Technology can hurt people
It seems so harmless. A keyboard, and monitor and an Internet connection. But we all know that those three things can damage a person's reputation quickly and easily.
First is the ease of emails. Buy a list, or steal a list, or scrape the Internet to create a list, get a cheap email service and spam away!
For a sales person or small business, email seems like such a convenient tool to get in front of people. People do not answer their phones anymore, and when they do they are often just as or possibly more frustrated with a cold call that interrupted them than they would be with that cold email that made their blackberry vibrate and rattle across the table.
Direct mail gets tossed out before it even gets looked at.
Person to person networking at events is time consuming and can get expensive.
So how can a sales person/small business person ever get any business?
The realities are that we have to pick up the phone, send the cold email, and get to the networking events. We have to reach out to many people over and over again. I'm sorry - but even with all the hoopla of social media, sales is still sales.
But there is one aspect of sales I have always believed should be honored above anything else and that is honesty.
When I was a recruiter we were taught how to lie our way to the decision maker or the potential candidate. I refused to follow those techniques and later took it upon myself to re-train new hires of how to get the job done honestly (yeah I caused some tension in the office - surprised?)
It seems that after SoCon08 a small business person used email to reach out to the people who attended. I personally have no problem with that - I know we need to do what we need to do to find sales. However, unfortunately his wording in the email suggested that he met every person at the conference, which would be 250+
This became a bit of a buzz amongst the bloggers - the idea that they had been spammed. It is unfortunate. The person's name was used in one of the blogs, which I find even more unfortunate.
I tried to avoid being a part of the situation, but since all of this occurred I have found myself involved in a few offline conversations and was just included, as were many others, in an email about the situation.
So here is my opinion.
We have tools that make us seem very powerful. But when we use them as a means to hurt someone, even when it is true that the person did do something wrong, I think we have crossed the line toward abuse of our technological powers.
I have been beyond furious at others throughout my years of blogging. I have felt so much venom boiling inside of me that I wanted to cause irreparable damage. I even blogged about it - subtly. But I never actually used names or caused real harm, because when it came right down to it, I know I am not perfect and I would not want someone to hurt me for my many mistakes.
Technology is powerful - please use caution.
