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I hate getting cold calls. So I avoid doing it to other people. Yes that makes me less of a salesman. So be it. Tangent: In India you can report unsolicited s

I hate getting cold calls. So I avoid doing it to other people. Yes that makes me less of a salesman. So be it. Tangent: In India you can report unsolicited sales calls to a central (government) authority, where you can sign up to get on a "Do Not Disturb" list, and get any sales caller who ignores this fined, and eventually get his number disconnected etc. The system isn't perfect, and there are some impressive hacks to bypass it, but the situation now is much better than before these regulations existed. Where one used to get multiple spammers a day, now weeks and months can go by before getting one (who I promptly report). My number must be on some shared "cranky idiot who hates cold callers" list, I almost never get these calls now. A minister was interrupted in parliament while presenting the annual national budget (iirc) by someone who wanted to sell him a credit card(!), which led to this regulation. And it is a godsend. Cold callers should all burn in hellfire (imo)

sremani 9y ago
Are you an entrepreneur? Have you built a business? When things are done to extreme sure.. the slimy salesman or the spammy robo-calls are a nuisance. Take a list of the world's 400 billionaires and ask them who has NOT Cold-Called? My guess is its less than 10. Or to put it another may, most successful people Cold-called, their "heros" or experts in their field or successful people in town etc. So I disagree the way you put cold-calling. If you want to start a business, I strongly suggest you to change you attitude towards Sales. Unfortunately, Engineers have this unjustified hate towards Sales, not every sales pitch or call is unethical or pushy.
- hobofan 9y ago
  Given that 20% of the people on the billionaires list were already on there by inhereting the money, I'd be willing to take that bet.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  Yes, all cold calling is horrible and unethical. Whether or not it works is besides the point.
  - goatherders 9y ago
    Horrible and unethical? Goodness.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    This is an interesting perspective. I agree that some types of cold-calling are terrible, like if you sell credit cards and just randomly call anyone who might want a credit card. This is untargeted, and if everyone who sold general-purpose goods did it, we'd all be inundated. In the B2B context, things seem a little different, especially for startups who have products that are not known. If you work in a particular field and someone calls you to tell you about their new product that is relevant to your company and your specific role, that seems much less terrible than the untargeted calling described above. And in some cases, you may actually be glad that you were called. I don't think it's fair to say that "all cold calling is horrible and unethical", since it can be done in very targeted ways. And small startups in particular (who are here on HN) often try to cold-call in as targeted a way as possible—because when you're spending CEO time on the phone, you're very sensitive to wasting anyone's time. At the end of the day, it comes down to balancing the benefits to people who are glad you called and the detriment to people whose time you wasted. If you're not targeted, you're likely a net negative to society. If you're very targeted (as many small startups are), there's a much greater chance you're a net positive.
  - amorphid 9y ago
    I like getting contacted about things that don't stink. Some things don't sell themselves.
- WingH 9y ago
  You can be an entrepreneur and still hate receiving cold calls. Just like you can be a dentist and hate getting tooth fillings. Or you can be a surgeon, and hate having surgery.
52-6F-62 9y ago
Another one that seems increasingly prominent in the tech/web space is cold email newsletter subscriptions. I occasionally receive emails from lists specific to trendy-looking SaaS/PaaS products that I've never even heard of. Just the same the emails will start rolling in telling me that my wait was up and their launch is just beginning and "come grab a promo-price for one month" if I sign on for a year, etc. When I first received anything like that, I thought maybe I'd just forgotten that I'd seen it and asked for updates— but no. After seeing more upon more, I realized that I was just getting spammed. Except none of it gets filtered out, because they don't carry the markings of what I'll lazily classify as 'traditional' spam.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  What's the most effective response in this situation? Officially opting out and then marking the "I never signed up for this list" button? I've wondered what threshold an emailer has to hit before MailChimp or whomever will give them the boot. Perhaps it's just better to mark as spam in Gmail or in your mail client so that their future email will be more likely to be marked as spam (for you and for everyone else). I've also wondered if there was a way to connect email spammers to each other. Like send an email to two spammers who had both emailed me and try to engage them with each other. I haven't figured out an elegant/useful way to do this yet.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    You're probably right about marking them spam. Often I'm just trying to be quick so I unsubscribe, check this "never signed up" option if it exists, and carry on. It would be fun to toy with them, but really I just wonder how they think others will look favourably upon their business when they try to make a sale that way. Maybe not everybody feels the same way, but it just seems cheap. Then again, my cell provider just initiated texting me advertisements randomly so I guess if it can be done, it will be done...

sremani 9y ago

Are you an entrepreneur? Have you built a business? When things are done to extreme sure.. the slimy salesman or the spammy robo-calls are a nuisance. Take a list of the world's 400 billionaires and ask them who has NOT Cold-Called? My guess is its less than 10. Or to put it another may, most successful people Cold-called, their "heros" or experts in their field or successful people in town etc. So I disagree the way you put cold-calling. If you want to start a business, I strongly suggest you to change you attitude towards Sales. Unfortunately, Engineers have this unjustified hate towards Sales, not every sales pitch or call is unethical or pushy.

hobofan 9y ago
Given that 20% of the people on the billionaires list were already on there by inhereting the money, I'd be willing to take that bet.
Nullabillity 9y ago
Yes, all cold calling is horrible and unethical. Whether or not it works is besides the point.
- goatherders 9y ago
  Horrible and unethical? Goodness.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. I agree that some types of cold-calling are terrible, like if you sell credit cards and just randomly call anyone who might want a credit card. This is untargeted, and if everyone who sold general-purpose goods did it, we'd all be inundated. In the B2B context, things seem a little different, especially for startups who have products that are not known. If you work in a particular field and someone calls you to tell you about their new product that is relevant to your company and your specific role, that seems much less terrible than the untargeted calling described above. And in some cases, you may actually be glad that you were called. I don't think it's fair to say that "all cold calling is horrible and unethical", since it can be done in very targeted ways. And small startups in particular (who are here on HN) often try to cold-call in as targeted a way as possible—because when you're spending CEO time on the phone, you're very sensitive to wasting anyone's time. At the end of the day, it comes down to balancing the benefits to people who are glad you called and the detriment to people whose time you wasted. If you're not targeted, you're likely a net negative to society. If you're very targeted (as many small startups are), there's a much greater chance you're a net positive.
- amorphid 9y ago
  I like getting contacted about things that don't stink. Some things don't sell themselves.
WingH 9y ago
You can be an entrepreneur and still hate receiving cold calls. Just like you can be a dentist and hate getting tooth fillings. Or you can be a surgeon, and hate having surgery.

52-6F-62 9y ago

Another one that seems increasingly prominent in the tech/web space is cold email newsletter subscriptions. I occasionally receive emails from lists specific to trendy-looking SaaS/PaaS products that I've never even heard of. Just the same the emails will start rolling in telling me that my wait was up and their launch is just beginning and "come grab a promo-price for one month" if I sign on for a year, etc. When I first received anything like that, I thought maybe I'd just forgotten that I'd seen it and asked for updates— but no. After seeing more upon more, I realized that I was just getting spammed. Except none of it gets filtered out, because they don't carry the markings of what I'll lazily classify as 'traditional' spam.

gnicholas 9y ago
What's the most effective response in this situation? Officially opting out and then marking the "I never signed up for this list" button? I've wondered what threshold an emailer has to hit before MailChimp or whomever will give them the boot. Perhaps it's just better to mark as spam in Gmail or in your mail client so that their future email will be more likely to be marked as spam (for you and for everyone else). I've also wondered if there was a way to connect email spammers to each other. Like send an email to two spammers who had both emailed me and try to engage them with each other. I haven't figured out an elegant/useful way to do this yet.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  You're probably right about marking them spam. Often I'm just trying to be quick so I unsubscribe, check this "never signed up" option if it exists, and carry on. It would be fun to toy with them, but really I just wonder how they think others will look favourably upon their business when they try to make a sale that way. Maybe not everybody feels the same way, but it just seems cheap. Then again, my cell provider just initiated texting me advertisements randomly so I guess if it can be done, it will be done...