Pitch, Please!

You may have already experienced this. Several times. It begins with the connection request from a leadership coach, management consultant, or strategist. She notes that you have contacts in common, compliments you on something, and claims to be sending a request because she is curious about your business services and availability. You click to accept and another message arrives faster than you can say “cut and paste” with a description of a totally unrelated product or service, image and link. There’s even a cheeky call to action, asking if you’d care to jump on a sales call shortly.

Congratulations.

You’ve Been Pitch-Slapped!

Yes, it’s really a thing. And the “management consultants” behind them either believe or have convinced their clients that there’s a good chance that you’re going to whip out your credit card and bulk-buy whatever it is they’re peddling.

Because we all buy when we’re this annoyed, right? But these companies can spam at such a high volume that they’re likely to make at least one sale using this deceptive practice.

It’s ineffective because it’s so annoying. And get enough of them and you get a little agitated. One more, and you see red. I’ve had three this week. I should probably be journaling about now, but this feels both therapeutic and vengeful. It’s infuriating that anyone thinks that tactic this thoughtless, lazy and dishonest is worth trying out.

Can marketing (and no offence to marketers) achieve anything here?

Is this pitch relevant to my needs and interests?

Has anyone at this company done any research to understand their business and challenges?

Is this the most appropriate time and channel to reach out?

Pitch slapping is already somewhat a relic. The contemporary update of the business mixers that were popular a generation ago would charge salespeople for weak cocktails and an hour to circulate around a motel ballroom and distribute stacks of business cards to every other salesperson in the room. Quality over quantity is always the smarter option, Anahis. Quality over quantity.

My third recent pitch-slap arrived while I was copyediting this document. I was curious that this could all be somehow automated, so I replied with images of my correspondence with Anahis, and a link and page defining the pitch-slap.

The advisor replied with “You stupid.”

Frankly, I’d had enough. I replied with, “You pitchy!”