Epic Fail: Losing at Business Development

Is this an article or a rant? Why not both?

This is a love-letter to recruiters and vendors trying to establish a foothold with a prospect. I am offering the very best advice you will ever get:

[ RANT ]

Target the right person.

I am a DevOps/SecOps/IT director. I describe my job as:

• keep the company safe
• build an infrastructure as the foundation of the company
• make my CFO fear my name *
• tell engineers 'No you can't do that'. **

If you're selling infosec services, cloud services, etc. I just might in theory be in your target demographic (though I generally don't respond to cold-calls... if I need you, I'll call you, and I don't buy services from companies I've never heard of). However, my job is not to:

• seek or accept financing from random people
• buy lists of qualified prospects; I'm not in Sales
• discuss recruiting/HR matters

My profile is very clear on these points. If I am cold-called and mistargeted, not only will I not accept what you are offering; I also will not connect you to the people in my company who might. Someone who doesn't qualify their contacts for relevancy (especially if they're trying to sell lists of relevant contacts!) is not competent, and I'm not going to pass through someone who's shown they're sloppy. And there's a lot of sloppy people out there.

On any given day, I get 3-4 calls on my personal cell phone asking to speak to my CEO. Oddly enough, they don't get to do that.

On any given day, I get text messages promising my company a million dollars. Suuuuure I'm gonna have you contact my CFO, O Scammer.

On any given week I get 1-2 unsolicited resumes from recruiters. We don't do that, and in any event if we hired that candidate, we wouldn't owe the recruiter a single penny in compensation. No pre-existing contract, no payment.

Biz dev folks, please don't waste your time or mine. Don't buy contact lists from people who don't know what they're doing. And if you're scraping LinkedIn for contacts, pay attention to what they do or don't do. Wasted time is wasted money. And you don't want to waste money.

Do you?

[ /RANT ]

Addendum: Just while I was writing this little magnum opus, I received not one, but two cold calls. No idea how my personal number ended up on a sucker list, but no money for them! Bwahahaha!

and..

* I'm actually a cheapskate. I can squeeze two quarters together and a dollar falls out.

** I'm actually nice to my engineers; I do, however, know the difference between "want" and "need".

Let me sell you some hashtags unsolicited: #coldcalling #businessdevelopment #imnotthedroidyourelookingfor