20 Not To Dos of Spam! What’s your favorite?

Do you think spammers like getting spam? If a spammer spams you in the forest, does it make a sound? If a husband says something in the forest, is he still wrong… I need to stop rambling and get to the point.  For the last several months, I’ve been responding to Spam requests via email or SpamedIn… wait, I mean LinkedIn, with the following message.

“Sounds like a great Idea, let’s talk. My rates are $400 per hour, 1-hour minimum, paid up front. As soon as you Venmo me the money, I’ll send you a scheduling link.”

Usually, I never hear back from them. Twice people responded, offended that I wanted to charge them to speak with me. I only wanted to help them, coach them, and like these Spammers, I don’t give away my product, which is my time, for free. If they ever did take me up on the offer, here’s what I’d coach them on, and here, such a deal… is free advice, worth every penny.

1. Don’t start by telling me your name… I don’t care about your name until I care about what you can do for me.
2. Don’t try and tell me why I should care about what you can do for me because if I cared about or needed what you offer, I’d be looking for it already, and I know people who know people, I know how to google, and I know I don’t need to do business with people who annoy me and don’t understand how to get my attention.
3. Don’t tell me you are “the perfect solution.” I kind of think that I am a better judge of the “perfect solution,” for me.
4. Don’t tell me you’ll attract clients the same way; you got me to mark your email as SPAM.
5. Don’t ask me if  I got your first email that I marked as SPAM. You ain’t, as you stated, “nudging your spam to the top of my inbox,” you’re nudging it up to the top of my spam box.
6. Don’t ask me to pay you to get on podcasts that take my valuable time and produce nothing of value for me.
7. Don’t say, “Nobody wants to be sold like this, but” and then try and sell me like that. Why you trying to do me like that, dude?
8. Don’t ask me if I’m ready to drop a dress size… I’m perfectly happy with my current dress size; thank you very much (an actual quote from one of my spam messages)!
9. Don’t ask me if I want a whole body deodorant; just tell me I stink!
10. Don’t tell me that I look like I might be doing great in business, and then ask me if I want to do great in another business you’re selling that I’m not interested in buying because, as you said, I’m doing just fine without you.
11. Don’t tell me that most companies need an outsourced payroll, benefits, IT dept, etc., when I’m obviously not like most companies with more than one employee. I’m more like most companies that have one employee… me.
12. Don’t tell me that I’m perfect, and you don’t want to change me and then offer to change me.
13. Don’t try to sucker me by offering me a seat on your advisory board round table and then asking me to pay for it. If I wanted to give people money… I’d have kids… wait a minute I do have kids.
14. Don’t ramble on for more than one sentence without letting me know what’s in it for me.
15. Don’t tell me that you do business with companies like VMware, Cisco, and IBM and then expect that to relate to me, who has nothing in common with VMware, Cisco, and IBM.
16. Don’t tell me that you came across my profile and then demonstrate you know nothing that is in my profile.
17. Don’t tell me that what I don’t know might hurt me because I already know that and your email is the only thing that hurts me. Did you know that?
18. Don’t ask me if I’m looking for corporate training for my current employees… ask me if I’m looking for training for my corporate employee (singular as in me).
19. Don’t spend one paragraph about your resume and another paragraph about your company before I delete and mark your email as spam, before getting to the point you might have been trying to make, which I never got to.
20. Don’t press send… just don’t.

And as usual, Mrs. Positvity Wifey says, “Hey Glen, how about some dos to go with the don’ts? Okay, honey, here ya go!

1. Make me care in the first sentence.
2. Make me laugh. I still will mark your note as spam, but I won’t hate you as much.
3. Actually, read my profile or something that I actually wrote, reference it, and let me know that this was not a mass email sent to 10 million “Johns.”
4. Find someone with whom we are connected and get them to forward the message to me. Get a warm introduction.
5. Try some other opt-in, unintrusive customer acquisition method, like:
   1. perform such a good service that your clients bring clients to you.
   2. advertising
   3. social media
   4. networking
   5. earning high ratings on a review site
   6. learning how to sell.

Or maybe you could use a coach. Try a complimentary coaching call; I won’t be willing to give you anything except a demonstration of the value of coaching. I warn you; if you try and sell me something during the call, you have implicitly agreed to pay $400 for my service, and I will charge you. I’ll disconnect the call, send you an invoice and “out” you on social media.

Want to improve your odds of success as a leader? Want to get more than you thought possible out of your team? You can check out my new book, Intentional Leadership, available on Amazon, in Hardcover, Kindle, or Paperback by linking here.