The other day I received a message from a person who I have never heard of. Apparently she was friends with a person I knew and as a result she thought I would be interested in her business opportunity. As you may have guessed this was a network marketing business model and so she wanted to recruit as many people possible to hopefully earn money from everyone below her. I wasn’t interested as the funny thing was I actually quickly looked at her professional profile and pretty much knew exactly which business it was she was with.
I would have probably still entertained her pitch if she told me something specific about my professional background as an example that she thought would be a good fit. But instead it was simply cold calling of sorts where she just looked at the connections her friend had and contacted people that way. So in general the perception that many would have is the person didn’t really spend any time in researching about you so no real point in giving them time as it is all a numbers game.
It could have been something really simple too such as referencing one of my past work to show there may be some kind of genuine fit. This is pretty much true for anything even when you are applying for jobs at a company. Showing that you have some genuine knowledge and interest goes a long way.