I guess it must work, or they wouldn't keep doing it, but why would anyone entertain a cold caller to any degree? In my experience there's a 0% chance it will be useful or a good deal, and a very high likelyhood it's an outright scam.
I do think it's good to be polite to anyone who calls, but it doesn't matter what they say or ask, the answer is always a polite "Please don't call me again."
I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. I understand why SPAM works - because it has a very small barrier to entry and it works on the idea of converting a small fraction of messages sent. But cold-calling takes man-hours and I can only imagine it's sole purpose is to catch individuals that simply would rather pay you to end the call rather than say "no."
Even worse is door-to-door sales. My neighborhood has big "no soliciting" signs at the entrances, but at certain times of the year we get huge swaths of salesmen and it's typically for the exact same services at different times of year. Once I was working on my boat late at night in my garage with the door halfway open. I had a pesticide service salesman zip up my driveway on a segway and come inside my garage and start pitching. I couldn't help but to lose my stuff on him. Do these tactics really work? Is it a certain demographic? Because I just don't grok.
Yes, they work. Cold calling and similar methods are all about the the numbers so even if you are immune to them, enough people aren't. Pesticides isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps you'd be more swayed by Doctors without Borders soliciting donations for aid to Gaza or something? You want to tell Jenny the volunteer you're so cheap so can't make a $5 donation? And before you know it you have signed up for a $10 monthly donation. Jenny will send you a thank you card in the mail. :) Couple the emotional manipulation with some insistence and aggressiveness and you'll have lots of sales.
BTW, I don't think you are immune. The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.
I have to disagree on that point. I have a no soliciting sign. It is an IQ test - I don't do business with people who can't or won't read the sign. I used to work in sales and had to deal with rejection enough that I have absolutely no problem asking people if they can read the sign and closing the door in their face if they start to argue that what they are doing isn't "soliciting" for some technical reason.
And yet if I showed up with exactly what you need in my hand at a reasonable price you wouldn't even think about the sign. The sign doesn't mean anything.
It’s wild to me people can say things like this so confidently. I’ve said no to everything my entire life. I don’t care what you’re offering, I’m already seething with rage that I have to talk to you. If I want something I’ll look for it same rules as avoiding phishing.
Really? If you're hungry and your coworker shows up with a pizza you just tell them to fuck off?
:wave:
Hey, the rest of the thread is over here. It looks like you moved the goalposts so far away you might be lost.
Not really, it's exactly my point. If you're a game collector and I show up with a game at a good price, that's a sale. If I pull into your driveway with the classic car you're looking for the sale is on the table. The sign means nothing, what matters is what you've got and how much it'll cost.
I would assume you’re screwing me and turn you down. If you’ve got enough margin to do sales that way, you’re screwing me, even if I can’t see it. It’s a no.
Everybody makes a margin, that's how the free market works.
But let's say you're a communist and I show up with a compound and a few followers, I suspect we have a deal to discuss regardless of the sign ;)
You could be offering hundred dollar bills for my garbage - I wouldn't even listen.
Everybody wants something and everybody has a price they'll pay for it.
Not from random strangers soliciting it. The chance that they are going to scam you is much too high to trust anything they offer.
Yes, it would mean something, and, yes, I would think about the sign. In fact, I did this about a month ago to someone who was selling a service I was actively in the market for. As I said, and I can only say this to you again, I can't understand it for you: the sign is an IQ test. I will not do business with someone who cannot or will not read the sign.
Even in such a situation – and that's actually happened before – I'd still say no and buy the product from a competitor, even if that means paying twice as much.
Also, the last time a doctors without borders person showed up, I tried pressuring her into joining a local protest a few days later until she got uncomfortable and decided to leave.
All types of forceful advertising – be that online ads or door-to-door salesmen – are absolute bullshit and shouldn't exist in a civilized society.
My doorbell is labeled "no soliciting" for a reason.
My opinion in recent years is that, completely by accident, we made the internet more secure then the phone system.
On the internet we have - for it's faults - the DNS and X.509 certificate systems. When I go to my bank's website, I know it's my bank.
We desperately need telecommunications to implement the same thing - i.e. businesses must present a valid cryptographic certificate which ties back to their registration number when using the phone system.
At the very least, so someone claiming to be a business would have a clear "invalid certificate" message displayed on the receiver.
Could individuals implement this on top of the current phone system?
E.g., each call starts with an attempted modem conversation to validate certificates, keys, etc.
And then the call is forwarded to the recipient's actual phone depending on rules related to that first step.
Not disagreeing that it must work, however, I think immunity is possible with a simple heuristic: Say no to all inbounds.
Or more specifically, if you get a call and it's not from someone you know then you simply hang up. Relevant information comes from you seeking it out, not the other way around.
I have personally never bought / donated anything from / to a cold-caller or a door-to-door salesman. At most it might pique my interest into doing my own research into the field/product and seek out the market leader on my own.
I disagree with the last statement. I have seen a handful of people close to me get scammed and have developed a “no thank you” attitude to everything.
Want to donate to save this or that? No thank you
Want this super great deal on this awesome thing? No thank you
Want free money? No thank you
If I want something I’ll Google it and do some research and then just get that thing. I’m glad to overpay to do things my way. Nothing would change my mind. Ever.
For privacy sake, and having encountered too many scammers, I have a hard rule about never giving money or personal info to any request, for any reason. If it's something I want to buy or participate in, I will follow up through other channels after some online research. If it's a business I already buy from, still a scam, I will use their website on my own. If it is emotionally charged or urgent, it is definitely a scam.
The most manipulated I've been in recent years is when I actually feel bad for the salesperson because their job sucks so much.
I'm immune because I don't answer my phone if you're not in my limited contacts list, and if you're an unknown number, you automatically go straight to voicemail.
Drastic measures like this had to be taken because I had a DBA for awhile and foolishly listed my actual number with the business. Basically my number is forever 'on the list', so, I made my own list.
Of course, if you're on my list and you call asking for ten bucks, well, I'll probably give it to you.
Incorrect - I'm immune because I presume 100% of solicitations are scams and behave as such. I don't listen to solicitations from anyone. I will just hang up, end the conversation, walk away, or close the door.
Even if I did listen to a solicitation and I was interested in the product or giving to the cause I would never actually buy anything, remember, I am presuming Jenny is a scammer. Jenny isn't getting any money from me no matter what she's selling.
We had such a visit recently; we were so appalled at the very idea that DwB would stoop so low as to send door-to-door solicitors around the town, that we immediately assumed this person was scoping the block for a potential break-in. Because he asked about our neighbor and we accidentally let it slip that he's away, we put up a hidden surveillance camera[0] overlooking the stairway and both our doors' for a couple days, just in case someone decides to come back at night. We also immediately queried Doctors Without Borders about this, warning them about a potential crime done using their brand.
Imagine our surprise where Doctors Without Borders responded to confirm that the person who visited us was, in fact, legitimately soliciting donations for them, and that they actually do door-to-door. Something in me died that day.
--
[0] - We repurposed a nanny cam for this, where by "nanny cam" I mean Ubiquiti G4 Instant, because the only way you can get a baby camera these days that doesn't send videos of your kids to random third-party servers is by buying industrial surveillance hardware.
A lot of people are gullible and/or socially have trouble saying "no" to people. I think cold calling and door-to-door sales preys on that. I have elderly family members who hate getting telemarketing cold calls, but they are from some time/culture where it's uncomfortable/difficult to directly tell someone "No, I'm not interested. Fuck off." That's often who's falling for these.
If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This is true for everything I've ever purchased. The fact that they have to push it on me proves that it's negative-EV and I have no problem just hanging up or closing the door. I guess not everyone finds this easy.
This assumes that you know everything there is to know about the world.
Customers often do not know that products or even product categories exist and need to be informed about them.
This idea that there is a solution to every problem if you only knew about it is a hallmark of these things. A lot of products are solutions looking for a problem, and they work very hard to make you think you'll have a problem if you don't buy the product.
As an example, a pest control company canvassed one of my friends' cul-de-sacs and essentially threatened to send all the pests into his house by poisoning them and repelling them from all the neighbors. If you have a pest problem exclusion is usually cheaper and better than poison or repellent. My wife paid for trapping and control on her house for years and then I went around over the course of a couple of weeks and closed the gaps in her siding that were added by telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and Comcast over the years. Mysteriously the pest problem went away after that.
So it's not always the case that the product being advertised is a net positive. Often it's net neutral or net negative. But the advertiser sure wants you to do it anyway.
Not all products and services are good, yes. But you don't spring forth from the womb knowing about all the good ones either.
I know ad and marketing folks tell themselves this to sleep at night, but it’s such a small factor in actual marketing and advertising that happens that it’s negligible.
That's what word of mouth is for. Ads and cold calls are not reliable sources of information, they are universally lies with some rare smidgen of truth sometimes hidden inside.
This is actually good. "Thanks for your time, the BRAWNDO CORPORATION won't call you again."
If you manage to end it in 3-8 seconds they can do 360 such calls in an hour. If the guy costs $12 per hour that works out to little over 3 cent.
And then, 20 months later a % of the "fuck off, leave me alone" guys need the product and remember how polite the call was. These usually do a good bit of research. They clearly call for information. If the price is good and they live 3 blocks away there are good odds they let you mow their lawn.
Too true, Many people, including myself, tend to say "ha, I have never bought any thing based on an ad or salesman" But often that is not the point, the point is to get it in your head that the product exists. and when you do need one, when faced with several indistinguishable items, you go for the one that feels familiar, the one that was infiltrated into your head months ago.
There is nothing super wrong with this, I mean, sales is necessary evil of doing business. necessary, because the whole point is to sell the thing, and evil, because you are coercing someone to do something they otherwise would not have done. But I think there is a healthy ratio here, and I try to make a point(often failing for the reason in the previous paragraph) to avoid products that lean too heavily on the unhealthy side of that ratio. those companies that believe sales is more important than the product.
If there are very few potential customers you just ask if it is at all possible to meet them. Same if you have only a few phone numbers from people who meet some set of requirements.
If there are millions of prospects and you cant filter by anything the point is to figure out that they don't need or want your product. Do it fast and politely.
Or not even that, the actual goal is to put in the calls without the negative psychological effect of mass rejection.
Arguably, you can start calling before writing the business plan when you only have a half finished idea. If you find just one prospect who says your product would be a wonderful thing have them be more specific. Like that it is much easier to stay motivated. Rejection is much harder if you are deeply invested, wrote the plan, wrote the code, found investors, hired employees.
While cold calling is heavily associated with shit products that doesn't mean your product is shit the moment you pick up the phone. Or maybe it is and you need to be told what is wrong with it repeatedly. You need to be talking with people who've made widgets for decades, they know their stuff.
Who knows, maybe you don't even need an idea. If you just call 1000 people in the funeral sector they can tell you what software they need. Then try weddings, laundromats, plumbers etc
Ask the dumb questions, what would be the right time to call someone in the $sectorName sector? What is their software budget? What are the repetitive administrative tasks? Is the sector patient and polite or do they tell you to fuck off and hang up?
This assumes it's a frictionless commodity. I want a pizza, I buy a pizza. I'm not interested in cold calls selling me pizza because if I wanted one, I would've already gone to the pizza shop down the road.
However, not everything is like this. Jobs, for example, are the opposite extreme. If someone cold-calls me asking me a job interview, well, this actually happened (not via a phone call) and led to me moving halfway around the world and having to learn a second language. Did I get scammed? Ich denke nicht.
In the realm of actual products, there are might be things you think about buying for a long time, and then eventually you see a good deal and buy it. Cold calls may help you find a good deal (I doubt it now - but back in the era when they weren't just spam) and then you may buy it.
There's also just advertising, especially for B2B where everything is more opaque. I have no idea where to get advanced Ethernet switch ASICs ("merchant silicon" as they call it) and you can't even Google it because the information isn't public. If I was a networking company and some switch ASIC company called me to tell me they make switch ASICs and here's our product selection guide, that would actually be welcome information. (I'm not one, but let's imagine I was.)
Elderly who are a prime market for a reason cash from retirement or life insurance and possible dementia.
I don't know how many times I have told my own mother not to pick up the phone. At best she knows at worst she says she's knows it's a scam but "just wants to see who it is". At least she knows not to press 1 although "why what would it do?" often comes up. She has no credit card or Internet so VISA and Amazon scams are obviously fake. Of the calls to her land line phone nearly 100% are scam calls.
Even my aunt who knows better called to ask my mother why [large company] needed her to get gift cards and not tell the police. The pressure of authority is strong for older people they can't fathom someone would dare impersonate police.
Don't fall for your elderly relatives behaviour if they seems smart and not in any way gullible they still may be. It's shocking how easily some people are fooled even ones you think would never fall for such scams.
The biggest door to door I get is from roofing/window where they canvas the neighborhood when doing a neighbor's house. I don't see the types of door to door where a car would drop off a couple of people to cover an area any more though. The No Soliciting is just not even a concern for them. It's not like it is enforceable in any way than a possibly rude door slamming in their face, and who cares about that?
"Hey, we're doing some work in your neighborhood and since our trucks and team are already there we can get you a great deal..."
I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow?
Or the other tactic where they say "you might have noticed my truck around as I've done some work for <neighbor> and will be at <other neighbor>'s house later..."
They name people whose door they knocked on, got their name, and likely rejected. But they use those names on other prospects which makes it sound like word of mouth, the best form of advertising! "Oh, if my neighbor is using this guy for <Service> he must be good"... Really a brilliant tactic that I bet fools some people.
The only guy I really admired (but didn't use because I thought his prices were far too high) was a guy going door to door offering to clean the outside windows. He wanted $10/window and I was like no way. I'm sure he got a few customers.
This seems obvious to me. My neighbours were getting their gutters cleaned and needed to come in to our garden, I asked the guys if they'd do ours as well. We didn't negotiate too hard on price, but I'm sure if pushed they would have taken something less than they'd charge to drive out and set up their equipment from scratch.
Maybe but probably not since they likely have jobs lined up for the next few months and aren’t about to work for less than they know they can get. It’s not like these guys are taking a horse and carriage 50 miles to a town to setup camp and try and sell out of whatever they’re peddling. They drive like 15 minutes. And they aren’t desperate for work.
Like a contractor like this wouldn't be willing to call up the customer they have scheduled next to say they were delayed for a reason other than what it actually was. However, on the flip side the expectation that they would drop everything just to service this one random request does seem a bit entitled.
What they would do is quote a much higher price since they’re aware the prospect isn’t price comparing and probably thinks they’re getting a deal because “they’re already here”. Why on Earth would they risk a higher priced job cancelling so they can do a lower priced job instead? lol! No. They will always do the better paying job first. If your contractor delays you it’s because another person is paying better.
I can see how "we're in your neighborhood so we thought you might want to use our services while we're here" could work. When I first moved into my house a few years ago, I wasn't familiar with tactics used by door to door salespeople, so I legitimately thought they were in the neighborhood and to save them on a second trip, they were seeing if they could drum up some additional business.
It was only after just about every door-to-door salesman used that excuse that I clued in that he's probably just a sales guy going to random neighborhoods and not actually one of the workers on the ground doing the job. Anyway, my point is most people don't think about these things, and especially not new homeowners, and probably just take their word.
Regarding the $10/window guy: I've been meaning to get out the ladder and clean all my windows myself but have been lazy, so if somebody actually showed up at my door, quoted a price, and said they'd do it right then and there, I might take them up on the offer. It's really just a numbers game for them.
For me it would have been over $400 since I have over 40 individual windows. I’d do it for $150, maybe $200. But not $400. I’m guessing he was able to pull a few though.
As for the “in the area” thing, it sounds logical at first and I’ve heard of neighbors negotiating a discount by getting the same job done by the same vendor but for jobs that take a good while if not multiple days, it just doesn’t matter.
Sometimes they actually do have equipment nearby, like a whole driveway repaving setup!
My "No Soliciting" sign actually worked very well with everyone except religious organizations. I still haven't figured out how to deter them aside from saying "I'll listen to your sales pitch about God only after you listen to my sales pitch about Satan."
Funny story, only once did that fail to get them to go away. In that case, it was a couple of Mormons and they took me up on the offer (leaving me wishing I actually had some sort of satanic sales pitch). They were very nice and pleasant company, and we ended up spending a couple of hours talking about the music of Frank Zappa.
But I didn't become a Mormon.
That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It reminds me of something I read that said if you are trying to sell something to someone and they're budging, ask them what it would take to change their mind. It's kind of a trick question, because often, whatever they request can be provided (or at least an equivalent), and once the salesperson provides it to them, it's very hard for them to say no. Most people want to appear consistent in their behaviors.
I was once offered a job across the country. I was flattered and a friend's recommendation was involved so I wanted to be polite. Instead of saying "no," I said thank you so much but looking at cost of living etc it would really take (to-me absurd offer, benefits, moving support, etc). They replied back: you drive a hard bargain but we can do that. Welcome aboard!
...shit. But yeah, I moved.
It really was. I think the reason they did and the others didn't was that they understood that I wasn't being serious, but the others thought I was. They laughed when I made the offer and said "sounds great!".
But, to your point, once they agreed I wasn't really in a position to say "no, never mind" without losing a bit of face.
Pro tip about Mormon missionaries (I've never been a Mormon but have been visited by them): the easiest way to get them to go away permanently is to get on their blacklist; they have them believe it or not. It is basically a "do not visit this house" list. And the easiest way to do that is to try to convert them to a different religion from Mormonism. If you're really good at it, they'll consider you a threat to their missionary work and blacklist you.
Now, you might be thinking "Nah, that sounds too much like work" but consider the benefit: you won't be blacklisted only by Mormon missionary trainer 1 and trainee 2, but no Mormon will ever visit your home ever again, because you are in their LDS ward.
While I really dislike anyone knocking on my door to sell me something, regardless of what that thing is, I do have to admit...
Mormons are usually the least objectionable of all the door-knockers. They tend to be genuinely friendly (or at least are able to fake it really well), respectful, don't do the "hard sell", and when I tell them I'm not interested, they honor my statement and leave without trying to change my mind or guilt-trip me.
Mormon salesmissionaries are trained to do whatever you want. They'll mow your lawn for you.
It sounds like you mostly didn’t have the problems they were pitching for. Imagine you urgently needed a pesticide guy! Maybe you’d too annoyed to buy but someone else might not. That’s my head canon on why google makes so much from search ads, they’re advertising to people who are trying to solve that specific problem right now.
My ex used to write car commercials, and I asked her why they all had that goofy tone and all sounded the same in a weird way. I told her that I couldn't remember a single dealership from all the commercials I'd heard, since that tone lets me filter them out. She told me that was just because I wasn't in the market for a car, and if I was, that same tone would make the car commercials stand out. Sure enough, when I was in the market for a car years later, I realized she was right!
Yep. HN (and similar community) conversations on this topic are always so snobby, but in reality all it points to is this community mostly wanting to buy different things. Everyone here is just as susceptible.
That's a great point. So much of advertising is just providing awareness, too. I may not be in the market for a particular product, but if I've heard their ads a million times, even if they're annoying, once I go to buy, I will probably give them more weight than some unknown brand, especially if it's a low stakes purchase.
My favorite door to door sales pitch is "buy a subscription to one of these magazines or I'll have to go back to doing drugs." I've had at least 3 of those salesmen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0
I think the answer is that much like an ad for a car or a mattress, the cold call isn't meant to take someone from zero to full interest, it's to find that one person in a hundred who's already thinking about it and just needs an opportunity presented to them.
How many random people would you need to ask before you found someone who was pondering joining a gym this very morning and would love some more info about it?
You're probably right, but I don't get this attitude at all. I could have a burning desire to do X and no time, if you called me out of the blue offering X, I'd still say no thank you, sorry. It's entirely in my DNA that cold calls are never good. Wonder why other people haven't developed this.
Many occupations involve receiving cold outreach and filtering for useful offers.
Think YouTubers receiving sponsorship offers, journalists getting leads, recruiters getting candidates, VCs finding start-ups, and car dealers getting inventory.
These people are often quite receptive to cold calls & emails if you can demonstrate credibility.
You know, I'm with you. Yet - I once had an ISP rep (Sonic) show up at my door letting me know that they're setting up 10Gbps fiber in the neighborhood and if I'm interested in getting 10x speed (was already on 1Gbps fiber from AT&T) at less than half the cost. I signed up on the spot, and I'm no stranger to saying no. So I suppose it's all about playing the numbers game looking for the right customer for that pitch.
Sometimes the right QUALIFIED cold call/email at the right time with the right pitch can be very effective.
The fact that cold calling was expensive was a signal that the caller was legitimate.
In the era where calling someone on the phone is cheap and highly optimized, getting a phone call is not a signal for quality.
But back in the 1980s that wouldn’t have been the case. If a human being picked up the phone and called you, you would be more inclined to listen to them, simply because you knew it was expensive for them to call and it happened infrequently. Phone spam didn’t become a thing until much later.
I did door to door selling in the US (as a Brit) as a summer job after graduating. The items weren't super expensive (maybe max $80 in the early '90s).
I wasn't very good at it, but some people did quite well out of it. Admittedly, only earning student-amounts. I don't think you could have fed a family on it.
If the tactic results in a return on investment, somebody will do it -- even if it makes them unwelcome at family reunions.
When the cost is extremely low -- spamming -- any return at all will justify it.
When the cost is low and the return is relatively high -- cold calling -- it will happen.
Only regulation and good enforcement of the regulation can stop these activities in a capitalist regime.
This pitch worked much better in the 80s and 90s when
A) most investors had a broker not just for advice, but because there was no easy way to trade individually or get live stock quotes until the internet was widespread and matured
B) telephone sales in general were more common then and less likely to be a scam (Stratton Oakmont and other boiler rooms played a large role in shifting public opinion on this)
C) The most desirable prospects (High Net Worth Individuals) were accustomed to dealing with legitimate brokers over the phone and being solicited by brokers from other legitimate firms in such a way
D) The markets were raging in such a way that everyone had FOMO and was dying to hear of a hot new tip
Almost nobody legitimate in the financial advising world acquires customers via cold call pitching anymore. Cold calling is still part of the toolkit for other sales niches (eg, tech sales) but it's a tough road with a low success rate.
Caller had to pay long distance costs at the time and really until you got in the later 90s early 2000's did you start seeing unlimited long distance everywhere.
Getting cold calls from random people way back then was super rate because it was expensive.
"Extremely cheap global telecommunications accessible to everyone" came with a lot of drawbacks we didn't consider at the time they started to become viable. Although all the spam in our inboxes should have been a clue.
Not exactly an advantage to pay a fee to a middleman. It's more like frictionless communication should be the default, and we had a period where friction accidentally acted as signal
I want frictionless communication with the people I've already communicated with, but very high friction communication with people I've never talked to before. I'd love a way to charge $10 to get into my inbox. If it ends up being a long lost friend or whatever, I'll Venmo them back the $10.
You can send everyone not on a list to spam and auto respond with a link to pay you $10 to get on the white list
should be doable
Not currently doable with phone calls.
From what I understand, the caller ID feature is completely useless. There is no willingness to implement rules that guarantee the number the call is coming from is the owner of the number. The best you can do is call them back and hope the routing doesn't get screwed up.
Depends on the circuit that you are dialling out onto.
I know where I work there are some rules about presenting whatever number you want on our trunk provider, but this is something they have put in place themselves with no "legal" reason for them to do it. We've been working with them for years so we are one of their trusted clients and have the ability to present any number we want as long as we have permission to do so from the number owner.
The fact its up to the trunk provider to put these rules in place and not just standard everywhere is wild to me.
This use case is actually the reason we have bitcoin, tho it's a shame it took off as a protest to banks instead of getting implemented as a functional anti-spam tool. To this day spam is regularly in my inbox and I have to check my spam folder for legitamate messages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
There's nothing stopping this from happening. Build encryption into the email protocols and hide the decrypt key behind a block chain that costs even $0.01 of a fungible token to access.
Well, no. That’s the reason we have hash cash (the pow algo for bitcoin)
Bitcoin itself, as with most early cryptocurrencies, is and was a protest against banks and centralized finance.
Ye imagine if you got 50c for each call or email you received not on a whitelist and the social contract was to refund it by pressing #1 after the call ended or whatever.
Pay numbers are a thing so I guess it should be doable.
Yes please. SMS too.
If I was your long lost friend I probably wouldn't pay the $10 upfront.
Not much of a friend then eh
You'll have to just to send your reply!
There’s lots of services like this that I have seen, including a popular one where you can donate $1 to a charity in order for your email to reach someone’s inbox.
You don't actually want frictionless communication. Frictionless communication will drown you in a mountain of spam.
A 'Frictionless' ability to transmit puts all the friction, pain, and negative externalities onto the recipient.
Friction is signal.
I recall I used to individually send snaps to like 30 friends each time, back before Snapchat invented Stories. I had to think a tiny bit, and put a tiny bit of effort, for each person. We lost that when people started posting to stories only.
No. We should have complete control on how much friction anybody gets to communicating with us. And frictionless should absolutely not be the default.
I mean if the signal isn't replaced by anything, then the onus is put on to the person receiving the call. If years ago, there was a barrier for an army of phone scammers from across the world throwing everything they can think of at an old person with borderline dementia, and suddenly that went away..I don't know how you can really justify the "frictionless communication" outside of a couple of options. A) "Well it's their fault, they should be on their guard all the time everyone is always trying to scam and manipulate you" -- (idk about you but this seems pretty grim and inhumane) B) "well it's a net benefit for ~someone~ so we should all be happy about it, and refer to A)"
With enough technological development we can make everything in the future like getting off from the airport train in a big third world city and surrounded by beggars and fraudsters. Robocalls, AI blogspam, Email, Facebook etc.
This is a great point. "More common" wasn't the best choice of words because it implies a higher frequency, which was not the case. "More acceptable/accepted/normalized" would have been better phrasing.
I mean, if you want to be pedantic about it, I suppose it depends on whether or not “telephone sales” implies something actually being sold.
Up until the early 90's if you wanted a stock price intraday, you had to call your broker. Your alternative was waiting until the morning and getting previous close from NYT or WSJ.
Totally.-
PS. Brings back memories. Won an US, national high school "paper trading" contest back in the day. Out of 14000 participants. Was quite proud ...
Trick to winning is to make a couple of insane bets that end up panning out, yeah?
Can't speak to that, but I remember spending hours and hours and hours pouring over stock listings after hours.-
I distinctly remember we used a newspaper that I think is still around called IBD "Investors Business Daily", and they had this system that worked really well ("C-A-N-S-L-I-M").-
And I remember pouring over thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of possibilities each day, and basically doing fundamental and technical analysis. I would filter out the candidates with broad technical analysis and then review the fundamentals of each, looking up each company on huge binders - yes, paper - from a subscription service the school had that had all financial and other info for all listed companies.-
And it worked out. At some point, I caught a few big ones that just went ballistic. And it worked out great. One of the things it did is it taught me the value of effort. And I distinctly remember another thing, too. I distinctly remember being called by the organization to let me know I was winning, having won, all but certainly.-
And the day after that, right before the closing of the ranking, running out of trades - because one had a limited amount of trades to perform during the competition. So I could not close a position I had, which had earned me a lot, so I wound up at a loss after having won, which, and I shall never forget this, ended up with my teacher basically saying, "I have seen how much effort you put into this, so I will give you -my account- to handle, so you can continue trading, so you will always remember that hard work and effort pays off in the end".-
In the end I did loose my ranking and with too little time could not catch up, even with the second account.-
So, I lost, but - in a way - I won, because I "won" that lesson ...
And gush bump it, it's a lesson I've never forgotten.-
So thank you, Mr. Brown.-
Did you become a trader?
Ah! The "fundamental" question :)
No, I did not.-
PS. Funny thing is I remember being asked, by the organization - whether I was going to go into finance at the time. Of course, I emphatically said that I was.-
I guess "life" took over. It is what happens to you while you make other plans, after all ...
... but the lesson(s) learned have remained with me.-
I remember doing something similar with a website in high school. Some people made reasonable investments and did well. Some people made insane bets that panned out and did better. The winner correctly guessed that the site wouldn't properly account for stock splits and merges and went hunting for stocks that were about to merge.
Ahh, the "Stock Market Game". It still exists: https://www.stockmarketgame.org/
It's more sophisticated now, and like you, when I was in school (middle school in the late 80s), we just tracked our portfolio performance using daily newspapers. I remember buying a couple of symbols for companies I'd never even heard of, and knew nothing about. Probably not the best that this was a thing led by our social studies teacher.
Remember, this was not too far removed from the era of https://youtu.be/2MXqb1a3Apg?si=J7Q_9hBYin2KWKwN
In our world of limited source credibility and disdain for expertise, this video and the script do seem like throwbacks to another time.
Also worth noting companies like Cutco use a similar script and a cold-calling approach, it doesn't work nearly as well as it used to though because most people don't answer numbers they don't know, so they train people to leave a message and say that a close friend (the reference) told you to call them
Go ask the elderly why they love cold callers and scammers. It is beyond my comprehension how their minds work. If Moses split the sea in front of their own eyes they wouldn't trust him to lend him five dollars, but as soon as there's a scammer on the phone or on the internet, wallets open wide.
Well, that's where the word "phony" comes from.
That's a phony etymology of "phony", which predates telephony.
I would guess many of them are lonely and are just happy for the attention.
My father made a friend, an elderly man, who was being taken advantage of by some locals. Basically helping themselves to anything in his house, asking for cash, drives places, etc. And he was glad to give it because he had no one else in his life at the time. What's money with no one to share it with? Finally met my Dad, who, thankfully, got his friend to move out-of-state to live with his only surviving family before he passed
I remember getting a cold call in 2014 from (supposedly) an investment company in Hong Kong. I was curious to hear what kind of pitch they had for someone like me living in Finland.
They claimed to have access to a block of NVidia stock available at a discount to the market price (I think it was around 10-15% off) and they needed investor funds immediately to buy the whole block. The minimum investment was $10k. When I sounded interested, my call was moved to a different young man who had a much more aggressive tone. That's where I hung up.
After the call, I remember thinking: "This is actually a good investment idea. I should buy some NVDA, but not from these weirdos in Hong Kong."
— Dear reader, did I buy the stock then? Of course not. Looks like NVDA is up about 260x since that call. (Insane. I had to double-check that.)
Imagine if someone actually sent $10k to this cold-calling Hong Kong company and just forgot about it. Now that $10k would be worth 2.6 million dollars. You see NVidia in the news and get excited about cashing out to buy a mansion... You call their phone in Hong Kong. "This number has been disconnected." No trace online of the investment advisor who got your $10k. That would sting far worse than just realizing early on that you'd been scammed.
This is a very common active Bitcoin "investment" scam today.
Are you saying that now that BlackRock's CEO is endorsing it, El Savlador's president is buying it as reserve for the country and Trump promising to use Bitcoin as a strategic reserve, it could go 260x and that, hence, if we get such a scammy phone call we should hung up and open an account on Coinbase (a HN unicorn btw) to buy Bitcoins?
Probably because things are a bit different now than in the 80's and 90's?
1. We used to do a lot more business over phone calls back in those days, so people were more willing to entertain cold phone calls
2. Technology has allowed automating phone call scams, so we get a lot more of those nowadays
3. Calling internationally is dirt cheap now, so you can have call centers full of scammers in cheap countries
4. Everyone is using text messaging with their friends and family so phone calls are more likely to be scams
I remember every other TV commercial ending with an address for where to send my self-addressed stamped envelope.
To expand on point 3, unlimited long distance and VOIP. At least before 1984 things like long distance calls where HYPER expensive via AT&T domination of the long distance market. After the breakup the market slowly trended to unlimited long distance.
After that point it required the invention of high speed internet and compression algorithms. Calling internationally over dedicated channels remained insanely expensive even after long distance mostly disappeared. Now the foreign call is handled via IP until it reaches the country of origin and is dumped into POTS via a local VOIP provider.
It surprises me too. When my current company was getting off the ground last year I was cold calling to find our first customers for our MVP. This is in the B2B software space. I would make about 70 calls a day and it would shock me how many people not only pick up, but stay on the phone to hear me out. I landed a number of accounts this way to get the momentum rolling.
And it was awkward for me too, I don't even have a background in sales. I'm sure a talented salesperson could have done much better than me at retaining their attention after the first opening sentences.
I think it's more welcome in B2B transactions because there are less ways to find products and less transactions in general. Whatever you're selling, there's a good chance the company didn't even know they wanted it until you reached out to them.
It goes like this at trade shows too. I can find the available types of pizza by visiting any pizza shop, but to find the available types of 5G base station I'll probably have to attend Mobile World Congress, or they'll have to discover me (if I'm a more publicly visible and quite big company) and then call me.
Retirees are bored and want to feel like they are part of something
Even with modern marketing like tv ads, display ads, or even paper mailers the expected conversion rate is tiny. It's always a numbers game. If you have a sales script that captures 0.7% of people who hear it while your competition is capturing 0.4% then you have a huge advantage. But you still have to reach thousands of targets to sustain a business.
There was once a recruiter who cold called me and I ended up taking the job that they reached out about, so I guess it works sometimes?
Obviously recruiting is a bit different, because of course I have to go interview at a place and whatnot, but it's the only example of where a cold call worked on me.
Most cons like that are have huge failure rates. But all it takes is one or two to fall for it for it to be worthwhile.
I think cold calling works decently for a certain subset of business people. There are folks out there that have genuine needs that salespeople can meet. At my last job, I didn't have authority to buy nor any real interest in the risk that such an opportunity could mean for the business. My boss, on the other hand, had lots of authority and would occasionally listen to pitches because they could benefit both parties. 95% of the time things didn't go further than the first call, but every now and then it would be a good fit. Anyone more senior than him probably didn't have the time for cold calls, but there is a sweet spot in the org where they can be effective. Since my boss had the ear of the budget setters, he could pitch them the idea and reap the benefit. Like other commenters have pointed out, cold calling and spam aren't so different in the sense that if they never worked, nobody would do them.
For example, I worked with with the woman in charge of our modeling team. She had a big issue managing a growing, international workflow. They used spreadsheets when the team was smaller, but that solution didn't scale and was starting to show cracks. Her boss gave her significant budget to fix the problem, but she had no idea how to spend it. I told her that one call to a Jira sales rep (or equivalent) and all her problems would evaporate. One call could have potentially saved our firm tons of money and provided another firm with a very good, sticky customer. As far as I'm aware, she was so overworked as-is that she never reached out/researched it.
It’s a lot better than the scam calls I get where an Indian guy says “Do you remember signing up for x, you won!” on a scratchy connection where I can clearly hear everyone else in the crowded room calling other people.
Cold callers were less of a problem 30 years ago. Now the entire US phone system is open to competition. You might think that was a good thing, but it's also what allows cheap VOIP calls appearing to be from "local" numbers to bother you night and day.
Bring back Ma Bell. She wouldn't have put up with this crap.
Out of curiosity, why?
It might be (probably is) my asocial personality and the fact that getting interrupted is very triggering for me.*
But while I am amenable to the argument that there is no use in being rude to someone who cold calls, I can't help but pick on your choice of words: "good to be polite to anyone"
Is it morally good to be polite to someone who wants to harm you? Perhaps if they are physically threatening you and politeness is part of your deescalation strategy. But a cold caller? I like to believe that there is a special rung of hell reserved for cold callers (right next to lawyers and people who talk at the theatre).
I don't go out of my way to be mean or nasty to them because there is nothing of value that can come from that.
But they certainly don't deserve a "please" in front of "delete this number click" in my personal opinion.
* - While I'm not a huge fan of smart phones, they do have one killer feature that has won me over: the ability to set the default ring tone to silence and assign people in my contacts a ring tone that will actually get my attention.
Old people are lonely. It’s not complicated.
Cold calling still works today.
People are gullible and want to believe the best in others. Cynics don’t make good victims.
Not efficient compared to what?
Compared to online marketing? Or cold emailing? Or talking to random people in the street?
I can't actually imagine a more efficient way to get a significant nr of sales from strangers than cold calling personally.
Of course contacting people who already know you is better, but the problem for a business is that in most/all cases that list of people who know you is not long enough.
I'd like for you to meet my dad.
This is like asking who would ever click on an online ad, yet they sell billions of dollars of merchandise every year. It's a numbers game.
After we've called you 50 times using different company names the deals get really competitive. Is Monday good for you?