Thank You, No

It’s easier than ever to automate outreach and follow-up. With a few button pushes, people can reach out to hundreds or thousands and then automate the stream of follow-ups. Don’t get me wrong, these tools are amazing but they are used indiscriminately in a spray-and-pray approach.

Inbox Pollution

We are barraged with messages on every platform, our email and even our text messages. It’s a growing thing as the platforms that enable this become more commoditized and less expensive. And the folks reaching out often don’t know who you are or if there is a need for their product or service.

We believe outreach should be an exchange of value not a cold ask. We believe in offering a resource or information when reaching out to a new contact. But that’s a topic for another time. The question here is how to respond to this inbox pollution?

Respond with Kindness

It’s tempting to scold people who pollute your inbox. But that spreads negativity. So we have devised a simple, quick way to respond with kindness. A quick but firm no is a great response. We wish people well. And we do this almost as quickly as the systems that automated the messages we received.