Several responses lately, to ask legitimate businesses about a legitimate opportunity, I was rebuffed and a bit asounded by their cold, almost “robotic” responses. Any ideas about that lead generation tool spitting out drip campaigns trying to sound human and interested, please take notice. Can humans be as uncreative as ai? Why yes, yes, I believe they can. Let’s see.

Getting Human About Transactions

I’m guessing businesses, recruiters, and industry professionals are being inundated with spam emails, phishing emails, sales emails. Most of us are. However, when a REAL inquiry comes in, don’t you think a better (more human) response would be a better plan? Let me give two examples.

The first example is an associate who is connected with me on LinkedIn. I was reaching out to his film and tv production company here in Austin, Texas to get some bids or ideas about shooting a teaser, short pilot, and full pilot for a scripted show I’ve been working on for years. Here’s the email I got back.

I was a bit rebuffed by the empty response. I could hear this man’s sigh as I would now attempt to justify his attention to explain my potential project.

Do you know what was not in his email? Any human connection. I was clearly wasting both of our time by asking about budgets and scope. He didn’t have the money to fund my project? What? I was asking him about budgets for three specific types of film production. He could give a shit.

I let the conversation drop at that point. It had become obvious that Mr. Producer/Director was not to be bothered with small fish.

Today’s Tonedef Sales Response

I gave Jake a piece of my mind before being “triggered” to write this post expressing my dismay.

Ah, typo and all on my part. Dear Jake, your response and lack of pricing on your company’s website is bad business. This email shows why so many of us “enterprise-level” companies don’t reach out to SALES until our minds are made up. Your role is not irrelevant. But your humanity is what will make you more successful.

Sure, we know companies are also flooded with spam, fake offers, fake customers, and competitors just trying to get on your mailing list so they can copy your lead strategy. BUT, Jake, and Chartbeat, by closing the conversation with follow my blog, before you know more than “consulting” about my business, is… well… It’s terrible business.

The Human Sales Opportunity

AI is muddying the waters for all of us. Real writers are being laid off at a record rate as unskilled middle managers try to get ChatGPT to do the work. Social media is now overrun with ai-generated fakes. What’s odd about Jake and the producer/director exposed above is that AI would’ve done a much better job at landing me as a client. I’m guessing I won’t hear from Jake about my response. Nor will I hear from the important local director whose one worthy credential is a documentary done in 2018. But, to both of them, I represented a low opportunity.

For the local film guy, if I was looking for him to finance my project the deal was a non-starter. I was not looking for financial help. For Jake, my survey did not meet the demographic they needed to be successful. I recall loving ChartBeat when it launched. I used it. Wrote a few reviews about them. Then their pricing model jumped to “enterprise” levels. Well, that was an easy decision at that point. $200 per month for a prettier Google Analytics. Nope.

Here’s the missing part. A form. A survey. A “what do you want” email response is a machine-like way of filtering out the less vital interactions. What my filmmaker didn’t know and won’t find out, is that my funding is in place for the three projects I outlined. What Jake only learned after his bumbled (company-approved) response was, that my client list includes 50+ companies with budgets exceeding your target customer by a factor of 10.

Be human. Stop automating responses. And when you are human and you are responding, give a little of your humanity in the response. “How can I help you?” That’s a terrible opening line. “Follow our blog.” Is another ai-like repsonse.

The early stages of business are like dating. You don’t walk up on a first date and ask, “What’s in it for me?” You can, as Jake and Filmy did, but it’s an inhumane experience. They are human bots. On to the next big fish, I guess.  Two other non-starters for humans, “Subscribe to our newsletter” and “Download this ebook.”

Humanistically yours,

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
LinkedIn or Iterativ.ai

A closer look:

• AI Marketing Video is a Bit Spooky: Introducing Creatify.ai
• Digging Into Generative Art with DALL-e: Prompt Examples and Tips
• TikTok, Adderall, 15-Seconds Or Less: The Fracturing of American Minds

A few of my creative ai motions:

• waltwhitman.ai < a book of “whitmanesque poetry” with zero AI
• Radio No Head < *ai* parsed music for you to sing and dream with
• poətic.com < my page about the ai poetry conundrum
• hyper-soul < the science fiction exploration and world-building project
• clickthis.ai < my team for *ai* marketing and sales acceleration