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?
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This has been really bothering me recently that I was also going to make a post on it.
Since starting with shopify it’s like my name is leaked. It’s like someone is selling the same klaviyo sales script course.
I have a team that are strict with call filtering but emails are relentless. The annoying this is you can’t just delete them as you’ll be on an automatic email follow up. I’ve resorted to just answering “no” and that at least
Need to up my filtering game though but it’s effort that I don’t have.
they selling shopify data on all fb groups lol
I get so many of these I don’t bother replying m. Straight to trash with all of it. I do t even check linked in anymore… it’s a spam machine these days.
We had a purchasing manager at our chemical company that was the first (open) office a salesperson would hit if they walked in to try to sell something unannounced. I used to cherish the times when I’d catch him just tearing a sales guy a new booty-hole. It was amazing, especially when he’d give them enough rope to hang themselves by admitting they had no idea what we made or purchased even though they were certain they could get it better and cheaper.
I don’t even try to use LinkedIn anymore. I linked with pretty much everyone I know in the first two years and for years now it’s just been people trying to get a meeting with me to sell me some service. I’ve ultimately given up on that platform and ignore it. The people I know know how to get a hold of me.
When I had a small business i considered cold calls a small piece to pay. The rude, no class callers were gone in seconds. You start to politely say no & …"click. Sometimes the inbound cold call provides value.
You guys answer the phone?
How do you buy b2b services? There will eventually be a need to talk to a consultant of some kind if you want to know more about something.
I agree that outreach has become more aggressive in order to compete for a prospects attention.
mostly referrals 60% of the times. sometimes through cold outreach but when they respected me time, were personalized, and sent me gifts like 100 dollar amazon cards, invited me for lunch, etc. (basically respect my time and dont do what 99% spammers doing)
thank you for the feedback. im in b2b sales and find it hard to get facetime (or phone time) to business owners that have reached out for additional information.
The life lesson here is to keep your contact info private and have a dump # / email for everything.
And for the love of god stay off social media for anything that isnt mission critical.
The model is changing, thankfully - or at least those who understand prospect sentiments like those OP shared do. More are focusing on strong self-service experiences and investing in organic discovery channels (e.g. if OP was ever curious about expense management automation and Google’d it.)
So I’m a commercial real estate broker and 80% of my business is from cold calls. I punch in every digit of the person’s number and I’ve spent at least a few minutes reviewing their portfolio before calling and have data and pictures of their properties on my screen when they answer their phone. If someone answers the call I don’t immediately plunge into a monologue about who I am what I do blah blah blah.
So, that being said, what do you think would convince YOU that a caller could actually provide value to you? What, if anything, would make you consider working with this salesperson?
Edit: love the idea of paying to earn your time.
For me trying to “build rapport” is a big no. If you are aware that I am looking for a realtor, go straight to the point. Do you already have found one? Yes / No. Move on.
man, if you are using auto dialer and dialing like wolf street, i would loathe the second i hear you on call. That being said, if you were to invite me for lunch, or send me gifts/gift cards or even pay for my time or to my fav charity, i do feel more obligated to get back to you. by the way, seeing this strategy by big companies now, paying for your time. seen some friends doing it on fozzie io, leaderpro and pitchfire
As a salesperson, for a highly lucrative prospect I’m not opposed to the idea of fees to book a C suite meeting…. But it seems like you’re more concerned with flattery and gifts. I’m all for spam filters as well, but even if every sales person sent you a gift card after they sent you an email if you don’t see any value or reason to learn more about our service…. You still won’t book the meeting. I focus specifically on SMB and I know owners are exhausted but as soon as they see I know a little bit about them they at least hear me out. But appreciate your post and I can see how exhausting it could be.
Hey! I was wondering if you’d be interested in leads for “place your industry here”. We can fill up your calendar with many meetings, is that something you’d be interested in? Want to hear more? Any opinions? Concerns? Questions?
This shit will be the death of me
Not sure anybody mentioned this, install TrueCaller. It works for me, cut down a lot of cold calls
worked great in Mexico and India, not so in US
Been there, and now on the other side (not cold email anymore) and I’d say I actually got some great services that I used till I sold my business off of cold emails.
There is a lot of weeding to do, but there’s some gems in there.
Hot tip, don’t call yourself the CEO on LinkedIn lol