Subscription Options

May 2, 2009

HEY FELLA!!

Hey, you - buy this, read this, its relevant to the message - HEY FELLA!!

If you were standing next to someone and did that they would turn away, move away or possibly even get aggressive. Yet there are thousands of people floating around online who seem to think that it is not only OK to do this, but that it is actually a good long term strategy.

Every now and then someone will join the group on LinkedIn that I run and almost immediately they are at it with  some way of promoting their products, services, knowledge, newsletter and so on.

Or someone will post to the blog, not even reference the issues that I posted on, and tout their newsletter, website or

It really annoys me... really!!

"Accept all invites..." - because thats what I'm really here for, not to interact with you and form a commercial relationship. No way! Just to get to more people through you.

"Join our new group on..." - because this group of nearly 3,000 people is just not good enough!

"Buy my stuff...", "Send me an email...", "Read my newsletter...", "read my blog..." HEY FELLA!!

Whats the underlying message here? "I'm not here for you, or anybody else. I have no intention of contributing value here. What I am really here for is me! My prosperity, my profits, my success... and I want to do it very quickly through you and your contacts!"

Trust is what drives sustainable success. trust in a persons character and abilities...and this is no way to begin a trust based relationship. At all, ever.

If you want to get someones trust then try interacting with them instead of interrupting them. try developing a line of communication with them before trying to sell them on anything at all. And try to be sincere and authentic.

Nobody cares about you, everyone cares about "me". And if you don't care about "me" then I could not care less about you...

The more you shout at people the more they look away or walk away. One of the things that Google was very good at doing in the early days was getting around web page spam.

One of the things that LinkedIn has become very good at is getting around anonymous spam.

Why are these things important? people want them of course...

So keep going, keep interrupting, and keep pushing you over them. Sustainable business success isn't for everyone...