When you give advice… ALWAYS include the trade-off.

Saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to something else.

If you’re making a choice and it looks all positive, you’re missing something.

But don’t take my word for it.

Charlie Munger (co-founder of Berkshire Hathaway) said:

“If you can't think in terms of tradeoffs… you're a horse's patoot.

You clearly are a danger to the rest of the people when serious thinking is being done.”

But since you’re reading this newsletter, you’re not a horses patoot.

You know better.

Here’s how you include trade-offs in your deliverables: 👇

So when you make a recommendation always include the downside of your choice.

Let’s show an example:
Remember the graphic design candidate from the first mistake?

Here’s what’s wrong with it…

I see only checkmarks. It’s all positive. I don’t trust it.

We either overlooked the trade-offs OR we’re hiding something.

Neither is good.

So make sure you add nuance:
This candidate has more experience in FB ads, but less in packaging. So choose this candidate if you want to prioritize ads, choose another if you prioritize packaging.

We show clients we’ve thought through all sides and they can trust us as an advisor.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Every upside has its downside.

In other words, things that seem positive have their negative side too.

Here’s a few examples of downsides of positive traits.
1) You prioritize moving fast.
Downside: Moving fast means more mistakes.

2) You prioritize creativity.
Downside: Creativity brings risk. You’ll have more failures.

3) Highly specialized skillset.
Downside: Not flexible.

4) Good at everything.
Downside: Not the best at anything.

Don’t trust an advisor (or anyone) who can’t see trade-offs.

Get these right and you’ll clone yourself (so quality can scale)

It’s hard to keep quality at scale.

You’ll need to clone yourself. And we can start by cloning your cravings for high quality.

➟ Start by stealing this outline.
➟ Host a training.
➟ Get your teams to understand what “quality” means to you.

When you can scale your quality, you’ve built real leverage.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
[email protected]
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TalentHQ

P.S. Want me to look at your deliverables and give you tips to scale your quality? Reply “Scale”

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