“Can we have a 5 minute call?

My inbox gets flooded with “Can we have a 5 minute call?” emails from sales and marketing folks.

I get it, you need to reach your targets and make stuff happen. And I am guilty of including that phrase in past emails (not anymore though).

HOWEVER, I don’t know who you are, what your company does and why I should care.

Most of the time it’s a problem/pseudo-problem I’m not even thinking about at the moment while I’m trying to get through important tasks and solve immediate problems.

So before you hit send, please take a moment and ask yourself if your email will serve me, a potential customer, or you. And if it’s the latter, your email will probably end up in my deleted folder.