Why Does Every Vendor Think I Can’t Hire?

About 15% of my daily inbox flow is from agencies or vendors trying to get my business. About 80% of my inbound calls are the same.

I hardly answer them, and when I get successfully tricked into picking up a sales call, I am sure my audible sigh in frustration is the last thing that poor SDR chained to their phone on the other side of the phone wants to hear.

There are two or three different pitches, depending on the vendor type, but they all come down to the same thing:

“You suck at hiring. Spending money on me will make you look good.”

What I have yet to see is the vendor or agency that offers to help me hire better without assuming that:

• I can’t find talented people on my own.
• …Especially that engineers are impossible to find.
• I am spending too much time finding people.
• I don’t like the process of x, y or z.
• That I need their help, really at all.

And their autoresponders and autodialers then kick in with messages and phantom calls every 3 days of their drip campaigns, mercilessly wasting my time.

“And if you’re not the right person for me to talk to, please direct me to the right person…”

No, I am the right person. I am just actually really good at my job. *

So, I reply because the last thing I need is this enterprising sales person reaching out to anyone else in the company thinking that I am not the right individual., because now, they would be wasting their time as well as mine.

And I engage you in just enough emails to make you think there’s a sale coming, when there never really was one.

Because I don’t need you or your services. And I don’t need you bothering other people here even less than I need you myself. Yet, you won’t listen.

I am talking to you, Lever.

Do I feel bad for this? Kinda, but then I remember, you started it. Assuming that I needed something I don’t, and then relentlessly pushing your agenda no matter what polite no-thank-you’s I sent your way.

How about we all decide if I dont reply to you it’s not because I am an imbecile, but actually because either:

• I actually dont need your service.
• I actually dont have “time for a quick chat or coffee”
• I actually dont think it’s worth your time to waste trying to sell me something I don’t need.
• I am actually busy filling jobs.

With those ground rules in place, you will realize why a) I am so silent and b) when i finally do reach out and say “nah, I think you should go somewhere else” that I am actually, honest-and-true, trying to do you a favor. Please stop thinking that my “no” secretly means “not right now” or that I have some kind of power complex and have to be right all the time. It actually just, simply means:

“No.”

*Which is why I do this job, in fact.