It amuses me when people on LinkedIn complain about folk asking to connect and then ‘selling’ to them straight away. I always find myself thinking – what do you want us to do, send flowers? Do you want to be wooed, appreciated as a person, sent little messages and compliments, or us responding to your posts with comments like “very insightful” or “how true”?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand personal taste and I 100% accept that what irritates one person is like water off a duck’s back another. For instance, I still find it hard to believe that people are so tolerant of the music of Bruce Springsteen, man-buns, Charlie Chaplin, beards, socks with sandals, Botox and any form of social media. But what is the big deal here!?
When you work in sales you are guaranteed only one thing, you will fail, and you will fail often. So, anyone with their own business or working in a sales role is resigned to this fact. Some people can bear this without a second thought, and some take each rejection like a punch to the solar plexus. Something we all agree on though, is that there is one thing worse than a rejection, and that is being ignored. So, whether our enquiry is via the phone, LinkedIn, SMS, direct mail or door-stepping we all relish those two wonderful words, “no thanks”. Why?
- It’s polite
- It lets us know where we stand
- It allows us to move on
- It acknowledges our existence
The other thing that I notice is that, almost without exception, the people complaining about these horrendous encroachments on their time, work for companies with their own sales operations that are diligently trying to prospect, build pipelines and generate interest for the products and services that pay everybody’s wages!
Forgive us, let us down gently, move on….. portfoliobusinesscreativeagency
