My friend cannot hound me in my nightmares!

My friend cannot hound me in my nightmares!

Being a consultant has a few fringe benefits. You get to meet some really nice people. Some other times you get to interact with someone who would make you feel why are you doing whatever you are doing. Since I am in a philanthropic mood let me just call it a waste of time.

Virtual experience and real experience seem to blur these days. I met a person on the internet who made me wonder what am I doing. Make no mistake. I am not against internet marketing or social media. I have a few clients and friends thanks to internet. This one is downright funny.

I am in market trying to sell a small Electrical Energy Saving Equipment manufacturing company. I am doing this assignment more for a friend than as a professional assignment since I don’t hope to (care to) get compensated adequately for the effort.

So off I went to the professional networking website and made a small post stating I’m in market to sell a tiny company and if someone is interested I could take this forward. Totally there were four leads. Three great matter of fact ones who understand what’s on the table and who understand the process involved. These three leads either PMed me or gave their co-ordinates and asked for more details. The fourth one commented on the post…

“spell out the product, size, cost, benefits, market, production[ available/made]“

Now my friend wouldn’t like me to leave any stone unturned. So I PMed…

“All details can be made available after expression of interest and signing of NDA. If you can send me a mail to info@smbenablers.com, I’ll send you a broad over view. If you are interested, after knowing more about each other we can enter into an NDA and I will provide you with all the details.

I don’t want to discuss this in public domain. Coming to Social Media is just to find interested people like you. Hope you understand.”

Pat came the reply through PM“yes Mr Srikanth what is your place?”. This was followed by a mail “details called for may please be sent” Now now… don’t think I have given relevant portion of the mail. I am giving you the whole mail leaving out just his name and retaining lowercase and uppercase as written!

Here I got into an existential dilemma. What do I do? I know it is waste of time communicating further. I know I should have stopped right then. But what if my friend started hounding me in my nightmares for a lost opportunity?

So I gave a brief sketch about the company, its past and future outlook and said that we need to enter into an NDA before I could reveal further.

One thing good about him – unlike my other three leads – is that he is straight like an arrow. Others visit my profile, visit my website, try to find more about me, more about the company, try to figure out what that company is, brainstorm with friends, delay replies a bit to try to figure out whether I am desperate… He doesn’t care about any of these trivialities. I get a reply in less than 30 minutes. Again a verbatim full text reproduction with unaltered uppercase and lowercase.

“Your b2b proposals is bleak
1 name the product
2 size, cost of product
3 inv, return, roi
4 as u have sold it, you are having a single man operation;
it is a sales agency.
5 like to see the product in use
reply”

If I had any sense left I should have conceded defeat and moved on. I knew. I knew because I had been there. One thing good about experience is that you quickly recogonise a mistake after you have made the same mistake. But then my friend would say, “What if he were a guy roaming around with a open cheque book and pen? What if it were a Slam Dunk transaction? You have missed a golden opportunity”, and would start hounding me in my nightmares. So I wrote back

“Before proceeding further, I would like to know more about your back ground and your interest. We have to enter into an NDA before I reveal further information. This basic data is just a primer. Not a DPR. DPR can be given at a later date if things work. Pl let me know more about you, your company and your interest before we proceed. We can have a chat over phone too if you prefer. My number is available in my website.”

He did not waste much time in replying. Again the full text of the mail without case change and with spelling mistake.

“DEFERED”

I am thoroughly beaten. No questions. I heaved a sigh of relief. My friend cannot hound me in my nightmares!

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