Have You Fallen Into The Portfolio Trap

Have you noticed an interesting phenomenon out there? And more and more buyers fall for it like dead flies. The disease is called "Can I see your portfolio?" They seem to care less and less about quantifiable results but put far too much emphasis on the portfolio.

Here is a question for you. If I'm looking for a web designer because I'm artistically challenged, how can I assess a web designer's expertise by looking at her portfolio? I could only assess her by her portfolio if I were a designer myself, in which case I wouldn't be looking for one.

But even me, the artistically challenged one can assess a designer by the results her design has created for her clients over the years.

1. Has her design generated sales leads?
2. Has her design generated sales?
3. Has her design generated newsletter sign-ups?
4. Has her design generated interest for a free report?
5. Has her design generated more website visitors?

Or...

1. Has her design earned her an award?

Because if not, that design is dead design regardless of the colour scheme and the bells and whistles.

The top five points are client-centred benefits. The bottom one is a designer-centred ego-trip which is roughly as useful for clients as a barbershop on the steps of the guillotine.

You see, some people build portfolios in search of awards and recognition. Just see the award-winning "Got Milk" ad, Pepsi commercial with Michael Jackson or a few years ago the Nissan commercial. All three of them won numerous awards and were great ego-candy for the ad agencies, but financially all three bombed miserably, having lost millions of dollars for their clients.

What are your clients seeking in your help? Fortune or fame? Money or medals?
Profit or portfolios? Rewards or awards? Cash or cachet?

When you need a dog to protect your home, what do you select. And freshly bathed and polished award-winning pedigree pooch or a shaggy Rotweiler?

And I've always thought that selecting professionals based on their "portfolios" with no regard to the financial improvement in their clients' businesses is just as retarded as selecting surgeons based on their portfolios of fancy incisions and award-winning stitches with no regard to the fact of how many of their patients died.

This reminds me of an interesting and relevant story. One day, the European aircraft manufacturer, Airbus held a test evacuation exercise on its A380 plane. The exercise was a blazing success. That is, the exercise was completed within the allocated time frame. Although several people were hurt, one broke his leg, but the tasks were completed within the allotted time frame, so the real outcome was deemed to be irrelevant.

Or...

I've recently talked to someone who is a co-ordinator at a government-sponsored self-employment programme. After taking these courses, some 75% of participants, instead of starting their businesses, get a job and live the rest of their lives as employees, just as they did before. To my surprise the co-ordinator explained to me, "Tom, you don't understand how government programmes operate. As long as we dispense 140 hours of classroom tutelage and can prove that every participant wrote document entitled "business plan", we are blazingly successful regardless of the actual failure rate. And we are blazingly successful even if they end up on welfare or homeless begging on the streets."

Interesting perspectives.

Fancy portfolios carefully hide one thing, the most important thing from the client's perspective: Was that initiative profitable for the client? Was it a wise investment with substantial return or just another idiotic waste of time and money?