We all get a lot of inbound sales prospecting email, and they’re much less of an intrusion than a call and kill less trees than the stuff the USPS stuffs into our mailboxes (ahem, Comcast and Amex). If it is an email that the sender actually thinks I’d care about and they’ve taken a few minutes to at least look at what we’re all about, I’ll give them the time to at least consider it, just as we hope our recipients do the same when we email them deliberately and carefully.

Unfortunately though, with the increased volume I’m seeing an increase in the quantity of idiots doing it, so I’m going to start a regular series call the the “Inside Sales Idiot Award” to showcase the best example of stupidity each month.

In the first month of the series is an email from Joe at Applause, a company that helps you test mobile apps or something. Anyway, Joe sent me an awesomely shit email where he didn’t bother to change the name of the company in the intro. Compounding the obvious fail of this approach, he then correctly concluded that people are busy and have other stuff going on in the run down to the holidays, but still suggested we set up a call, and finished it with a prize winning confident line about being sure we’ll be happy we did.

Anyway, here’s Joe’s ISI Award winning effort for December.