4 ms·

> Common courtesy would go a long way. I don't believe this applies to salesmen, though. They're trained to exploit all holes related to human decency and cour

> Common courtesy would go a long way. I don't believe this applies to salesmen, though. They're trained to exploit all holes related to human decency and courtesy. They expect a polite person will not reject an invitation (to a meeting they absolutely don't need and which serves only one party) and so on.

hash872 5y ago
1. It's a bit different if it's a 'customer success' type person from a product that you're already using- that's different from totally cold outreach 2. You're free to just ignore them, especially over electronic communication. (Silently mark it as spam if you're really annoyed). I teach my kids that the adult way to respond to this kind of pushiness over something like email is to simply ignore them. Responding back with rudeness is juvenile, this is like day 1 of Being A Professional 101 kind of stuff. 'No thanks' and/or then ignoring them puts you in control of the situation, it's ultimately the high road
- vasco 5y ago
  > 1. It's a bit different if it's a 'customer success' type person from a product that you're already using- that's different from totally cold outreach It's really not, but I agree completely with your second point. I've managed interactions with vendors for only ~5 years and this is for a small startup, with not a lot of them, and still over 5 years they switch up your account managers left and right (people keep moving companies) and you never know what you're going to get. And each of them thinks your whole job is to just wait for their random emails to have calls without agendas scheduled where they'll go over whatever playbook they were given to see if you'll commit some more spend this quarter before their earnings. I tend to reply after only several days and try to not get baited into looking an asshole like this Evan person did - but sometimes it's hard. I can imagine this person gets way more email than I do and my advice would be to just not reply if what you're going to write is to "teach them a lesson". There's no point in telling someone they lied to you in a sales email, get over yourself.
jacobr1 5y ago
Salespeople are people too. They deserve some courtesy until they step over a line. I will always try to be polite on my first reply, if the salesperson actually wrote me something directly. If it was just a spammy mail merge blast, then I will ignore the bot. Even knowing they are using sales techniques, I try to not be a jerk. Even though I agree with the author of the original post, he comes off a low EQ.
- MaulingMonkey 5y ago
  "Some" courtesy, perhaps, but many first contacts are already over the line in their fundamental construction. Someone illegally robocalling my cell will earn my scorn immediately. As well as any idiot calling at 3AM in the region of my area code. When I'm called the very next day by a company I asked to put me on their do not call list, while I won't emotionally terrorize the fellow on the phone, it's worth pointing out in no uncertain terms that this is completely unacceptable, and exactly why. If someone scrapes my git logs for emails to give poorly targeted recruiter spam, I'm going to share my two cents about how exactly I feel about their half assed effort. > he comes off a low EQ. Low in empathy, maybe. Low in EQ? I disagree. High EQ doesn't make you a slave to false smiles and empty pleasantries, nor require you to engage in networking with anybody with a pulse. Not all relationships are positive, cooperative, and worth building and reenforcing, nor necessairly worth attempting to salvage in such a direction. The author's initial responses are a bit cold and testing - correctly suspecting low effort sales full of faux relatability without much actual common ground - while not being so negative as to prevent the possibility of correction should that suspicion be proven wrong instead of validated. Evan perhaps makes a minor mistake in not triaging, cutting off, and ghosting these sales pitches earlier - when it becomes clear it's not a relationship or conversation he'll value. This would likely be driven by curiosity, concern, a desire to give the benefit of the doubt, and/or empathy despite the cold demeanor - but that's not particularly a low EQ thing either. TL;DR: Sith lord EQ techniques are still EQ techniques.

hash872 5y ago

1. It's a bit different if it's a 'customer success' type person from a product that you're already using- that's different from totally cold outreach 2. You're free to just ignore them, especially over electronic communication. (Silently mark it as spam if you're really annoyed). I teach my kids that the adult way to respond to this kind of pushiness over something like email is to simply ignore them. Responding back with rudeness is juvenile, this is like day 1 of Being A Professional 101 kind of stuff. 'No thanks' and/or then ignoring them puts you in control of the situation, it's ultimately the high road

vasco 5y ago
> 1. It's a bit different if it's a 'customer success' type person from a product that you're already using- that's different from totally cold outreach It's really not, but I agree completely with your second point. I've managed interactions with vendors for only ~5 years and this is for a small startup, with not a lot of them, and still over 5 years they switch up your account managers left and right (people keep moving companies) and you never know what you're going to get. And each of them thinks your whole job is to just wait for their random emails to have calls without agendas scheduled where they'll go over whatever playbook they were given to see if you'll commit some more spend this quarter before their earnings. I tend to reply after only several days and try to not get baited into looking an asshole like this Evan person did - but sometimes it's hard. I can imagine this person gets way more email than I do and my advice would be to just not reply if what you're going to write is to "teach them a lesson". There's no point in telling someone they lied to you in a sales email, get over yourself.

jacobr1 5y ago

Salespeople are people too. They deserve some courtesy until they step over a line. I will always try to be polite on my first reply, if the salesperson actually wrote me something directly. If it was just a spammy mail merge blast, then I will ignore the bot. Even knowing they are using sales techniques, I try to not be a jerk. Even though I agree with the author of the original post, he comes off a low EQ.

MaulingMonkey 5y ago
"Some" courtesy, perhaps, but many first contacts are already over the line in their fundamental construction. Someone illegally robocalling my cell will earn my scorn immediately. As well as any idiot calling at 3AM in the region of my area code. When I'm called the very next day by a company I asked to put me on their do not call list, while I won't emotionally terrorize the fellow on the phone, it's worth pointing out in no uncertain terms that this is completely unacceptable, and exactly why. If someone scrapes my git logs for emails to give poorly targeted recruiter spam, I'm going to share my two cents about how exactly I feel about their half assed effort. > he comes off a low EQ. Low in empathy, maybe. Low in EQ? I disagree. High EQ doesn't make you a slave to false smiles and empty pleasantries, nor require you to engage in networking with anybody with a pulse. Not all relationships are positive, cooperative, and worth building and reenforcing, nor necessairly worth attempting to salvage in such a direction. The author's initial responses are a bit cold and testing - correctly suspecting low effort sales full of faux relatability without much actual common ground - while not being so negative as to prevent the possibility of correction should that suspicion be proven wrong instead of validated. Evan perhaps makes a minor mistake in not triaging, cutting off, and ghosting these sales pitches earlier - when it becomes clear it's not a relationship or conversation he'll value. This would likely be driven by curiosity, concern, a desire to give the benefit of the doubt, and/or empathy despite the cold demeanor - but that's not particularly a low EQ thing either. TL;DR: Sith lord EQ techniques are still EQ techniques.