This morning, I was greeted with a couple of things. One is the norm, I get inundated with mindless prospecting emails every day. Usually a couple of dozen make it through my spam filters, There are dozens in the spam buckets. I scroll through those quickly, spamming each of those. But I know tomorrow, dozens more will find their way into my inbox.
Then I saw a post in LinkedIn, it highlighted some data (let’s assume it’s true). It suggests there are close to 360 Billion emails sent every day! Doing some quick search, I find there are 4-5 billion email users in the world. This means each of those users get 72-90 emails every day! (Making me wonder why am I receiving so many more than that!) While that data point was disturbing, the discussion around that was even more inane. It centered around tricks/techniques to do more, to try to standout in all the garbage. There were the inevitable comments about AI enabling people to extend their outreach.
The voice in my head was screaming, “Stop The Insanity!!!!!” But I realized people simply don’t care. Rather than trying to figure out ways to engage customers and prospects more meaningfully, too many keep doing the things that have never worked at ever increasing volumes, with ever decreasing results. And you know what happens with that–the universal answer is, more, faster!
I chose one of the emails I received this morning. I chose it not because it was the worst, it is simply representative of the crap people thoughtlessly send. Stated differently, all of these messages are horrible and do more damage to the senders’ brands than they generate business. And this was no different.
Let’s look at it, dissecting it is so easy!
The problems with this email, as with every other email that made it through my spam filters are obvious! It’s all about them, their products/services. The writer is asking for a discovery call, but the text has nothing to do with discovery, it’s telling them what they can do for me and why I should buy—all without any consideration about whether I even care.
And worse, since they are a lead gen/prospecting services organization, I can take this as an example of the stunning job they do in these outreaches, and how I can expect them to represent my organization.
There is simply nothing right about this outreach. And it’s no different than the others that are no longer in my inbox and will be no different than the dozens more I will receive through the day.
And hopefully, you are reading this, thinking, “Ho hum, Dave, tell me something new…….” And that’s the point. We’ve known, for decades, these approaches are meaningless, they are a waste of the seller’s time, they are a waste of the recipient’s time, they destroy the brand of the sender. I suspect the one or two responses they might get from every thousand they send must make them ecstatic.
The thousands of posts, the hundreds of books, the podcasts, that say this just doesn’t work, have no impact. The research and data showing plunging opens/responses, reinforce this. The endless posts, hints/tips/tricks about how to produce more mindless emails reinforce this even further.
The only conclusion I can draw is people simply don’t care! They are mindlessly going through the motions, without regard for the results they get. They know they can eke out the responses they need, simply by ramping up the volume and velocity. And this is how we get 360 Billion emails a day and next year we can expect even more billions!
Maybe, I’m way off base and wrong. I tend to look for new highs in performance. I constantly look at how we can get better. I look at Simone Biles’ performance in the recent world championships. Despite being the best, despite years of absence in competitions, she keeps raising the bar on her own performance. She’s driven to be better. And through her work, she drives other top performers to be better.
That’s universal with all top performers. They are never satisfied with what they’ve done today, tomorrow they want to do better.
But that mindset is so rare! It seems we are in a world where people are satisfied with going through the motions and simply don’t care.
What a tragedy! What lost opportunities!
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