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?
YMMV but I’ve cut out most of them because I am a small word of mouth type business and I like it that way.
When they ask what my marketing budget is, I tell them (honestly) zero.
They’ll try to pitch SEO, etc. I have a website, it’s fine. Im covered up in work and don’t really want anymore thanks but no thanks.
That has seemed to cut my calls to maybe one a month now, if that. Apparently (I hope) I’m on a “there’s no money there” list. Fine by me.