Beginning of “Ice Road Truckers” (Photo credit: Marke Clinger)

Normally, this would be me telling a story about a stupid thing that I did. But, this time it’s a story of a guy I never met, asking me for a “favor”, via a medium he didn’t understand. It starts with me getting a message from a guy via LinkedIn, check out another LinkedIn Mistakes.

Although he was from my town, (Solon, Iowa – a small town in rural Iowa) we had never met. Yet, he felt comfortable enough to send me a connection request. I thought about ignoring it – but he works for a freight company, and the place I work (ClickStop) is an ecommerce company and we spend a lot of money each year in freight costs.

Either way – he contacted me cold on LinkedIn with the following message:

“Good Afternoon

To prevent writing a novel and get quickly to the point….. My name is Brice Xxxxxx and today I am using linkedin for it’s soul purpose, to reach out to you for an opportunity to establish a business relationship.

I am a Freight Broker at XX Transportation.

I am an intermediary between businesses with shipping needs and transport carriers.

The following are the Transportation Services I offer:
Over Dimensional & Overweight
Truckload (Reefer, flatbed, dry van)
International (exporting) services
Rail Transport Ocean & Air
Less than Truckload (LTL)
Hazmat Capability

I’m asking for the opportunity to MOVE YOUR FREIGHT on time and healthy! Please let me know if this is something that you would like to further discuss.

I can be reached anytime at 319 555 1212

Have a good day
Brice Xxxxxxx”

It wasn’t bad – but I’m not sure LinkedIn’s soul purpose is “business relationships” – but whatever. After his message – I sent him a quick, what I felt was a, polite note to say I’d preferred not to get solicited on our first encounter. In commerce circles they jokingly say you can’t walk up to someone in a bar, grab them by the cheeks and lay a wet kiss on their lips and think it will go well a majority of the time – let’s get to know one another first.

Here is what I sent him in reply:

“Please don’t send me unsolicited emails like this.”

Was my reply too pissy?  I didn’t want it to be. I thought about saying more – but I just kept it short.  My thought was, I really wanted to know more about him before I felt comfortable enough in recommending him to my company to ditched our current freight company and give him our business.

You can imagine my surprise when I received this message today:

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings

Have a good week”

My first reaction was to email him back.  I mean – seriously Brice - I’m not a total tool and try to be nice to everyone.  I’m a good steward of the web.  Seriously, I guess it frustrated me enough to write this post – maybe Brice is a savant and my feelings really are hurt?

I’m not sure – but think we can chalk up a generalization about LinkedIn, its not really OK to blindly connect with random people on LinkedIn and solicit business from them on the “first date”.

So – sorry Brice, sorry if I came of odd and didn’t want your emails.  I was trying to be polite.