As a CEO of a small business, I am inundated with over a few dozen cold outreach attempts daily. This isn’t just my experience right?

My day often starts with a barrage of cold calls, many of which are from spammers. LinkedIn has become a hub for BDRs sending long-winded pitches, and my Gmail inboxes, both primary and office, are overflowing with sales-driven emails. It’s overwhelming and frankly, quite irritating.

I once experimented with gated com, which asked cold emailers to donate a few bucks to my chosen charity for a response. Sadly, very few took this step, showing a lack of seriousness. Downside of using app was that even my known contacts were getting these automated messages.

Now, I’m exploring several options to manage this situation better:
- Creating extensive filters in Gmail to automatically direct such emails to spam (especially using spam words like “book with me”, “just following up”, “wanted to reach out to you”, etc)

- Considering sanebox, which smartly categorizes emails and identifies cold outreach emails.

- Looking into marketplaces like fozzie io and leaderpro, where individuals would compensate for my time. I’m thinking of setting a rate, say $200 for a 30-minute slot, and directing all cold outreach to these platforms. So alteast these spammers pay for my time at the very least and i could then take them serious (b2b meetings are $1000 upwards, so why not i get my share lol)

- Still left with cold calls and linkedin though

Thoughts or strategies on managing this menace?

  • felinePAC@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I get so many of these and am shocked at how some will get increasingly aggressive. “I guess you don’t want to double your sales metrics and be overflowing with clients, do you?”

    I already wasn’t interested and now I’m REALLY not interested.

    • Jdornigan@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I know a lot of small businesses that already have too many customers and don’t need more. They make enough money already, they lack the capital to expand, they lack the staff, or they don’t have the space the expand. If they did expand, it might be a million dollars, and the return on investment is too low so it would take a decade to just break even. They are actively raising prices to push some customers away permanently or temporarily already. I know it seems crazy to not want to make more money, but it takes more money to make more money. They no longer do promotions or discounts as it isn’t necessary anymore.

      The aggressive sales techniques are just horrible. They might work in their native country, but not where the buyer lives. I can only imagine them trying to sell this to US auto dealers, for the last few years they are busier than ever. Sales and service is always busy, and even independent repair shops have a 3-4 day waiting period before they even look at the car.