There are many ways for me to learn about your company, products, or services. Cold calling and emailing me is the least-preferred or recommended means.
I prefer to not be solicited. I ask that you to respect my time and privacy by calling or emailing me or my team only if I or members of my team have recently reached out to you or your company asking for information. If I have reached out or created an account with your company, all of your communication must come from and link back to your domain or subdomain (not a third-party domain or subdomain).
When choosing between competing solutions, I take into consideration the companies that were most patient and respectful of my time — actively avoiding those that had sales or marketing teams cold contact me or my team by phone or email.
If you want to learn more about how I actively learn about products and services, please review my FAQ.
Thank you for respecting my privacy.
Do Not Solicit FAQ
Opting out of sales and marketing calls.
I prefer to learn about new solutions and services on my own time, when it is most convenient for me. Please respect my time by refraining from calling or emailing me if I didn’t first initiate a request or information.
How will you learn about my product or service?
Through podcasts, RSS feeds, user groups, technical conferences, and industry peers that I respect. I listen to 10+ hours of podcasts a week, subscribe to 400+ RSS feeds, attend 5 to 10 local user groups a year, and travel to technical conferences most years. I prefer to use these focused mediums to learn about new products, solutions, and companies.
May I subscribe you to my company’s marketing newsletter?
The more phone calls and emails I receive your company, the less likely I am to do business with you. For most, a single unsolicited phone call or email will be all that it takes for me to no longer consider your company or solutions. Please unsubscribe me. If you produce great content about subjects that interest me, I’ll find and subscribe to your RSS feed or podcast.
But I’m not calling to sell you anything. We’ve set aside some time on (insert day) to demo our solution.
Scheduling a future time to sell me something later also counts as an unwanted solicitation. I look at several new products a month, but they are demos of solutions that I am actively seeking, not random solutions to problems I do not have.
My important boss will be in your area meeting with one of our important clients, he/she might have 10 minutes to also meet with you since you are nearby.
I also do not appreciate this tactic. I’m not interested in your boss’ travel schedule and haven’t asked to meet with him or her.
What if I call you to ask if I can email you a white paper that my company has asked me to shill?
That is perhaps the worst thing you could do. You are not only interrupting my day by calling, you’re now asking me to provide an email address so that you may interrupt me again the next time I use my email. Companies that do this — perhaps one per day in 2018 — demonstrate the least amount of respect for my request for privacy.
Have a great website
Like most people, I use the internet to research solutions that might solve my employer’s problems. Please have a great website that describes your product or solution, compares the key features that set you apart from alternative solutions, and clearly provides pricing information (even if it is just list pricing).
Before I contact any company I wish to first know two things: 1) Do I think this product or solution will solve the problem I’m actively working on resolving and 2) Is it fairly priced. If your website does not include basic list pricing information, I will attempt to find a solution that does.
Lastly, please avoid interpreting my visit to your website as an invitation to later call or email me. On two different occasions, hours after visiting a company’s website I received a cold call from their sales team. In both cases, their privacy policy stated that they do not track IP address to individual users. This type of behavior is unappreciated and erodes my trust in your company or its representatives. I both cases, I chose to buy solutions from their competitors.
Use your own domain or subdomain
For all electronic correspondence from your company to me, you must use your own domain or subdomain — any deviation will look no different than a phishing attack or a man-in-the-middle attack. If you use a third-party, you must configure your third-party and your public DNS records so that all communication to me comes from your domain/subdomain and links back to your domain/subdomain. Here’s how configure your account with a few major providers:
- Zendesk.com: Changing the URL of your help center and Allowing Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain
- Sendgrid.com: How to Set Up Domain Authentication
Legal / Privacy Policy
I am committed to safeguarding my privacy; this policy sets out how any person, company, or entity is to treat my personal information.
Revoking all explicit or assumed permission
You may not use any third-party, internet-connected email server, or telephone to send marketing/sales emails or phone calls to me or my team. Marketing and sales emails and phone calls are defined as any communication medium that attempts to inform me about your company, product, or services that I or my team members did not request to receive less than five business days prior.
For example, if I sent you an email on Monday asking for more information about your company or its products and services, you may respond by email or telephone on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. You may not, however, respond one week, month, year, decade, or century later (or any time between). After five business days have passed, so has my permission for your sales or marketing teams to communicate with me or retain my information.
Also, I am publicly stating that I wish to unsubscribe and opt-out of every email sent by any bulk-email company (e.g. Exact Target, Salesforce, Pardot, Campaign Monitor, iContact, Campaigner, MailChimp, Benchmark, GetResponse, Constant Contact, VerticalResponse, AWeber, GraphicMail, Service-Now, Medallia, Zendesk, SimplyCast, Cheetah Digital, Twilio, SendGrid, Quora, or any similar service) or phone call made by any call center. You may not provide third-parties my contact information. In the event that you or your client assumes that I have opted-in to receive your email or phone call; you are wrong. I wish to opt-out. No matter who you are, I do not want your sales or marketing email, your survey, your phone call, or your postal mail.
I own the domain @jasonpearce.com. I manage my employer’s domain @riverview.org. I am the administrator of these domains, their DNS, their MX records, their email gateways, and all of their email addresses. This opt-out, do-not-solicit, unsubscribe request applies to all domains I manage and all of their current and future email addresses.
Requiring Permission-Based Marketing
I require all individuals and companies to create and manage “opt-in” subscriber lists. By building and using an “opt-in” subscriber list, you can be certain that you are sending emails to recipients that have expressly given their permission to receive your email.
I also require all individuals and companies to create and manage a global “opt-out” unsubscribe list. By building and using a global “opt-out” unsubscribe list, you can be certain that you will avoid sending emails or phone calls to recipients who have expressly revoked their permission to receive your solicitation, regardless of who our current or future employees or clients might be.
Note that I Opt-Out (Global Opt-Out Policy)
It is also important to note that I wish to “opt-out” of being on any subscriber list. I expressly revoke permission for you or anyone you know to send me sales or marketing emails, phone calls, or printed materials. If you think that I once opted-in, I now and forever inform you that I opt-out.
You may not purchase, sell, trade, or give away my contact information
Buying lists of email addresses, phone numbers, or postal addresses from third parties that include my information is not permitted and may result in me becoming angry with you (among other unwanted outcomes). I revoke permission for you to buy, sell, trade, leak, or give away my personal information (name, company, title, phone number, email, address, IP address, or anything else that could be used to identify me). If I did not directly provide you my contact information first-hand, then you wrongly obtained my contact information and are to delete it.
You may not transfer my permission or information to other employers
If I provided you my contact information or worked with you as a vendor while you were employed by Company A, you may not transfer my information to your new employer at Company B. You must wait for me to show interest in Company B and to reach out for more information.
Make it easy to unsubscribe and opt-out
If you are able to access jasonpearce.com and this Privacy Policy, you are to opt me out of all solicitation. If I call or email you asking to opt out of all solicitation, you are to do so immediately and not require me to take additional steps.
Do not solicit my employees
I ask my employees to also avoid doing business with companies that solicit. Before I approve a sales order, I ask my employees if they were solicited by the vendor or if they sought out the solution or service own their own. Your process as a vendor with my employees will influence if a purchase gets approved or not. Respect their time as much as I ask you to respect mine.
Complaints?
If you remain confused about my request for privacy, please reference this dissertation. I take permission-based marketing seriously. Please respect my privacy by refraining from attempting to use any medium to sell or market your goods or services to me or my employees. Thank you.