Why This Legendary TV Character Would be a Rotten Marketer…

Remember Eddie Haskell?

He was the guy on Leave it to Beaver (a TV classic!) who oozed insincerity. 

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver. Isn’t it a lovely day,” he’d say to Beaver’s parents. 

And then, when the adults left the room, Eddie would wreak havoc. 

The sweet-talking devil. 

I had an Eddie Haskell flashback the other day. 

I got an email from a guy named Nick. On the surface, the email was friendly and charming. 

But scratch the surface, and the insincerity spilled out like toxic waste. 

It was paint-by-numbers BS. Templated trash. 

Here’s the template: 

Hey [Insert Lead’s First Name Here], Highly inspired by the recommendations made by [Insert name of person who posted recommendation on lead’s LinkedIn page here] on LinkedIn.

We help agency owners fill their calendars with 5-10 qualified sales meetings per month without spending money on ads.

Interested in a quick call to discuss?

-Nick

P.S. Volunteering at [Insert name of first organization listed under the Volunteering section on the lead’s LinkedIn profile here] must be challenging. How do you maintain a good work life balance?

And here’s what Nick’s paint-by-numbers said in my inbox:

Hey Tom, Highly inspired by the recommendations made by Beth Pagano on LinkedIn.

We help agency owners fill their calendars with 5-10 qualified sales meetings per month without spending money on ads.

Interested in a quick call to discuss?

-Nick

P.S. Volunteering at The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis must be challenging. How do you maintain a good work life balance?

(Note to all you social media and email cold-callers: “Inspired” is a giant red flag. It screams, “I’m dishing out false praise. I full of B.S.”)

I usually ignore emails like this. Not worth my time to engage. 

But, for some reason, this one got under my skin.

So I decided to reply to Eddie Nick and call his bluff: 

Hi NIck —

Yes, volunteering at The Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis is challenging. 

How do I maintain a good work life balance? 

Thanks for asking. 

Mental Health America offers some really great advice on this subject. I’ve taken it to heart. Here it is…

And then I pasted in a 1,000(+)-word article with tips about how to maintain work-life balance. I closed the email by saying…

Thanks again for asking!

How about you? How do you maintain a good work life balance?

Tom

It took me 30 seconds to google and copy the article and about 60 seconds to write and send the email.

90 seconds to poke Eddie/Nick in the ribs.

On the outside chance that Nick was being sincere, I figured I’d get a charming response about how HE manages work-life balance. 

That response never came. Just a bunch of crickets chirping in the toxic waste dump. 

You can’t build human connections with
fill-in-the-blank templates.

If you want to stand out in the crowded marketplace of ideas…

…if you want to captivate prospects and inspire them to hire you…

…be real!

That begins with honest emails that show you understand your audience…

…without a bunch of fake sincerity.

Personality? Yes.

B.S. fill-in-the-blanks “personalization?” No. 

Here’s the thing about Eddie Haskell:

The adults in the room always saw through his B.S. They never fell it.

And your prospects won’t fall for it either. 

You can’t build meaningful connections with prospects by cutting and pasting factoids from a social profile or merging data from some spreadsheet. 

You can’t attract interest by pretending to be interested.