Don’t you just love those messages in your inbox that start “I’m so impressed by your work at [Company] and I’d love to connect to find ways to collaborate”?
Or:
- I loved the latest episode of Sales for Nerds and I have the perfect guest for you [whose qualifications make it clear I never listened to your podcast, I just did a search for “sales”].
- You filled out a form on our website and I’m just following up with you.
- We help companies like [Company] save money/increase revenue with [methods that don’t apply to you]. Can we schedule a 30 minute conversation?
I’m not opposed to advertising. I’m not opposed to getting the word out about who and how you help.
But I am very opposed to lying. It’s bad for all kinds of reasons that you wouldn’t think we’d need to explain to adults, but especially in trust-based, relationship businesses, starting off with a lie poisons the well before you even get started.
People have been trying to pull fast ones since there have been people. That’s why the Code of Hammurabi from about 1750BC has laws and penalties for fraud.
We might have hoped that with the internet and greater ability to access information, that we would have less fraud, but it seems the internet is the perfect medium to run scams, because you can do it at scale without physical proximity. From Nigerian prince scams to spammy LinkedIn campaigns to crypto rug pulls to coaches selling outlandish results (“land whale clients in 15 minutes a week!”), scams are everywhere.
A healthy culture discourages this kind of behavior, socially, legally, and financially. Unfortunately, our society doesn’t seem very healthy. Scammers get punished if they defraud other rich people, like Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Elizabeth Holmes, who got in trouble for defrauding investors, not patients. And if you’re rich enough, powerful enough, and connected enough, legal and ethical constraints no longer apply. This corrodes society and encourages more scams.
Here we are. Fight the good fight. Do right by your clients, partners, and prospects. Work smart, but don’t take ethical shortcuts. This not only builds a better business, but a more meaningful life.
(A lot of those scammers seem pretty darn miserable for all the money they’ve accumulated. Maybe we need to bring back some of the Hammurabian punishments for fraud.)