Jason Fried

July 17, 2023

Stalking, not sales

salessequence.png


What you see above is a 17-day sales sequence, or cadence. A friend of mine just sent it over and it creeped me out.

From email to LinkedIn to phone to email back to LinkedIn back to phone, and so on. I assume day 18 would be a bullhorn outside your window.

Somehow this is allowed to be called sales. But in any other realm it would be called stalking.

The sales industry calls these moments "touches", which is even creepier. And then, check out that last one: The break up email. Ouch.

Imagine if you ran this playbook when trying to sell yourself in a new relationship (or save yourself in a failing one). You meet someone new, and you contact them 15 times in a variety of ways over 17 days. And sometimes multiple times a day after they've already ignored your earlier attempts. They'd be right in calling the cops and getting a restraining order.

I know this isn't how sales always works, but it's prevalent enough. I've been on the receiving end before. It's just wrong, even if it "works" sometimes.

Clean up in aisle sales! Something's broken.

-Jason

About Jason Fried

Hey! I'm Jason, the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY. Subscribe below to follow my thinking on business, design, product development, and whatever else is on my mind. Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading.