It always pays to do a little bit of research before reaching out to a potential client.
Last Friday I received a very unusual email in my spam folder:
I get a lot of people soliciting services, usually people offering SEO optimization or asking to write content for the site (see my article “A Serious Look at Marriage and Family Counseling“). I’ll usually just skip over them and pay them no mind.
But Gary’s email stood out to me because, well, why the hell was he asking me if I offered catering services? I’ve gotten some strange solicitations before, but this was by far one of the strangest.
After doing some research, I discovered that Gary was the vice president of a service that basically serves as the middle man for people looking for catering services. He wasn’t running some kind of scam or anything, he had just picked an odd place to attempt to solicit his services. I mean really, the email address is “@angryjerk.net”.
In any case, I decided to have a little bit of fun with Gary:
I wanted to see how long it would take Gary to realize his mistake of trying to solicit his services to an internet publication that has absolutely nothing to do with catering or food service in general. I hoped that by signing my email with “CEO/Editor-in-chief” he’d at least think to take another look at the website.
My hopes were dashed when Gary replied almost instantly:
Okay, so obviously this guy hadn’t even bothered to read the website. Like, at all. I’m honestly not even sure how he found my email address to contact me. There’s no way he got it off of the website without seeing that we’re not a caterer.
I wanted to teach Gary a lesson, but I had other things going on at the moment and wasn’t sure how I was going to teach him that lesson. In an attempt to buy myself some time, I came up with some nonsense about having to run the decision by a board of investors:
There was no way in hell Gary would actually buy this bullshit, right? Surely there’s no way he’d believe that we have a board of investors?
Wrong, he took the bait without second thought:
Are. You. KIDDING ME?!
I was starting to think that maybe this guy wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards, and to be honest I was so busy working on other things (seriously readers, 2024 is gonna be lit) that I started to feel maybe it was best to just let this guy go.
I gave him the old “We’ll be in touch”, with no real intention of getting back to him:
In the meantime, I really hoped he’d take another moment to research the client he was attempting to solicit. You’d think he’d have at least taken a look at the website. Even one look would’ve been a dead giveaway that we’re not caterers.
I went about my day and my weekend, and had no further plans to email Gary.
That is, until this morning when I received another email from him:
You can’t be serious…
Gary hadn’t bothered to do one iota of research over the weekend. Researching potential clients before contacting them is Marketing 101.
Further, Gary had originally emailed me on Friday. It was now Tuesday and he was already sending out follow up emails, after telling me that this wasn’t time sensitive? Most clients might view this behavior as annoying. Gary should have waited a week before sending out the follow up email, not three business days.
At this point I was really tempted to just turn it into a game to see how long I could string Gary along before he got annoyed, but time spent doing that would be time not spent doing something productive. It was time to let Gary go:
Gary wasn’t amused by my story, and chewed me out for wasting his time:
As if it was my fault he didn’t bother to do any research before contacting me? Gary, the website is literally “angryjerk.net”, and I signed my emails with “CEO/Editor-in-chief”. Exactly what kind of caterer did you think you were contacting here? Do you even know what you’re doing, like, at all?
Never one to pass up a teachable moment, I decided to educate Gary on the finer points of marketing, namely make sure you’re marketing to the correct demographic:
This is why it’s important to not just scatter-shoot emails when trying to find new clients for whatever service you’re offering. Client research is one of the most basic yet important aspects of marketing, and someone running their own business should know that much. Otherwise you end up sending internet humor publications offers to get them catering clients in the pharmaceutical industry.
Now, as it happens, I actually DO have contacts in the catering industry who would have been the exact clientele that Gary was looking for. But I’m not going to give them Gary’s info, because if Gary can’t be bothered to learn basic marketing skills, then I can’t be bothered to help him obtain clients.
I also could have published Gary’s full name, phone number, and associated company, then let Google do its thing and expose his ineptitude to anyone searching him out. But I’m not going to do that either, because, as inept as Gary is, he doesn’t deserve to have his livelihood ruined over a mistake.
Gary, if you’re reading this I hope I’ve provided you with a valuable learning experience in the importance of client research. Next time look at who you’re emailing before you email them.
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