On Client-Hunting: The Market Will Weed out the Fakes (With or Without My Complaints)
When someone seems too desperate to help you, it raises red flags.
There’s a fine line between pushing your belief (in your products/service) to others because you care about their betterment — and desperation.
Here’s what “desperate” looks like:
- Desperate Helper: Wanna save money? I’m selling this super absorbent reusable towel. It’s cheaper than your typical paper towels. Plus, by buying it, you are saving Mother Earth because you’re using less paper. And today is the perfect time! We are offering 75% off for first-time buyers.
- Me: Awesome offer! But…no sir, I don’t need a super absorbent reusable towel because I’m happy with the regular paper towels. I’m sure your product is cheaper and better for Mother Earth, but not this time…
- Desperate Helper: OH! So you don’t care about saving money?! How about helping Mother Earth?!!
- Me: *thinking* Oh here comes the make-me-feel-guilty questions. This is exactly why I don’t wanna engage in the first place!
However, almost all the time, those who offer these products dismiss the feelings and beliefs of their potential customers.
Their approach screams “There’s more at stake for me here” than the client they want to help. But I get confused because somehow it appears to work! No wonder why most client-hunters do it.
As someone inexperienced in the game, it makes sense to stick to what’s proven to work.
Why reinvent the wheel when there’s a proven approach everyone uses…right? But doing so will make it harder for my potential client to realize I’m different. The commonness of the approach also creates the opportunity to stand out.
I can take advantage of the situation by applying a design principle known as “Contrast”.
It’s when you create a big gap between two different entities:
- To increase sales, you make your pricing seem a lot cheaper than your competitors or the perceived value of your product/service.
- In design, to make a color stand out, you’d have to pair it with a color that sits on the opposite end of the color wheel.
- In terms of aesthetics, something that’s “ok-looking” can look “super attractive” when surrounded by ugly-looking things.
Said simply: to stand out, you need to put yourself in a position where everybody else looks the same.
Here’s how I would apply “contrast” in the game of client-hunting:
- Most client hunters cold-message potential clients based on their public profile. They spray and pray generic outreach messages because it’s a numbers game.
- I’ll stand out by studying potential clients and gauging whether there’s an alignment between what they need and what I offer before reaching out. This will allow me to send a personalized outreach message that demonstrates “effort”.
- Most client hunters focus on selling their services without proving their skills.
- I’ll stand out by using me as my case study. I will double down on the quality of my work such that it will do the selling for me.
- Most client hunters position themselves as if they can do whatever you ask them to do. It doesn’t matter which industry their potential client is in. As long as it involves writing, you bet they can get it done.
- I’ll stand out by specializing in a sub-category of a given industry. It needs to be an industry in which I have a lot of experience or high interest. The more connected I am in that sub-category, the less challenging it is to find a gap in the market.
Standing out by making yourself look better than everybody else can be tiring.
Make it easier by being different.
