Cold outreach is the domain of spammers

I’ve frequently shared my distain for any company that pushes cold outreach. Blair Enns recently wrote an excellent post where he breaks down the three tiers of lead generation:

Tier I: Inbound leads
People that find you via your content or referrals from others, with no specific action on your part.

Tier II: Warm Outreach
These are leads that maybe purchase a course from you, and then you reach out to strengthen the relationship.

Tier III: Cold Outreach
These are leads that don’t know who you are when you interrupt them for the first time. Blair argues that sometimes a bit of very targeted and specific cold outreach can be acceptable, but that it’s rare and ChatGPT is going to kill it.

His main idea today is that automation is currently the line that separates semi-legit cold email from outright spam, with automated messages being 100% spam, but that’s about to change. When ChatGPT (or similar AI tools) can write detailed and custom messages to everyone, it’s over. That sliver of acceptable cold outreach will be gone, and that time is essentially here.

Blair says:

Thanks to ChatGPT, your inbox is about to blow up and it will be harder to separate the wheat from the chaff…