You Don’t Know Me. Can I Get 30 mins?

Lincoln Murphy

Have you ever received an email that, maybe not in so many words, says “You Don’t Know Me. Can I Get 30 mins?”

Out of the blue, you get an email from a salesperson, biz dev hustler, or startup founder you’ve never met or even heard of with a simple request for a large chunk of your time to listen to them talk about their product?

It’s when you get that email from someone you don’t know, that’s all about them, what they want, what they want you to do for them, asking for a “quick” 30-minute meeting, or to “jump on a call” so they can pitch their product that you swear off email for good. You’re done.

But then you need customers, investors, publicity, etc. and you end up sending an email just like that!

Don’t worry, you’re not alone; both in sending that type of email and receiving them.

The knee-jerk reaction is to say “no one wants more email in their inbox” but that’s just not true.

What they really mean is “no one wants more AWFUL, SELFISH, and just plain RUDE email in their inbox.”

I’ll prove it.

Do you want more payment notification emails in your inbox? Obviously, yes.

Do I want more Clarity call request emails in my inbox. Yes, Please.

Would you want more “support ticket closed,” subscription or sign-up notifications, or other emails that make you happy? Yes. Yes. A thousand-times yes!

So clearly it’s not more email that we don’t want… we just don’t want stupid emails from people that clearly don’t “get it” cluttering up our inbox.

So when you send cold outreach emails to prospective customers, partners, employees, investors, etc. – and at some point you will – run these 7 Sanity Checks on the email before you send it.

In that article I talk about why sending email to prospective customers is very likely what you’ll need to do – especially when you’re a new startup no one knows about yet, if you’re working in a new product category, or if you’re otherwise operating where “inbound” marketing just isn’t going to work – and how to make sure your email starts a conversation and doesn’t end up in the trash.

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