If we spam you, please be polite to us

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I recently came across a fascinating thread on LinkedIn where salespeople were frustrated by being “ghosted” by potential clients. They’d reach out, and simply get no response.

Ghosting someone isn’t generally a nice thing to do, but there was a big difference with this thread — almost everyone in there was sending cold emails (you know, spam) and they were upset with the lack of polite “no’s” that people were offering if they’re not interested.

If you’re having an ongoing conversation with a potential client, and they choose to work with someone else, getting a “no” response from them should be expected. That’s not the case here.

Knowing that most of us get 10-20 of these spammy emails every day, taking the time to respond to all of them would be silly. Those in this thread do not agree, though. Their thought is that if you say “no” they’ll stop bugging you, and so it’s in your best interest to do so. That may be true, but it feels more like a threat — “I will continue to spam you until you write back”.

From Christopher:

Could not agree more. Respond with a direct reason why it’s not a good fit or you’re not the right person allows me to update my CRM and leave you be.

Or Andrew, who says that a “no” isn’t enough, and you should pester them for more info:

I’ve turned a lot of no’s into cash flow for both sides. Gotta be careful I agree-but sometimes diamonds lie just on the other side of where you stopped digging. Ask the hard question of “why” before stopping at no.

Or from Bali:

Just be polite and respectful and answer the email or reply to the voicemail. The ones with integrity will not be offended at all. We are doing our job.

You can check out the full thread on LinkedIn and read more for yourself to gain more context.

Seth Godin has a few great thoughts on this. From a very old blog post of his:

Some spammers will tell you that all you need to do is opt out. But of course, the very problem with spam is that it requires action on the part of the recipient, action that can’t possibly scale (how many times a day should we have to opt out, communicating with businesses we never asked to hear from in the first place?)

(On a side note, this is exactly why a blog is great. If Seth had posted that on social media eight years ago instead of his blog, it’d be unfindable today. Own your stuff.)

More recently, I heard him simply say: “Selfish can’t be fixed, apparently.“

I agree with him that it should be considered selfish to send someone an unsolicited message and then complain when the prospect won’t even be “respectful” enough to give a reply. Respect needs to be earned, not threatened. Earn it.

Alternative facts come from a lack of detail

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“Alternative facts” are a real thing, at least to some degree. Here are two quick examples.

First is this image that has been shared around quite a bit:

The second are the facts that Chick-Fil-A is mathematically the fastest drive-thru restaurant, but they’re also mathematically the slowest drive-thru restaurant. Both are 100% factual, from the same study, but they’re quite the alternate to one another.

In both cases, the “alternative facts” arise because there is not enough detail in the viewpoint that each party has.

In the “6 vs 9” example it’s pretty clear. If one were to come get the perspective of the other, they’d realize what they’re looking at. A little attunement goes a long way.

In the Chick-Fil-A example, one piece of it is measuring how quickly they handle each car (fastest), and the other is how long your average total wait in line is (slowest, due to sheer volume of cars). The details matter.

If someone shares an “alterative fact” with you, press for details. It may simply be a bogus fact (like this), but it might also be a case of each party looking from a different perspective. Try to see through the other person’s eyes, and perhaps you’ll understand why they see things the way they do.

You’re not really selling time

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A common way to price your offerings is with an hourly rate, but that’s not generally the best way to go. It can certainly help frame what price point might be appropriate, but even if you charge by the hour, your clients aren’t really just “buying your time”.

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In a recent post by Jonathan Stark, he puts it this way:

“If clients were really buying your time, it wouldn’t matter if you spent it coding their website or sorting their sock drawer.

They aren’t buying your time.

Then what are they buying?

They are buying the results they believe you can deliver.

Stop selling time and start selling results.”

Selling by the hour is an easy way to do things, but it almost never aligns with the goals of your client and the value that you can bring. Sell the actual value that people want to buy, not some representation of how long it’ll take you to produce it.

Saying “no” is intellectually lazy

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As you are growing your business, developing the ability to say “no” more frequently is a great thing.

No to unnecessary meetings.

No to clients that you don’t fit with.

No to things that waste your time.

In many cases, though, the answer should be a bit more nuanced. It’s easy to say “no”, but you might want to think about it a bit more. A recent episode of the 2Bobs podcast dug into this a bit, with a rather funny (and sad?) story from Blair Enns about someone he knew that was trained to say “no”.

I was having a conversation with an agency principal a few years back, and I had worked with her firm a dozen years earlier. We were catching up, and she said, “Oh, you’d be so proud of me. I got an RFP from a Fortune 500 firm the other day and I said no.” I said, “Great. Then what? Then what did you say?” She said, “Nothing. They went away.” I went, “Oh, my God, what have I done?”

Blair famously doesn’t think you should respond to RFPs (Requests For Proposals), but that you should say “no” with some nuance. If it’s a good opportunity, you try to spin the conversation into something that works better for you. If you can, great! If not, then maybe walk away.

In the example above, they simply said “no” and were done. That’s taking the lazy way out, and it’s a good plan to run yourself out of business.

Say “no” often, but take a breath to make sure it’s the right thing to do.

Clear is kind

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If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk very much, you’ve probably noticed that his big push lately is for “kind candor“. In his earlier years he did well with the “kind” part, but hid from the “candor”, which was a big disservice to those on his team.

You don’t need to hide from the truth, but don’t be a jerk about it either. It’s similar to what I shared a few weeks ago when I said that “Honesty without kindness is brutality, and kindness without honesty is manipulation.“

In her book “Dare to Lead“, author Brené Brown shared this thought a few different ways. She had a pretty harsh overview:

“Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind”

But she also summarized it very neatly:

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Hiding behind the truth to make someone feel better may work for a while, but in the long run it’s likely to lead to trouble. Speak the truth whenever possible, but always try to be a good human while you do it.

Enjoy your obscurity

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We all tend to want to reach more people, whether that’s through our creative work, sports, acting, etc. Even on this blog, which I’m doing almost entirely for my own growth, it would be kind of fun to have more traffic.

That said, a bit of obscurity can be a good thing. If you look at famous actors or athletes, there is certainly a lot to like about the life they have, but there are downsides as well (they can’t go out in public as easily, etc).

The same is true for online work. I look at someone like Chris Lema that gets a ton of traffic to his site, so as a consequence he turned off the comments feature a few years ago. It was a fantastic little community in the comments, but it was simply too much work for him to maintain. Turning off the comments was unfortunate, but absolutely the right move for him.

In his book “Steal Like An Artist“, author Austin Kleon simply says this:

Share your work with others to become well-known, but enjoy the benefits of obscurity first.

Becoming well-known will provide a ton of benefits to you, but if you’re still rather obscure, take some time to enjoy the benefits that come from that as well.

Reading can be high-leverage work

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I shared the question last month of whether reading can be considered “work” or not, and I’m still a bit torn on the idea. I think that reading certainly generates benefits for my work, but I also don’t think that it’s the best use of my time during the day. It’s something I’ll continue to ponder.

In his book “Effortless“, Greg McKeown has no need to ponder; he absolutely considers it to be work. He says:

“Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.”

Ultimately, I think it comes down to your role and your needs, but consistently taking time to read (whether it’s “work” or not) is likely to gain you some huge benefits.

What does “done” look like?

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With most things that we work on, there is some end goal in sight.

Publish the website.

Mow the grass.

Run a marathon.

In some cases, though, there isn’t a “done” to be found. This blog is a great example of that, in that I have no end goal in mind. In most cases, though, clearly defining what “done” means is essential to actually getting there. As Brené Brown says, you should “paint done” to know what it looks like.

In his book “Effortless“, Greg McKeown simply says “The first step to Effortless Action is defining what “done” looks like.” He unpacks it further with:

“If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible.”

The reason for defining “done” is so that you know when to stop. For things like mowing the grass, it’s pretty easy to know when it’s done. For building and publishing a website, you never really finish it, so you need to have a clear picture of the initial goal so that you can actually hit publish for the first time.

Your visitors have their own mission

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Your company very likely has a mission statement that you’re proud of, and you probably should be. Having a solid mission is a great thing, but your customers care almost nothing about it. When they come to your site, they don’t want to hear about your mission — they have their own mission that they’re working through.

In a recent post, Tom Tortorici put it this way:

What they appear to be forgetting is that their website reader is on their own mission.

If someone is interested enough in your business, they’ll ultimately head over to your “about us” page to learn more about what’s behind the company. First, though, they need to know that you can help them with their mission.

Looking at the stats for the GreenMellen site, the majority of people already that fill out our contact form came from our about page. They look around the site to see if we can help, then learn more about us, then reach out.

If that process is out of order, it’s far less likely to be successful. Help the visitor understand that you are a good fit to help them accomplish their mission and then they’ll take the time to get to know you.

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Collect more ideas

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I’ve collected various things throughout my life. I had a pretty large hat collection when I was in middle school (perhaps 100 hats), and I still have many thousands of baseball cards. Those were fun collections to build and hold.

Lately, though, I’ve been working on a new collection — ideas.

In “Steal Like an Artist“, that is precisely what author Austin Kleon says that we should be doing:

“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”

There are two important pieces to what he’s suggesting.

First, there is “more you can choose from to be influenced by”. Collecting more ideas means you’ll be seeing more viewpoints, which generally is a great way to have better opinions. I want to see things from every angle and then change my mind if I find that my old opinion was incorrect.

Second, it gives me more to learn from and share. Collecting good ideas is a great start, but digging through them and combining new ideas with old ones is where I often find gold. If you can develop a system to store ideas in a way that resurfaces them with new ones (like I try to do with Roam Research), the results can be fantastic.

Collections are fun to build. You might collect shot glasses, coins, or antique cars, but working on your collection of ideas is one that is free, easy to build, and will serve you well in many facets of life.