Ellen Patnaude

Ellen E. Patnaude has been coaching, training, and developing people to achieve higher levels of success in a professional capacity since 1997.

Do You Spray and Pray?

Do you spray and pray? I’m specifically asking about your habits when it comes to making new connections. What did you think I meant? (*giggles like a juvenile under her breath*)

I continue to be astonished by the number of people (companies? Bots?) operating with the spray and pray model. Their messages land in my email and in my DMs on social media on the regular. Here’s a typical example, recently received:

“Hi Ellen, I am with a pay-per-performance marketing company. I came across LeadQuine and am pretty confident we can bring more business your way. Over the past 4 years, we have put 1000’s of people into events & generated more than 30,000 leads for coaches, consultants & service-based businesses busy serving their clients. We know we can help your company grow.”

There are three things that bother me about this approach.

It’s assumptive as hell. What have you learned about my business (or me) that makes you think you can bring more business my way? What makes you think I want/need help? How do you know I want to grow?
It’s arrogant. The sender went from “pretty confident we can bring more business your way” to “we know we can help your company grow” in the span of two sentences.
It closes the door on truly connecting. Most relevant to this post, it is the epidemy of the spray and pray approach. The sender likely sends out the max limit of messages per day they can get away with without triggering a spam alert (spraying). They are so busy spraying that they have no time or energy to spend on inviting real conversations. They hope (pray) that their thousands of messages will yield one or two clients.

Yuck.

Bottom line?

Don’t do this. Pick a much shorter list of people you truly think could be your ideal client. Read their content. Look at their website or business page. Demonstrate curiosity. Ask questions. Invite conversation. Not only will it help you stop offending people (me), but you just might have some real conversations. Those lead to connections which lead to business. Stop spraying and praying. Just reach out and connect.