Recommending writers is no easy task. What’s the best thumbs-up you’ve ever given for a writer? Or for anybody, for that matter?

Recommending writers with a guarantee? You wish . . .

If you ask me about a particular writer’s work, what do you want to hear most of all? You want to hear, “She does good work, and I’ll guarantee it.” I can go on and on with lots of other words, but what you’re hoping for is some kind of guarantee that the work she does for me will be as good as the work she did for you.

Naturally, I can’t give you that guarantee. I can tell you, “I asked her to write a rocking white paper in three weeks, and she did it in two weeks. Our leads have doubled since we put it on our site.”

But of course, your mileage may vary. Or, as they say in financial services, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

All they have is their word

I once pitched a VP of marketing named Jim, one of my dad’s long-time colleagues. A few days later, Dad told me that Jim had asked him about me afterwards.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I said, ‘He does what he says he’ll do.'”

That sounded fine, because he put all the responsibility back onto me. And isn’t that what recommending writers (or anybody) boils down to? In a world where talk is cheap and where everything is easier said than done, consistently doing what you say you’ll do is a pretty big deal.

A writer’s word and reputation are really all she has. There are no guarantees about anybody you hire to tell your company’s story. The best you can do is to find out whether she does what she says she’ll do.

What’s the best thumbs-up or ‘attaboy you’ve ever received?

photo credit: Caspar Diederik