When you email someone out of the blue, do they respond?

Or do they ignore you?

You’re doing well if it’s a little of both.

And the solution is to increase your volume, right? After all, a hit rate of a percent or two doesn’t matter when you email thousands.

Well…

Look, you can do that if you want. I’m not saying it won’t lead to clients.

But have you considered the costs of this strategy?

Sure, it’s cheap to send as many emails as your little fingers can type.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost you.

If you come across as a low-grade jackass with your emails, then you pay the price. The good news is that most of your recipients will simply ignore you. Anyone who pays attention enough to delete you loses respect for you, though. They lump you in the same category of those delightful Nigerian princes who need a respectable foreigner to help them out.

When you look like spam, you get treated as spam.

This is fine if you’re selling snake oil or cheap widgets. If you’re a professional, though, that’s toxic to your brand.

So what’s the answer? Never cold contact anyone?

I wouldn’t go that far.

You can send emails folk will respond to.

Or if they don’t respond, they at least appreciate the message.

They see the mark of a fellow professional – a leader in the field, someone worth paying attention to.

Because how can you be a professional if your messages don’t stand out?

If they trigger red flags?

If you look the same as scum sucking parasites, looking for another sucker to fleece?

I want you to wonder how to get past their autopilot. If you’ve never wondered this – never given it serious thought – then you’re going to struggle.

Because most folk receive a lot of unsolicited messages.

Especially successful folk.

The vast, vast majority are garbage.

Which is why so many of them never bother reading or responding to unsolicited emails.

As soon as you arrive on their screen, their autopilot kicks in. And the autopilot is not flattering to you. It says to ignore this message, maybe throwing in a few choice swear words too.

You want to stop that.

You want to shut that autopilot down, if even for a moment.

How?

By sending a cold email that doesn’t look like all the other cold emails.

Maybe you’re surprising.

Or self-deprecating.

Or controversial.

Perhaps you use strange words in strange ways, or lead with a question that makes them pause for a moment.

Get this wrong and you look like a lunatic.

(Whether that’s better or worse than being ignored depends on your risk appetite.)

Get it right, though?

You’re not looking at a few meagre percent – the bottom handful who haven’t wizened up to dodgy marketers and parasites.

You’re looking at real results from the real leaders in your field.

When communication is cheap, the world becomes noisy. The only way to be heard is to stand out and stand above the rest.