Once again today, I received an email from someone who didn't know me or my business offering to provide services to me. I don't have a problem with this normally, because we all have to market our services in some fashion.

What I had a problem with, however, is that the services I was being offered were services that I actually provide and market myself. In other words, even though the email came from an actual person (I know this because I wrote the person back), this person didn't take even a quick minute to look at my main page to see what it was I did.

When businesses have websites online, it's easy enough to take a quick look to see what a potential client's business is to determine if it's worth offering your services to them. As a healthcare consultant, I'm not going to offer my services to another healthcare consulting company. As a management consultant, I'm not going to offer my services to a management company. As a,... well, you get the picture.

True, it's harder in the regular world where you may be sending something out to hoards of people all at once to specifically eliminate people who do something similar. But when you're in a small business, your credibility is always on the line just a bit more than a large company, and making a faux pas like this one doesn't look good, and you probably won't get much business.