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?

  • titopapi@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I did three things to cut down some spam :

    1. got rid of the Founder/CEO label on LinkedIn. Can use a title like “cat herder” or “bean counter” if your industry tolerates a more cheeky approach.

    2. I got a Google Voice number for all the social media and platform profiles. You can still put the actual phone number in your email signature, etc. people in your contacts will display as such if they call the Google Voice number. I think unknown numbers can route to a voicemail box.

    3. I changed my first name on LinkedIn to an emoji character and put my full name in the last name field . When a sales team buys a contact list or uses an automation tool I get filtered out because the emoji breaks the script or I get an email that starts with “Greetings [emoji]” and those are also easier to filter out on my end.

    Hopefully these ideas are applicable to others as well!

    • just2quixotic@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I changed my first name on LinkedIn to an emoji character and put my full name in the last name field . When a sales team buys a contact list or uses an automation tool I get filtered out because the emoji breaks the script or I get an email that starts with “Greetings [emoji]” and those are also easier to filter out on my end.

      Oh thank you! I am so going to steal that idea. That’s beautiful.

      As for

      use a title like “cat herder”

      Not only do I use a self deprecating title, I tend to elevate my people’s titles. In a bakery I have, I make some of them things like “X Company VP of West Coast Foods Production”

    • Ham-saus@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Can I ask, why do you even put your phone number on public social media profiles, etc?

      I’m not a CEO and even I don’t do that due to spam calls and I’m not a coveted spam target

      • conor04045161@alien.topOPBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        your numbers are everywhere in data enrichment companies! i can even get your familys phone numbers on this and try to ask them to connect to you.

        • Ham-saus@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          I didn’t ask about where all they’re available, I’m aware of that. I was asking that particular person why they would voluntarily share their number on socials as they implied they used to, and changed it to a Google voice number.

      • titopapi@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I did not wish to make myself unreachable, just wanted to compartmentalize things so I can deal with them on my schedule. Similar to routing or label rules in an email inbox. I found it helps some with reducing distraction

    • conor04045161@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      good hack. but remember your email, phone numbers and even personal addresses are in zoominfo, apollo from where most of them extract data. So probably they have you listed as ceo from many data sources, linkedin will be just one feeding point for them