Like anyone with a LinkedIn profile publicly identifying them as someone who makes purchasing decisions about technology, I am pretty used to getting cold-call emails from technical sales reps trying to get me to demo their product or attend their conference or meetup or whatever.
Usually, I ignore them and mark them as spam. Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly annoyed, I click through their unsubscribe link.
This morning, I got one from some random sales rep asking me to attend their sales conference March 25-26. This one pissed me off. You want a bunch of people to gather together in a big room? Really? Now?
Here’s the response I sent:
I will not be attending. I understand you are not the decision-maker on this, but please communicate upward that it is irresponsible to be promoting a large conference in the face of the community-spread of the COVID virus.Our company is doing everything we can to eliminate travel and public gatherings for our staff and customers, and will be enforcing mandatory remote work for all employees.
I encourage your team to do the same in the interest of public safety.
Feel free to copy and paste if you like.