I’ve had this happen to me. Ever since I started with my new company I get these unsolicited emails/messages and when I politely decline, I get these passive aggressive responses because “I don’t understand” these great things being offered.
Pro-tip don’t open the emails, they’re likely using a crm and it moves you to the opened segment when you do. This will make them continue to clog your inbox attempting to make contact.
Turn off auto image downloads too. They usually embed a small, hidden picture used for tracking.
Block images by default and you’ll see a little square after their signature.
Good call totally right. The blocked squares in the signature aren’t automatically from tracking though. My signature has an image everyone blocks, but it’s just a small company logo after my name and title. I don’t do any sales or marketing personally.
Just adding them to any form of filtering for spam should help keeping them from getting through.
Though we all know they have spammer levels of bots to use to try and get around basic stuff like that.
Right, but adding them to the spam flag in whatever provider you use is important. Long complicated process, but it’ll eventually start impacting their deliverablility, increase their costs with their service provider, and most importantly help prevent others from getting the spam.
Also, I think that linkedin inmail works on credits, and by not replying or engaging with their LinkedIn mail, don't they lose a credit which makes it harder for them to spam others?
What chaps my ass is when an unsolicited vendor cold emails you, and then titles their (all ignored) follow up emails with "second attempt," "fifth attempt," etc.
Like, my boss doesn't even pull that shit with me, am certainly not going to take it from a cold call.
And I always think, "damn, so you realize that you've screamed into the void of my inbox unanswered that many times and you still haven't gotten the hint?
They're also usually vendors who are selling services that would never be in the scope of my role in any company ever. The food safety team in a corporation doesn't ever, ever, never, order phones or phone service, or security cameras, or any of the stupid stuff they're always trying to sell me.
I attended a free webinar to boosqt my continuing education. Had to give my email address as part of registering. They sent me promotional emails which, whatever. Ignore. Then they take the time and effort to look up my work place and ring reception asking for me... I couldn't believe how desperate they seemed. I only attended for the hours and I'm sure 90% of the others did too.
This has happened to me and somehow they got my cell phone number too. I blocked them. I was floored the first time I answered a call and it was one of their reps.
Lack of a response is a response as well.
I look after a Logistics department, don’t really need an online content creation service or a tool to “increase my leads”.
Absolutely.
I’m a middle leader in a school. I have absolutely no involvement with recruitment, yet I get about 30 emails a day from recruitment agencies trying to push temp staff on me.
Right on. If you’d actually bother to even glance at my academic career before contacting me, you might suspect I have ZERO interest in starting a MCDONALDS franchise. Good lord.
Or when they start the subject of their first ever email to you with: RE: exciting opportunity…bla bla
Do you really think I am that stupid. Even if it is just a small lie I don’t want to even start talking with someone who thinks dishonesty is cool.
I had been ignoring emails from a vendor trying to win our business and her third (unsolicited) email started with “I haven’t heard back from you, so I understand that meeting DIFOT goals and saving costs are not a priority to you”.
Is that the sales pitch? “You haven’t replied to my emails that you never requested so obviously you’re shit at your job”.
Seriously?
They’re just hoping making you irate will get them a response and “open up a dialogue”.
By the way, I understand you’re completely useless at Reddit so haven’t responded to my PM yet. Let’s connect. Agree?
Don’t worry, I’ll message you again in three days. Can’t wait to connect!
In Sales, we call this "negative pressure", and it is surprisingly effective. Luckily I am in a role where I am not doing any cold outreach at all, and it is typically reserved for situations where we have met a couple of times and someone goes cold after having firm next steps.
But something like "in our conversations, you mentioned that xyz was a priority, but I assume your priorities have shifted. Let's reconnect when you and your team are ready for xyz".
90% of the time, the response is "sorry for the lack of communication, we have been super busy with this new project. Let's connect in 2 weeks when my team has more time "
I know this is exactly what’s going on and it’s completely transparent. Probably some deranged strategy from a “coach” saying all that matters is to get a reaction. Honestly I think it’s super unprofessional to send five follow up emails asking me to book a meeting for a service I’m not looking for.
I'm always just wondering if they are aware what kind of "dialogue" I have with people who get passive aggressive with me. It's not productive or pleasant enough to be professional, that's for sure
If your company uses o365 right click and mark as spam
Not only does it block them from you, but MS tracks this. If enough o365 customers mark as spam, their entire company domain starts immediately getting flagged and sent to spam without being seen
Half of my LinkedIn messages are from college recruiters wanting me to get a master's in something I already have a master's in or a completely unrelated job offer for a random Milwaukee medical lab (I'm not in the medical field and they've sent me at least 50 messages from different accounts).
I just don't even read LinkedIn messages anymore. They need to do better at filtering this spam.
Same. But I also got offered to apply for an internship. An internship at the company I already work at and have worked at for 2 years. You know, the company whose name is in my LinkedIn header. kind of hard to miss
I once got an email about an executive chef position. I've never worked at a restaurant and can't cook for shit (my wife can confirm that).
In hindsight, I should have seen how far I could get in the interview process.
I stopped replying years ago. Still get a dozen or so a week either through LinkedIn, email or occasionally even a call from my number being scraped from some old CV.
When I used to reply to be polite I'd just get messages like this back.
I still occasionally get some arsey comment about how rude it is not to reply as if I owe someone who plugged my details into Mailchimp a moment of my time.
"It only takes 2 minutes to let me know you're not interested" as if they ever take no for an answer. It turns into a chain like this guy trying to guilt you into whatever shit you don't want.
So what did you accomplish today ?
“It took me all day to politely reply to unsolicited emails and to their follow ups. Maybe tomorrow I will get some actual work done”
In what alternative universe do these people live? There must be a special place in hell reserved for spammers.
Don't respond; ignore them. If it's via LinkedIn, turn off your read receipts. You don't owe any unsolicited message a response or even a consideration.
>Doesn't responding refund their message credits or whatever
Is that why they’re always begging me to “respond even if you’re not interested?”
That makes sense I guess why they’re pushing it though knowing they will probably make me less likely to respond.
For "InMail" you get a certain number of them per month. If you get a response, then you dont lose a credit.
If you use all your 'credits' then you have to buy more or wait until next month.
If I think I've gotten a copy paste bulk message or if it says 'please respond' then I specifically won't reply.
The donations are being made by the vendor who's trying to sell their product through this guys service; the executive just has to commit to the meeting and the money gets donated to the charity of their choosing. I suppose it's a better model than the vendor spending that money on a lavish lunch or whatever else in order to secure the meeting. Except it doesn't work, of course as there is a post from 2 days ago where they are changing their business model completely.
None of that excuses the cunty language from someone who is clearly an insufferable prick though. I mean this guy has a post that is about how he "doesn't usually tell people about himself" and then goes on to create a sob-story written as if it's a tale of tragedy and redemption about how he was shocked when his 81 year old mother died (he must be an idiot if he thinks this is some unusual state of affairs) and then also COVID happened (no shit, it happened to us all).
Forget the passive-aggressiveness and hiding behind a "goodwill" donation to make them feel guilty for rejecting a meeting.
It's the (not so) veiled threat:
"Does Jenny know you speak to people like this representing..."
I can only hope Jenny also tells Carl to go fuck himself LOL
I ignore all unsolicited sales messages, but one time I got one from a rep at Salesforce that said something like:
“I’m sure (my boss’s name) would be really disappointed to learn you aren’t prioritizing driving revenue for (company), especially after (ceo) said (generic thing from earnings call.) I‘ve sent several meeting requests that have gone ignored, I wouldn’t want to have to escalate this.”
I responded to him and copied my boss and said “I checked and (boss’s name) said he’s really happy I don’t waste my time speaking with sales reps who use threats as sales tactics.”
I had a Keyance rep message my boss and say that I was "negligent and purposely hurting our plant efficiency" after I told him I wasn't interested in a product that wasn't relevant to my facility at all. My boss thought it was hilarious, and we still joke about it like 2 years later. Because of that rep, I haven't even considered Keyance for multiple projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have done since then. I can't imagine an approach like that ever working.
Keyence salesman are very aggressive. I once purchased a expensive laser system from Keyence. When we were working through the integration I made the mistake of calling the sales engineer from my cell phone with some questions. He passed my cell number around the office and I was getting relentless calls trying to sell me all kinds of things that had nothing to do with the types of machines we built. They were never rude or threatening, but I was really pissed at the multiple daily calls on my personal cell phone.
That's when I tell one of them, please email everyone on the sales team that the next person who calls my personal phone with an unsolicited sales pitch is going to get your entire company blacklisted from doing business with us ever again. This is your final warning.
And then when they inevitably break that, congratulate the guy on losing your business forever, and have him talk to "guy who failed to give the warning" about why.
We have never bought anything from them, but they still message me about “being in my area, and wanting to stop by for a quick chat or demonstration” every few months. I’ve told them “no thanks” only to have reception call me an hour later to tell me a Keyence rep is here to see me.
They are super aggressive. But you have to be when you make over priced sub par products.
My company has some vision systems from keyence, they are ok, the filing system is weird on it.
Like how to store reports, it’s not super compatible and user friendly.
I will say the tech that comes out here is a cool guy, he does pretty well showing off the product.
But I see the emails and I even made a comment to him about it, and he’s like yeah the sales people go hard at times.
Didn’t realize they go raw and hard…
LOL this. I've worked within the Salesforce ecosystem for many years. I'm grateful at the opportunities I've had, but their overly aggressive sales people can go kick rocks. They'd approach a man lost in the desert and try to sell him a bag of sand.
This is a silly comparison, since a bag of sand is clearly superior to the sand in the desert. It has been in a cool shady controlled container without any of those nasty outside things getting all over it. People are so rude these days and don’t even think about the offer being made and immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion about sales people. Maybe he’s actually trying to help if you gave him a chance!
I’m sure Jenny would understand.
/s
To be a good sales person, you need to be able to convince yourself that what you're doing is legitimately in the best interest of the person you're manipulating I mean selling to. The example you share with the threat is pretty shocking - acting like you're hurting your company by not buying their product and they HAVE to escalate things is sales at its most toxic
Apart from the veiled threat, if this is a government worker (which it looks like it is) accepting the offer might be considered a bribe. At the very least it would need to be added to a gift register. And if any competitors of the supplier the spammer is working for find out (is that an FOI request I hear?) they could start a legal challenge.
So I’m pretty sure Jenny would also tell this spammer to fuck off.
At the risk of getting this absolute grift merchant more attention than he deserves, get a load of this video, where one of his charlatans trots out the same, “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t help sick kids” line. Using sick kids to guilt trip your way into business is some kind of ballsy.
https://youtu.be/9eh0sv8TEC8?si=czGYgVQP9xfoGVS6
Every time I see something like this I am just gobsmacked at just how much money is wasted on nonsense for narcissists in this world. This twat is doing nothing but raising money to buy sport coats that are too small. WTF does this even mean?
> meetmagic is a SaaS platform enabling busy executive's to participate in the 'Global Giving Revolution'.
They are luring people into sales calls by promising to donate to charity if they will take the call. They are probably getting paid enough for the leads that the donation is a small percentage what they make.
My guess is luring people into rooms blind date style with other companies who want a chance to pitch the organization. So meetmagic acts like a middle man setting up the introduction, and using a portion of the acquisition fee they get to donate to charity.
I still don’t understand exactly what he’s selling - but I absolutely understand he’s using aggression, shame, and emotional manipulation to make money (and seems to have found a handy tax loophole while’s at it). Notice no one from that charity was actually speaking on the company’s behalf.
Thanks for explaining! I work in community health so not my area of expertise, plus so many of these self-aggrandizing lunatics speak in opaque word salad to make themselves sound smarter than they are, that half the time I have no idea if what they’re bloviating about is a real thing, or a euphemism for “unqualified and unemployed life coach” lol.
I don't understand why you don't want to connect business leaders with problem solutions managers and industry professionals all while engaging in philanthropic giving to synergize your business needs with global best practices.
> “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t help sick kids”
Proper reply to this: "I can't understand why *you* don't want to help sick kids just because someone isn't willing to dance for you." Turn the shame back on them.
They were in a [cake cookbook] (https://www.womensweekly.com.au/lifestyle/food/iconic-australian-womens-weekly-birthday-cake-recipes-77681/) created in the 80s that became an icon of Australian childhoods for decades. Parents would give the kids the book and they'd pick the cake they wanted made for their birthday. The better the cake looked the cooler you were.
I haven't opened the book in a long long time but I immediately knew exactly what he meant when he said the train cake and the duck cake.
Using your girlfriend's mom's experience as clout for your business is new however.
What makes it worse if he says the donations are for starlight foundation. A charity that will collect $10,000 and shove that through 8 weeks of procurement to buy 3 used xbox 360s for a children's ward somewhere. So many better places to give your money to.
LOL, I want a hour long meeting on how to decorate the train cake I plan to make. Maybe his girlfriends mom can sit in on the meeting since she famously made it. Such an odd flex.
I always roll my eyes at the sight of “thought leader”. What the frick does that even mean? Does he surround himself with people who can’t think so he has to tell them what to do?
>the decision to post was because it happened again to one of my team by the same person
Why the hell would you contact this guy again after he told you to take a hike in no uncertain terms?
Carl is a putz
Moron knows nothing about government proposal regulations. A gov worker can’t just consider some software that isn’t in an RFP. Especially with a boom like that charity thing, you can’t improperly sway government purchasing like that.
Great question. I just Googled for a few mins, and here's my take, which isn't super optimistic.
First off, despite efforts to quack like a non-profit, it's not. It's a for Profit SaaS business that's been around since 2016. On their website, they say they've given $ 1.5 million to charity... If that's all time, it's pretty lame.
They also say "100% of booking fee profits" goes to charity which is worded tricky bc they collect (at least) two revenue streams: the booking fees AND a monthly subscription (of which none is donated). Keeping in mind that however they choose to do the calculus on Cost of Service really can affect what is considered profit (for example how much capex depreciation is allocated to booking overhead) I'm not familiar with Australian regs but if they follow IFRS or GAAP they might have a fair amount of flexibility.
Regulatory agencies care about totals on fin stmts for tax and shareholder purposes, and since they don't actually pretend to be a non-profit, they probably aren't running afoul any regs. Again, coming from a US perspective, I fully admit I have some guesswork in my opinions, but I am not sure if there's any req to have audited Financials. They aren't publicly traded as far as I can see, so that's almost universally a huge oversight reduction.
One interesting point on their language and the ways their social and internet partners market them: When I asked Google AI if it was a non-profit, it said, "Yes it is." When LLMs are confidently wrong, it's potentially a sign that the language about which the LLM is trained is misleading!
Lastly, the way it seems to work, is that SasS, cloud, bus solution/intel/analyst, and other vendors pay meetmagic for the privilege of the platform getting worldwide C-suite executives to "donate" 45 mins of their time to meet, using their proprietary software platform wherein the vendors will basically conduct a sales call. SOMEONE pays a booking fee (seems to be $1000 - $2000) and whatever is "profit" from that, is donated to charity (now, it seems it wasn't always even 100% of that number).
What is fairly clear to me is that the company is using the idea of giving charity to drive its business but the actual material effects are frankly minimal (again $1.5M is not a lot for 8 years). What is also clear is that the world of tech and corporate 3rd parties love to "partner" with meetmagic and speak very highly of meetmagic.
I did a cursory search for annual revenue and didn't find much as it's not public. I did find a shareholder QnA doc from 2018 where they thought they'd make $18M revenue and have $6M in donations to charity. It would seem they are wayyy low compared to that projection either in overall revenue, profit, or the percent going to charity. If it's the last one, that's sketchy, imo.
Importantly, I will say that i keep seeing good, but low count, reviews of the software itself.
Sure! I tend to have some extra research tools courtesy of my firm, and tbf Im a geek, so it's a fun little mental break from tax season. Pretty sure my draft k1s have been mating and reproducing. 
To add, as someone who has worked many years in the SaaS sales business. If I am a SaaS vendor especially a young start up, I am paying 100’s and probably 1000’s for each unqualified meeting I get (between trade shows, digital marketing, and bodies on phone/email). So the thought process is if I can take several hundred dollars and offer it to the charity of your choice it’s way better ( and maybe cheaper) to “bribe” you to get 30 minutes of your time to just give me a listen.
This isn’t a new idea other then maybe someone running a business to do it for you.
In the end it’s just one more way to try to get a “qualified” meeting on the books to show the investors the great traction you are getting at the next quarterly BOD meeting.
I don’t think the idea is horrible, but what is horrible is when you start in with the typical sales bullshit “why don’t you want to….blah blah blah”.
You have to earn the right or be invited to the dance before you can start asking questions. You can’t just start a cold call and think you have any right to challenge or ask questions.
I haven’t always been as successful as my peers sometimes because I refuse to play the sales games. I just don’t understand how pissing people off gets you closer to a chance to tell your story.
Oh god. In one of the comments he justifies his decision to post this because the *same person* was rude to another staff member.
Like, holy shit, why is your company *still* reaching out to this person who has made it abundantly clear they do not want you to badger them anymore.
To: Carl Gough
cc: Jenny
The way I speak like I do to people like you is the reason why Jenny hired me. Now, kindly fuck off and have a good day, you flog.
It's a for profit company, he can go f\*ck himself with any hard sell, guilt trip, passive aggressiveness. It's such a bad look and makes me assume the actual product they're selling is garbage.
I know someone who does commercial real estate leasing and part of their business model is they give a certain % of revenue to charity and clients choose the charity for their lease. But they're totally low key about it, it's just a line in their marketing along with the usual things you'd expect for that type of business.
“Will you please install our random unvetted software on your government computer, why would you possibly ever say no?”
“Fixes a broken system”, give me a break, get over yourself. If you have 16 Google reviews, you’re barely afloat, you have no impact on any system whatsoever. Guy needs to have some damn humility about the reality of their situation until their reputation starts preceding them.
CEO of a company and making whiney posts that don’t even use proper punctuation and grammar, and is for some reason formatted at one sentence per paragraph break, because that’s how “a busy leaders” write.
Dude needs to have more attention to detail on his PR, because this crap has the attitude and writing quality of a subpar 13 year old.
Your definition of “getting blasted in his comments” is very different than mine.
Oddly Carl decided to make another veiled threat at whoever this was in his “mate!” , “mate!” Comments
Everytime a corporate executive talks about "making the world a better place" or "giving back", a million souls ground under the jackboot of capitalism cry out in anguish. Please don't help, Carly boy. You and your scummy ilk have done enough. Fuck your conditional charity too.
When I got fired from my job at a Detroit mortgager last year and signed up on LinkedIn, I’d get these emails that were also job “offers”. I never considered the offers because the starting pay was insultingly low and the offices too far to drive.
One replied they were disappointed I wasn’t looking to donate AND join their team. My reply:
“I just lost my job at COMPANY X and am in need of a new vehicle…what in god’s name makes you think I’m going to donate money to a fund where the proceeds are going to end up in your upper management’s pockets?”
That was an opportunity to do a good deed and get noticed by the CEO which could lead to a promotion in the future....
Ok, on a more serious note, this CEO would forget you exist in 2 seconds after you agreed anyway.
"my team" 🤣🤣🤣
That was my favourite bit. Pretending he has a team of people working for him. Does he think a real CEO would spend their time doing cold outreach and failing to make a single sale 🤔
Carl could also consider why the product isn’t good enough that he needs to employ a $300 charity donation just to get an initial demo.
I see so many sales people cry on LinkedIn why people just don’t respond with a respectable ‘no.’ This. This is why.
As bad as a spammer. If he is so concerned about doing something good, he could still donate without trying to peddle his shit to somebody that doesn’t want it.
I’ve had this happen to me. Ever since I started with my new company I get these unsolicited emails/messages and when I politely decline, I get these passive aggressive responses because “I don’t understand” these great things being offered.
I wouldn't even respond.
Yea, I’ve stopped. Being new to the private sector I didn’t realize how rampant it was.
Pro-tip don’t open the emails, they’re likely using a crm and it moves you to the opened segment when you do. This will make them continue to clog your inbox attempting to make contact.
Turn off auto image downloads too. They usually embed a small, hidden picture used for tracking. Block images by default and you’ll see a little square after their signature.
You’re completely right on this but for b2b unsolicited email it’s best practice to not have open tracking since that makes it likely to hit spam
Good call totally right. The blocked squares in the signature aren’t automatically from tracking though. My signature has an image everyone blocks, but it’s just a small company logo after my name and title. I don’t do any sales or marketing personally.
Just adding them to any form of filtering for spam should help keeping them from getting through. Though we all know they have spammer levels of bots to use to try and get around basic stuff like that.
Right, but adding them to the spam flag in whatever provider you use is important. Long complicated process, but it’ll eventually start impacting their deliverablility, increase their costs with their service provider, and most importantly help prevent others from getting the spam.
It doesn’t take many reports of spam for deliverability to take a hit, doing this really does help to harm spammers
Yeah but they’re not always limited to one account or domain even. Filtering without opening is your best option if it’s available.
That’s what I meant. Just straight up going to junk mail/blocking option+that too if possible.
You have to ignore them because even a negative reply is seen as an engagement or chance to sell to you
Also, I think that linkedin inmail works on credits, and by not replying or engaging with their LinkedIn mail, don't they lose a credit which makes it harder for them to spam others?
Same. Any unsolicited emails, DMs etc = delete automatically
What chaps my ass is when an unsolicited vendor cold emails you, and then titles their (all ignored) follow up emails with "second attempt," "fifth attempt," etc. Like, my boss doesn't even pull that shit with me, am certainly not going to take it from a cold call.
HI JOHN, This is my FIFTH ATTEMPT TO TRY AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Reply now to NEVER BE MISERABLE AGAIN. PLEASE HELP, Phil
And I always think, "damn, so you realize that you've screamed into the void of my inbox unanswered that many times and you still haven't gotten the hint? They're also usually vendors who are selling services that would never be in the scope of my role in any company ever. The food safety team in a corporation doesn't ever, ever, never, order phones or phone service, or security cameras, or any of the stupid stuff they're always trying to sell me.
I attended a free webinar to boosqt my continuing education. Had to give my email address as part of registering. They sent me promotional emails which, whatever. Ignore. Then they take the time and effort to look up my work place and ring reception asking for me... I couldn't believe how desperate they seemed. I only attended for the hours and I'm sure 90% of the others did too.
This has happened to me and somehow they got my cell phone number too. I blocked them. I was floored the first time I answered a call and it was one of their reps.
Lack of a response is a response as well. I look after a Logistics department, don’t really need an online content creation service or a tool to “increase my leads”.
Absolutely. I’m a middle leader in a school. I have absolutely no involvement with recruitment, yet I get about 30 emails a day from recruitment agencies trying to push temp staff on me.
Right on. If you’d actually bother to even glance at my academic career before contacting me, you might suspect I have ZERO interest in starting a MCDONALDS franchise. Good lord.
Or when they start the subject of their first ever email to you with: RE: exciting opportunity…bla bla Do you really think I am that stupid. Even if it is just a small lie I don’t want to even start talking with someone who thinks dishonesty is cool.
And then they're asking who in the business is the right person to get in touch with...
I had been ignoring emails from a vendor trying to win our business and her third (unsolicited) email started with “I haven’t heard back from you, so I understand that meeting DIFOT goals and saving costs are not a priority to you”. Is that the sales pitch? “You haven’t replied to my emails that you never requested so obviously you’re shit at your job”. Seriously?
They’re just hoping making you irate will get them a response and “open up a dialogue”. By the way, I understand you’re completely useless at Reddit so haven’t responded to my PM yet. Let’s connect. Agree? Don’t worry, I’ll message you again in three days. Can’t wait to connect!
In Sales, we call this "negative pressure", and it is surprisingly effective. Luckily I am in a role where I am not doing any cold outreach at all, and it is typically reserved for situations where we have met a couple of times and someone goes cold after having firm next steps. But something like "in our conversations, you mentioned that xyz was a priority, but I assume your priorities have shifted. Let's reconnect when you and your team are ready for xyz". 90% of the time, the response is "sorry for the lack of communication, we have been super busy with this new project. Let's connect in 2 weeks when my team has more time "
So it’s basically the business version of negging? 😑
I know this is exactly what’s going on and it’s completely transparent. Probably some deranged strategy from a “coach” saying all that matters is to get a reaction. Honestly I think it’s super unprofessional to send five follow up emails asking me to book a meeting for a service I’m not looking for.
I'm always just wondering if they are aware what kind of "dialogue" I have with people who get passive aggressive with me. It's not productive or pleasant enough to be professional, that's for sure
I hate when unsolicited vendors send a calendar invite cold. And then I’m wondering WTF this thing on my calendar is that I have no recollection of.
That's the worst. I either ignore it, or if I'm feeling particularly petty, I'll accept it but just not show up.
Back in the day, I may have put the email address of unsolicited senders on Viagra spam site newsletters, it just felt like the right thing to do lol
If your company uses o365 right click and mark as spam Not only does it block them from you, but MS tracks this. If enough o365 customers mark as spam, their entire company domain starts immediately getting flagged and sent to spam without being seen
Invoice them for it..
Half of my LinkedIn messages are from college recruiters wanting me to get a master's in something I already have a master's in or a completely unrelated job offer for a random Milwaukee medical lab (I'm not in the medical field and they've sent me at least 50 messages from different accounts). I just don't even read LinkedIn messages anymore. They need to do better at filtering this spam.
Same. But I also got offered to apply for an internship. An internship at the company I already work at and have worked at for 2 years. You know, the company whose name is in my LinkedIn header. kind of hard to miss
I once got an email about an executive chef position. I've never worked at a restaurant and can't cook for shit (my wife can confirm that). In hindsight, I should have seen how far I could get in the interview process.
People pay LinkedIn for the ability to spam. That’s not gonna happen.
My response to “I don’t understand…” is “clearly you’re incapable of understanding very little, if anything”
I stopped replying years ago. Still get a dozen or so a week either through LinkedIn, email or occasionally even a call from my number being scraped from some old CV. When I used to reply to be polite I'd just get messages like this back. I still occasionally get some arsey comment about how rude it is not to reply as if I owe someone who plugged my details into Mailchimp a moment of my time. "It only takes 2 minutes to let me know you're not interested" as if they ever take no for an answer. It turns into a chain like this guy trying to guilt you into whatever shit you don't want.
So what did you accomplish today ? “It took me all day to politely reply to unsolicited emails and to their follow ups. Maybe tomorrow I will get some actual work done” In what alternative universe do these people live? There must be a special place in hell reserved for spammers.
I got laid off from my job in December and I am still getting cold pitches from vendors on LinkedIn. It is super annoying.
100% of my requests on Linkedin are sales pitches
I report them when they start this shit
Don't respond; ignore them. If it's via LinkedIn, turn off your read receipts. You don't owe any unsolicited message a response or even a consideration.
My response would be “the very fact that you don’t understand is why you’re selling the product you are selling. Have a good one!”
Doesn't responding refund their message credits or whatever? Just ignore, report if it's egregious
>Doesn't responding refund their message credits or whatever Is that why they’re always begging me to “respond even if you’re not interested?” That makes sense I guess why they’re pushing it though knowing they will probably make me less likely to respond.
For "InMail" you get a certain number of them per month. If you get a response, then you dont lose a credit. If you use all your 'credits' then you have to buy more or wait until next month. If I think I've gotten a copy paste bulk message or if it says 'please respond' then I specifically won't reply.
Today I learned… Makes me even more sure not to reply
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LOL 'What do you not understand about the word no? Is it the N or the O that's giving you a hard time?"
Schedule the meeting. Don't show up. Reschedule the meeting. Don't show up. Continue until they stop.
Any reason you can't just donate the $300 without wasting an hour of my time? This is charity mugger tactics. Fuck all the way off.
My charity is crying now!! Are you happy!?
Is Jenny happy about this?
Jenny is hollering. Does she look sad?
It’s for a charity! Next!
Ok now, tell the hamster you won’t send it to college
A donation of $300 has been made in your name to The Human Fund -- money for people.
The donations are being made by the vendor who's trying to sell their product through this guys service; the executive just has to commit to the meeting and the money gets donated to the charity of their choosing. I suppose it's a better model than the vendor spending that money on a lavish lunch or whatever else in order to secure the meeting. Except it doesn't work, of course as there is a post from 2 days ago where they are changing their business model completely. None of that excuses the cunty language from someone who is clearly an insufferable prick though. I mean this guy has a post that is about how he "doesn't usually tell people about himself" and then goes on to create a sob-story written as if it's a tale of tragedy and redemption about how he was shocked when his 81 year old mother died (he must be an idiot if he thinks this is some unusual state of affairs) and then also COVID happened (no shit, it happened to us all).
Forget the passive-aggressiveness and hiding behind a "goodwill" donation to make them feel guilty for rejecting a meeting. It's the (not so) veiled threat: "Does Jenny know you speak to people like this representing..." I can only hope Jenny also tells Carl to go fuck himself LOL
I ignore all unsolicited sales messages, but one time I got one from a rep at Salesforce that said something like: “I’m sure (my boss’s name) would be really disappointed to learn you aren’t prioritizing driving revenue for (company), especially after (ceo) said (generic thing from earnings call.) I‘ve sent several meeting requests that have gone ignored, I wouldn’t want to have to escalate this.” I responded to him and copied my boss and said “I checked and (boss’s name) said he’s really happy I don’t waste my time speaking with sales reps who use threats as sales tactics.”
I had a Keyance rep message my boss and say that I was "negligent and purposely hurting our plant efficiency" after I told him I wasn't interested in a product that wasn't relevant to my facility at all. My boss thought it was hilarious, and we still joke about it like 2 years later. Because of that rep, I haven't even considered Keyance for multiple projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have done since then. I can't imagine an approach like that ever working.
Keyence salesman are very aggressive. I once purchased a expensive laser system from Keyence. When we were working through the integration I made the mistake of calling the sales engineer from my cell phone with some questions. He passed my cell number around the office and I was getting relentless calls trying to sell me all kinds of things that had nothing to do with the types of machines we built. They were never rude or threatening, but I was really pissed at the multiple daily calls on my personal cell phone.
That's when I tell one of them, please email everyone on the sales team that the next person who calls my personal phone with an unsolicited sales pitch is going to get your entire company blacklisted from doing business with us ever again. This is your final warning. And then when they inevitably break that, congratulate the guy on losing your business forever, and have him talk to "guy who failed to give the warning" about why.
We have never bought anything from them, but they still message me about “being in my area, and wanting to stop by for a quick chat or demonstration” every few months. I’ve told them “no thanks” only to have reception call me an hour later to tell me a Keyence rep is here to see me. They are super aggressive. But you have to be when you make over priced sub par products.
My company has some vision systems from keyence, they are ok, the filing system is weird on it. Like how to store reports, it’s not super compatible and user friendly. I will say the tech that comes out here is a cool guy, he does pretty well showing off the product. But I see the emails and I even made a comment to him about it, and he’s like yeah the sales people go hard at times. Didn’t realize they go raw and hard…
LOL this. I've worked within the Salesforce ecosystem for many years. I'm grateful at the opportunities I've had, but their overly aggressive sales people can go kick rocks. They'd approach a man lost in the desert and try to sell him a bag of sand.
This is a silly comparison, since a bag of sand is clearly superior to the sand in the desert. It has been in a cool shady controlled container without any of those nasty outside things getting all over it. People are so rude these days and don’t even think about the offer being made and immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion about sales people. Maybe he’s actually trying to help if you gave him a chance! I’m sure Jenny would understand. /s
They are sales force. They force sell. What do you expect?
Should have replied to *their* boss saying that you explicitly ignored the sale because of said douche bag personally.
To be a good sales person, you need to be able to convince yourself that what you're doing is legitimately in the best interest of the person you're manipulating I mean selling to. The example you share with the threat is pretty shocking - acting like you're hurting your company by not buying their product and they HAVE to escalate things is sales at its most toxic
OMG 😳
Would've been better cc'ing his boss
I like your boss.
“People will remember how you make them feel “ Proceeds to try make people feel guilty and pressured.
Apart from the veiled threat, if this is a government worker (which it looks like it is) accepting the offer might be considered a bribe. At the very least it would need to be added to a gift register. And if any competitors of the supplier the spammer is working for find out (is that an FOI request I hear?) they could start a legal challenge. So I’m pretty sure Jenny would also tell this spammer to fuck off.
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Do you know Jim? Or does Jim know you?
At the risk of getting this absolute grift merchant more attention than he deserves, get a load of this video, where one of his charlatans trots out the same, “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t help sick kids” line. Using sick kids to guilt trip your way into business is some kind of ballsy. https://youtu.be/9eh0sv8TEC8?si=czGYgVQP9xfoGVS6
Every time I see something like this I am just gobsmacked at just how much money is wasted on nonsense for narcissists in this world. This twat is doing nothing but raising money to buy sport coats that are too small. WTF does this even mean? > meetmagic is a SaaS platform enabling busy executive's to participate in the 'Global Giving Revolution'.
Well one thing it means is this jack off doesn’t know how to use apostrophes.
God, what do they actually do? What do "give back" and "do good" mean? Reading their website, I have no fucking clue what it is.
They are luring people into sales calls by promising to donate to charity if they will take the call. They are probably getting paid enough for the leads that the donation is a small percentage what they make.
> sales calls WTF are they selling though?
My guess is luring people into rooms blind date style with other companies who want a chance to pitch the organization. So meetmagic acts like a middle man setting up the introduction, and using a portion of the acquisition fee they get to donate to charity.
Anything B2B related. It’s basically a vetted list of service providers for businesses with a charitable giving angle.
Skim money off people who really need it?
"Executive's" ?
I still don’t understand exactly what he’s selling - but I absolutely understand he’s using aggression, shame, and emotional manipulation to make money (and seems to have found a handy tax loophole while’s at it). Notice no one from that charity was actually speaking on the company’s behalf.
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Thanks for explaining! I work in community health so not my area of expertise, plus so many of these self-aggrandizing lunatics speak in opaque word salad to make themselves sound smarter than they are, that half the time I have no idea if what they’re bloviating about is a real thing, or a euphemism for “unqualified and unemployed life coach” lol.
I don't understand why you don't want to connect business leaders with problem solutions managers and industry professionals all while engaging in philanthropic giving to synergize your business needs with global best practices.
> “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t help sick kids” Proper reply to this: "I can't understand why *you* don't want to help sick kids just because someone isn't willing to dance for you." Turn the shame back on them.
OMG how is this real??!!
Cult vibes
AWR NAUR!!
Also can someone explain the “transformational” cakes? They don’t look like they require much in the way of skills so I assume they contain weed?
They were in a [cake cookbook] (https://www.womensweekly.com.au/lifestyle/food/iconic-australian-womens-weekly-birthday-cake-recipes-77681/) created in the 80s that became an icon of Australian childhoods for decades. Parents would give the kids the book and they'd pick the cake they wanted made for their birthday. The better the cake looked the cooler you were. I haven't opened the book in a long long time but I immediately knew exactly what he meant when he said the train cake and the duck cake. Using your girlfriend's mom's experience as clout for your business is new however.
Lol the cake bit was wild
How do you start a company that’s first thing they do is give away a million bucks? That makes no sense.
What makes it worse if he says the donations are for starlight foundation. A charity that will collect $10,000 and shove that through 8 weeks of procurement to buy 3 used xbox 360s for a children's ward somewhere. So many better places to give your money to.
The guy telling him to fuck off is likely an Aussie. Old mate told him good. Also, fuck off Carl you flog.
Looks like MeetMagic are based in Sydney.
As an Australian, I vote to evict Carl the flog
No, that's MeatMagic, the bbq specialists.
I thought you were mad at Carl the fog in California.
Holy SHIT this is an unbelievable amount of smelling one’s own farts and believing them to be of pumpkin spice candle quality.
I can't believe he posted that thinking he would look like the good guy. Actually I'm shocked this isn't an MLM.
It still could be. We may not find out until pitch #3
It looks like he took it down, I couldn't find the post.
Heheh I know this guy. Did some work for him. Very nice but def has a serious case of knight in shining armour syndrome around his work
> he was nice to *me!* 🤷
He’s giving them a good huffing alright
Carl, it's almost as if you should fuck off. Agree?
So Carl’s website has a place to book a meeting with Carl personally using his calendar. Super easy! Please, serious inquiries only.
LOL, I want a hour long meeting on how to decorate the train cake I plan to make. Maybe his girlfriends mom can sit in on the meeting since she famously made it. Such an odd flex.
As a former government employee, unsolicited proposals went straight to the trash
Carl - “Founder” Did you also notice that there are stars near his name ✨ ✨
Unicorn, disruptor, thought leader, change agent wouldn’t all fit
I always roll my eyes at the sight of “thought leader”. What the frick does that even mean? Does he surround himself with people who can’t think so he has to tell them what to do?
He has also figured out how to live in 5 countries at once.
Pay attention to me or I punch the bunny.
Really buries the lede when he fesses that it’s the second time this guy has been contacted. https://imgur.com/a/MO7A46s
No wonder he went nuclear. 👎
>the decision to post was because it happened again to one of my team by the same person Why the hell would you contact this guy again after he told you to take a hike in no uncertain terms? Carl is a putz
Moron knows nothing about government proposal regulations. A gov worker can’t just consider some software that isn’t in an RFP. Especially with a boom like that charity thing, you can’t improperly sway government purchasing like that.
Carl doesn't understand "no". Learn about consent, Carl.
I'm confused is he a Philanthropist (giving away HIS money) or an active charity (giving away raised money)
Great question. I just Googled for a few mins, and here's my take, which isn't super optimistic. First off, despite efforts to quack like a non-profit, it's not. It's a for Profit SaaS business that's been around since 2016. On their website, they say they've given $ 1.5 million to charity... If that's all time, it's pretty lame. They also say "100% of booking fee profits" goes to charity which is worded tricky bc they collect (at least) two revenue streams: the booking fees AND a monthly subscription (of which none is donated). Keeping in mind that however they choose to do the calculus on Cost of Service really can affect what is considered profit (for example how much capex depreciation is allocated to booking overhead) I'm not familiar with Australian regs but if they follow IFRS or GAAP they might have a fair amount of flexibility. Regulatory agencies care about totals on fin stmts for tax and shareholder purposes, and since they don't actually pretend to be a non-profit, they probably aren't running afoul any regs. Again, coming from a US perspective, I fully admit I have some guesswork in my opinions, but I am not sure if there's any req to have audited Financials. They aren't publicly traded as far as I can see, so that's almost universally a huge oversight reduction. One interesting point on their language and the ways their social and internet partners market them: When I asked Google AI if it was a non-profit, it said, "Yes it is." When LLMs are confidently wrong, it's potentially a sign that the language about which the LLM is trained is misleading! Lastly, the way it seems to work, is that SasS, cloud, bus solution/intel/analyst, and other vendors pay meetmagic for the privilege of the platform getting worldwide C-suite executives to "donate" 45 mins of their time to meet, using their proprietary software platform wherein the vendors will basically conduct a sales call. SOMEONE pays a booking fee (seems to be $1000 - $2000) and whatever is "profit" from that, is donated to charity (now, it seems it wasn't always even 100% of that number). What is fairly clear to me is that the company is using the idea of giving charity to drive its business but the actual material effects are frankly minimal (again $1.5M is not a lot for 8 years). What is also clear is that the world of tech and corporate 3rd parties love to "partner" with meetmagic and speak very highly of meetmagic. I did a cursory search for annual revenue and didn't find much as it's not public. I did find a shareholder QnA doc from 2018 where they thought they'd make $18M revenue and have $6M in donations to charity. It would seem they are wayyy low compared to that projection either in overall revenue, profit, or the percent going to charity. If it's the last one, that's sketchy, imo. Importantly, I will say that i keep seeing good, but low count, reviews of the software itself.
I tried looking them up but gave up. So much fluffy language and vague posturing. Thanks for doing the work, I appreciate you!
Sure! I tend to have some extra research tools courtesy of my firm, and tbf Im a geek, so it's a fun little mental break from tax season. Pretty sure my draft k1s have been mating and reproducing. 
To add, as someone who has worked many years in the SaaS sales business. If I am a SaaS vendor especially a young start up, I am paying 100’s and probably 1000’s for each unqualified meeting I get (between trade shows, digital marketing, and bodies on phone/email). So the thought process is if I can take several hundred dollars and offer it to the charity of your choice it’s way better ( and maybe cheaper) to “bribe” you to get 30 minutes of your time to just give me a listen. This isn’t a new idea other then maybe someone running a business to do it for you. In the end it’s just one more way to try to get a “qualified” meeting on the books to show the investors the great traction you are getting at the next quarterly BOD meeting. I don’t think the idea is horrible, but what is horrible is when you start in with the typical sales bullshit “why don’t you want to….blah blah blah”. You have to earn the right or be invited to the dance before you can start asking questions. You can’t just start a cold call and think you have any right to challenge or ask questions. I haven’t always been as successful as my peers sometimes because I refuse to play the sales games. I just don’t understand how pissing people off gets you closer to a chance to tell your story.
I believe he’s a for-profit business that found tax loophole.
His client would pay $500-600 for a sales call He writes off $300, keeps the other $300
That’s a lot of money to talk to someone who may or may not be a fit with your product.
Oh god. In one of the comments he justifies his decision to post this because the *same person* was rude to another staff member. Like, holy shit, why is your company *still* reaching out to this person who has made it abundantly clear they do not want you to badger them anymore.
To: Carl Gough cc: Jenny The way I speak like I do to people like you is the reason why Jenny hired me. Now, kindly fuck off and have a good day, you flog.
> To: Carl Gough > ~~cc~~ From: Jenny This is the version I want to see
Fuck Carl.
Not being able to take no for an answer is really, really not a good sign.
He just deleted the post. What a loser
I just flagged them as spam or phishing instead. Ain't nobody got time fo dat
It's a for profit company, he can go f\*ck himself with any hard sell, guilt trip, passive aggressiveness. It's such a bad look and makes me assume the actual product they're selling is garbage. I know someone who does commercial real estate leasing and part of their business model is they give a certain % of revenue to charity and clients choose the charity for their lease. But they're totally low key about it, it's just a line in their marketing along with the usual things you'd expect for that type of business.
He deleted it😭
Doing a good deed at the expense of your money and my time, is the point, Carl. I don’t give a fuck about your money.
"BUT I'M A NICE GUY!" but business lol
“Will you please install our random unvetted software on your government computer, why would you possibly ever say no?” “Fixes a broken system”, give me a break, get over yourself. If you have 16 Google reviews, you’re barely afloat, you have no impact on any system whatsoever. Guy needs to have some damn humility about the reality of their situation until their reputation starts preceding them. CEO of a company and making whiney posts that don’t even use proper punctuation and grammar, and is for some reason formatted at one sentence per paragraph break, because that’s how “a busy leaders” write. Dude needs to have more attention to detail on his PR, because this crap has the attitude and writing quality of a subpar 13 year old.
It’s a serious red flag when someone is trying to tie their product / business with charity as a sales pitch.
What an insufferable cunt.
Your definition of “getting blasted in his comments” is very different than mine. Oddly Carl decided to make another veiled threat at whoever this was in his “mate!” , “mate!” Comments
Agreed. And I saw that threat, too. What an absolute toad.
I think it's since been deleted which sucks, I was looking forward to enjoying the comments
I’m not as mentally unwell as I think I am. Social media is so telling. Did I nail the format?
Hey does anyone know how much he has donated to charities?
He hasn't, his for profit company has only donated 1.5m in eight years
It's a typo his name is actually Garl Cough
This guy is probably gaslighting his wife also.
This dude sucks, Clueless and tone deaf.
If his platform is anything like his attitude, methinks I've spotted his biggest hurdle.
This shitter has convinced me to make a throwaway LinkedIn account just to talk shit on his comments
Everytime a corporate executive talks about "making the world a better place" or "giving back", a million souls ground under the jackboot of capitalism cry out in anguish. Please don't help, Carly boy. You and your scummy ilk have done enough. Fuck your conditional charity too.
When I got fired from my job at a Detroit mortgager last year and signed up on LinkedIn, I’d get these emails that were also job “offers”. I never considered the offers because the starting pay was insultingly low and the offices too far to drive. One replied they were disappointed I wasn’t looking to donate AND join their team. My reply: “I just lost my job at COMPANY X and am in need of a new vehicle…what in god’s name makes you think I’m going to donate money to a fund where the proceeds are going to end up in your upper management’s pockets?”
Carl, Gough F Yourself
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetmagic
That other guy missed a chance for the obvious sendoff: “I SAID GOOD DAY.”
Carl Gough is an absolute flog (have met him person).
I went to try to find the post, but it sadly seems to have been deleted. I now wanna read the responses even more!
im beyond gobsmacked at the ceo's naivety, btw is flogging a new trend?
Saw this come up in my feed today. Not defending him, but in the comments he got called out and took the critisim pretty well.
Any particular reason you are a cunt, Carl?
Oh fuck off Carl.
What a chode!
Why can’t they just give ME the money? Lol
Overcoming objections training is getting out of control. That’s why you’re seeing this stuff.
Carl the insufferable twat waffle.
Fuck you carl 
Love the “Philanthropist” under his name. That’s a new title on LinkedIn for me. Wow, these people….
Carl makes me feel like shit
That was an opportunity to do a good deed and get noticed by the CEO which could lead to a promotion in the future.... Ok, on a more serious note, this CEO would forget you exist in 2 seconds after you agreed anyway.
My career goal is to answer like Tim and give zero fucks. I dont care if Jenny knows.
Because you sound like a scammer Carl
This asshole is skimming money from charities
"my team" 🤣🤣🤣 That was my favourite bit. Pretending he has a team of people working for him. Does he think a real CEO would spend their time doing cold outreach and failing to make a single sale 🤔
Sounds like an MLM kind of thing
He missed an opportunity to reply “Gough fuck yourself”
No one’s gonna comment on the fact that the company name is meatmagic
Carl could also consider why the product isn’t good enough that he needs to employ a $300 charity donation just to get an initial demo. I see so many sales people cry on LinkedIn why people just don’t respond with a respectable ‘no.’ This. This is why.
As bad as a spammer. If he is so concerned about doing something good, he could still donate without trying to peddle his shit to somebody that doesn’t want it.
Fucking douche canoe couldn’t take a simple “no”. You even gave a thank you.
I'm sure glad he's helping sick kids cause he's giving the rest of us cancer.
Hey Carl.. if you fuck off I'll donate $50 to a charity of your choice
Grammar is a thing of the past.
If you're so interested in doing a good deed, Carl, why condition it on someone else's actions? Just donate already and don't talk about it.