I hope this finds you well

As a sales professional, I write on average 20 - 40 emails a day to contacts outside of my business.

A large proportion of these emails will be to prospects, to try to move a sale on. In some cases I may have lost touch with said prospect and this is the first time we've been in contact in a little while. More likely it will be a totally cold email to a contact I've identified as someone I'd like to speak to.

And in every case they almost always start with the ubiquitous "I hope this finds you well."

Is it just me or is that an incredibly pointless opening line? For the following reasons;

1. Isn't it a given that you want the recipient of your email to be in a positive state of affairs? Are you ever going to think, let alone write the opposite, "Dear Mr/Mrs Prospect, I hope this finds you crying in to your coffee and questioning your life choices" or "Good morning Client, I hope you've had a terrible week and have already opened the gin at 10am" Probably not.
2. Has anyone ever in the history of the planet replied with anything other than the affirmative and the pointless question back "I'm fine thank you and you?" ? No.
3. It's a rhetorical question. In fact, it's not even a question. If we really cared whether or not the recipient of the email is well, wouldn't we opt for an open question (I'm looking at you Sales bods) something really complex like "How are you?"
4. Are you really not going to give me the time of day because I got straight to the point of why I'm emailing and didn't pose a vacant question-non-question I don't actually want the answer to? I doubt it.
5. An email is HTML code processed through a server in to a person's inbox. It's not an MI6 agent. It doesn't find you. You open it.

In these "unprecedented times" (don't even get me started on that one) the dreaded "I hope this finds you well" has now evolved. These days we can look forward to "I hope this finds you safe and healthy" (Safe? Is this person likely to be replying to this communique perched on top of an active volcano? Answering a cold sales email whilst their kidnapper popped out for milk?) And healthy - even if in the highly unlikely scenario that the recipient were clearing out their inbox lying on their death bed, they would still probably opt for option 2. We're British after all.

So, please, can we call time on the hoping our emails find us anything and if the sender genuinely wants to show they care how the recipient is, just opt for the far less pointless "How are you?"