I was hanging out with a friend a few weeks ago when they got an unknown call on their cell phone. With a few minutes of free time, I encouraged them to answer it to see what happened. It was a local lawyer that had seen a public record of them being in a recent (very minor) car accident, and was pushing to hear of ailments (“are you sure your neck doesn’t hurt a tiny bit?“).
My friend should have used some very unkind words with this cold-calling ambulance chaser, but instead they just gave an overly polite “No thank you”. I’m all about defaulting to kindness, but people who push spammy interruptions deserve no kindness for their acts.
In a recent episode of his “Akimbo” podcast, Seth Godin shared this excellent sentiment:
“And you will go back to business as usual because the ratchet of capitalism is inexorable. Over and over, it turns, usually in one direction, and it’s not the direction toward, I see you as a human, I treat you with respect and dignity, and you in return do the same for me. No, we’re in such a hurry to save a minute or save a dollar. We’re in such a hurry to click on that thing we want, even if we know that we are rewarding a marketer who is doing something we don’t approve of, that we keep doing it.”
Don’t reward marketers that do things that you don’t approve of. Really, any cold outreach is unacceptable and should be treated as such. Mark cold email as spam, disconnect from anyone that sends a cold DM on social media, and hang up on anyone that cold calls.
This stuff doesn’t scale, and both the small and large issues should be called out. If you think something might be spam, it almost certainly is and spammers don’t deserve to be treated nicely.
Seth has also said that “the people you most want to engage with don’t want to be hustled“, and that’s a perfect way to put it. There are great ways to market to your desired audience, but don’t hustle them — engage with them.
