The Uninvited Guest Spell

Do you hate cold emails like I do? shiver

What exactly is there to love about a stranger demanding, cajoling, insulting and persuading you to part with some of your time and attention?

It reminds me of wandering a foreign market as an obvious tourist: anyone who approaches with a smile and asks where you’re from gets an insta-ignore.

The last time I had a major corporate email account, I slowly stopped paying attention to emails from a sender I didn’t know. I’d check my inbox in the morning, and four hours later, another 20 to 30 emails from randoms had arrived. Who has time for that?!

When you’re inundated with pitches for random services, they all become meaningless.

Not everyone feels this way. For me, though, the choices I make myself are more powerful than anything someone pushes on me.

This week’s spell: people say yes to what they choose, and resist what’s pushed on them. I call it the Uninvited Guest.

UGS for short, pronounced “ughs,” which was my exact reaction when I decided to write about cold outreach. Big picture - most don’t have time for strangers pushing random products on them. As it turns out, most people are capable of using Google, AI and their own relationships to find what they need.

Last week’s Jam Jar Spell was about how many options to offer. This one is about how you ask.

Busy? The TL;DR is at the bottom.

📜 The Lore: what the research says

1. Same request, different door

In a 2017 study, psychologists Mahdi Roghanizad and Vanessa Bohns had 45 people each ask 10 strangers to fill out a short survey, using identical wording. Half asked by email, and half asked in person. Both groups expected about half of the strangers to say yes. The in-person requests were 34 times more likely to get a yes. Yes, that’s right. 34!!!!!

Why it happens: the researchers found that people asking by email didn’t realize how suspicious an email from a stranger looks. In person, a face and a voice make a stranger feel legitimate.

My own theory goes deeper: we all have a bajillion years of evolution behind our limbic system. Humans are wired to respond to other humans, and we’re built for community. When a stranger reaches out and you have no sense of their humanity, the message barely registers. Looking into someone’s eyes changes everything, and I doubt I even had to explain the research for you to recognize that from your own life.

For context, one email tool company, Instantly, puts the average cold email reply rate at 3.43%, and one agency, Belkins, reported that its 2025 campaigns averaged 0.45%.

2. Calls and video land in between

A 2021 follow-up by the same researchers asked people to get help proofreading a short text by email, text message, phone, video or in person. Phone and video requests did much better than email, and in person did best. The study found no clear advantage for video over a voice-only call. Once again, the people asking underestimated how much the channel mattered.

A separate 2021 study found the same blind spot: people expected a phone call to feel more awkward than an email. It didn’t, and the call built a stronger bond.

3. Brains sync face to face

In a 2012 study, neuroscientists recorded two people’s brain activity at the same time while they talked. Face to face, activity in a language region of their brains lined up. When they talked sitting back to back, it didn’t.

4. Hearing beats reading

In a 2015 study, professional recruiters and other evaluators either heard job candidates’ pitches or read the exact same words. When they heard the pitch, they rated the candidate as more intelligent and were more interested in hiring them.

5. Why a push backfires

When people feel their freedom to choose is under threat, they push back to protect it. Psychologist Jack Brehm named this reactance in 1966.

📖 Reactance: the urge to resist when someone pushes us toward a choice, often regardless of whether the choice is a good one.

The flip side: reminding people they can say no seems to make yes more likely. A 2013 review of 42 studies found that adding “but you are free to refuse” to a request roughly doubled the odds of agreement. The asterisk: later, stricter reviews found a smaller and less certain effect. Treat it as a good habit, not a guarantee.

In my own communications, I always leave people an easy out. It’s easier on both of us, and apparently, more effective.

✨ Practical Magic: try this at work

Marketers: borrow a relationship

The warmest way to reach a stranger is through someone they already trust.

• Use referrals. A referral borrows a relationship two people have already built, while reaching out yourself starts from zero.
• Ask for the introduction, not the email address. Have the person who knows you both set up the connection, rather than pass along contact details.
• Let people find you. Conferences, in-person events and content bring people in on their own terms, the way a café you find yourself beats the one with someone waving a menu at you. Measure events by the deals they start, not badge scans.

Sales: make it human

Cold outreach runs in trends. Three promises:

• Your insight isn’t new. Whatever problem you spotted, someone else has already pointed it out.
• Your tools aren’t new. Whatever AI or template wrote your email, it wrote someone else’s too.
• Your message isn’t unique. Whatever you wrote, a near-copy is already sitting in their inbox.

What stands out is a human connection:

• Call or meet before you email. Use email to confirm a conversation, not to start one.
• Go through someone. The more important the person, the more likely your email gets lost in their inbox. Solve a problem for someone lower in the chain, and let them bring you to the right person.
• If email is the only option, write like someone they know would. Name the shared contact, leave links out of the first message, make one clear ask, and say plainly that a no is fine.

Leaders: ask one person, not the whole room

People respond to a request made to them, in person, far more than to one sent to everyone.

• Ask one-to-one. Ask in a team meeting or a group channel, and the responsibility is diffused: you get very little back. Asking one person makes them feel chosen, and that’s how you build and keep a relationship.
• Hold the on-site. I’ve managed a team from across the ocean, and my relationship with each person changed entirely once we went from a computer screen to the same room. People go from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. For a remote team, that’s the power of the quarterly or annual on-site.
• Otherwise, use video. Make the ask on a video call, make it easy to decline, and keep Slack for the follow-up.

Job seekers: referrals beat auto-apply

Hiring managers are drowning in applications too, many of them written by AI.

• Find someone who knows someone. One person who can vouch for you at the company can help your application stand out from the pile.
• Ask for the introduction. A direct introduction to the hiring manager carries the relationship with it. A forwarded resume mostly doesn’t.

☠️ Curse Collection: where it backfires

The obvious conclusion is to do everything in person. The research has a catch: in person, people say yes even to things they’d rather not do, because saying no to someone’s face feels bad. Freedom to choose is more powerful than pressure: a choice people feel they made themselves tends to stick better than one they were pushed into. Instead of pushing for a yes, plan how the other person can reach the idea on their own.

A surprise call or an unannounced visit is also an uninvited guest. In-person asks work best when there’s already a reason to talk: a shared contact, an event, or a question the other person raised first.

The counter-spell:

• Make it easy to say no, and mean it.
• Let them ask. Mention what you work on the way you would at dinner, then stop. If they ask how it works, you’re following their curiosity, and the conversation is their idea.
• Give first. Help someone with no strings attached: an introduction, an answer, a useful read. People feel a pull to return a favor. Just don’t make one the price of your help.

💬 Your turn

What’s the best or worst way someone has started a sales conversation with you? Tell me in the comments, and I’ll share my favorites in the next issue.

Read and comment on LinkedIn

🪄 Meanwhile, at the wand shop

The shop sent 1,000 owls announcing its winter sale. One customer came in and tried to return the owl.

The next week, Kevin and Devin called every -evin they knew: Bevin, Nevin, Trevin and two distant cousins, Steve and Belinda. The referrals brought in a fleet of customers. The shop sold out by Thursday.

TL;DR

• In one study, strangers asked in person to fill out a survey were 34 times more likely to say yes than those asked by email.
• People say yes to what they choose and resist what’s pushed on them. Give first, let them ask, and make it easy to say no.
• For any ask that matters, use a referral, an event or a one-to-one conversation. Use email to confirm.

Until next time, may your inbox be quiet and your door be open.

Claire, sometimes wizard