5 ms·

Ha, I write telemarketing support systems for a living and feel your pain. It might not be sexy work but sure helps to grease the wheels of commerce and put foo

by tedeh 8y ago

Ha, I write telemarketing support systems for a living and feel your pain. It might not be sexy work but sure helps to grease the wheels of commerce and put food on the table.

hirundo 8y ago
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.
Rjevski 8y ago
Telemarketing does not help grease the wheels of commerce. It helps grease the wheels of scamming. Commerce is when people buy stuff they do need and that provides value to them. Telemarketing is conning people by pushing them to buy shit they never needed and that won’t provide any value to them. It is not commerce, it is scamming. I’m not criticizing you for doing the necessary things to put food on the table, but please don’t justify it by saying it helps commerce.
- austhrow743 8y ago
  Nothing about conning or no value in the definition of telemarketing. It's just outbound sales. Some of it is scams, plenty isn't.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    I disagree. You wouldn’t need “outbound sales” if you had a product that people wanted. They would be calling you with their wallets open if it was the case. You only need outbound sales/scammers if you have a product that you think that people need even though they’ve been living without just fine for ages. > Some of it is scams, plenty isn't. Please give me some examples of how some are scams but plenty are not. From personal experiences it's always been the opposite for me. I feel like telemarketing is only used where the product/deal is so bad/unneeded that it wouldn't sell through normal, respectful channels, requiring the use of a telemarketer to put pressure onto the innocent victim to push them towards a purchase.
    - austhrow743 8y ago
      People aren't omniscient. People at best look for known unknowns, but not unknown unknowns. Particularly when it comes to tech, that covers a very broad area of things that they don't know are possible. The idea that if you need to tell people about it for them to know about it and potentially buy it, then the offer is a scam, is baffling to me. As for inbound leads, their existence doesn't stop outbound sales being productive. they're not mutually exclusive at all. In fact they're complimentary. Outbound sales results in customers, having customers creates awareness of product in the market, people that hear about it through those customers become inbound leads. Regarding people living fine without the new product. You're just arguing against progress there. Which as a definite luddite and potential anarcho-primitivist, I am all for. But "scam" isn't a synonym for just "bad", and any definition that includes just creating needs would have to include most of modern commerce. Definitely including any and all software developers.
      - Rjevski 8y ago
        People are not yet omniscient, I agree. But lately there's this wonderful new tool called the Internet which allows people to become omniscient as far as product discovery is concerned. If you have a product that solves problem X, make a website, blog posts, send samples to journalists for reviews, etc about how your product solves problem X, and let search engines & organic growth do the rest. > You're just arguing against progress there I'm not arguing against progress. I'm arguing against the (potential) progress of your wallet, which is not at all correlated with progress of humanity as a whole. Again, if a product was truly progress then organic growth would be more than enough. As far as your wallet is concerned, you can make it progress through other, less annoying means, and actually create value in the process.
        austhrow743 8y ago
        I'm definitely getting the impression that you're just asserting that outbound sales is "bad" in some general sense rather than specifically that its use means the business is a scam. Microsoft has one of the highest quality sales teams there is. Many of which are outbound focused. Do you consider Microsoft products to be scams? Most (all?) silicon Valley b2b startups utilise outbound sales heavily. /r/sales is full of people either in or looking to get in to saas. It's basically only behind medical devices in preferred products to sell as a salesperson right now. Do you believe the majority of b2b software companies are scams? If so, what is a scam to you? Sorry for the clarification request, and I will assume good faith if you get back with a reasonable answer, but I just can't see how the lines of argument you're putting forward pertain to your original assertion.

by tedeh 8y ago

Ha, I write telemarketing support systems for a living and feel your pain. It might not be sexy work but sure helps to grease the wheels of commerce and put food on the table.

hirundo 8y ago

Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.

Rjevski 8y ago

Telemarketing does not help grease the wheels of commerce. It helps grease the wheels of scamming. Commerce is when people buy stuff they do need and that provides value to them. Telemarketing is conning people by pushing them to buy shit they never needed and that won’t provide any value to them. It is not commerce, it is scamming. I’m not criticizing you for doing the necessary things to put food on the table, but please don’t justify it by saying it helps commerce.

austhrow743 8y ago
Nothing about conning or no value in the definition of telemarketing. It's just outbound sales. Some of it is scams, plenty isn't.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  I disagree. You wouldn’t need “outbound sales” if you had a product that people wanted. They would be calling you with their wallets open if it was the case. You only need outbound sales/scammers if you have a product that you think that people need even though they’ve been living without just fine for ages. > Some of it is scams, plenty isn't. Please give me some examples of how some are scams but plenty are not. From personal experiences it's always been the opposite for me. I feel like telemarketing is only used where the product/deal is so bad/unneeded that it wouldn't sell through normal, respectful channels, requiring the use of a telemarketer to put pressure onto the innocent victim to push them towards a purchase.
  - austhrow743 8y ago
    People aren't omniscient. People at best look for known unknowns, but not unknown unknowns. Particularly when it comes to tech, that covers a very broad area of things that they don't know are possible. The idea that if you need to tell people about it for them to know about it and potentially buy it, then the offer is a scam, is baffling to me. As for inbound leads, their existence doesn't stop outbound sales being productive. they're not mutually exclusive at all. In fact they're complimentary. Outbound sales results in customers, having customers creates awareness of product in the market, people that hear about it through those customers become inbound leads. Regarding people living fine without the new product. You're just arguing against progress there. Which as a definite luddite and potential anarcho-primitivist, I am all for. But "scam" isn't a synonym for just "bad", and any definition that includes just creating needs would have to include most of modern commerce. Definitely including any and all software developers.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      People are not yet omniscient, I agree. But lately there's this wonderful new tool called the Internet which allows people to become omniscient as far as product discovery is concerned. If you have a product that solves problem X, make a website, blog posts, send samples to journalists for reviews, etc about how your product solves problem X, and let search engines & organic growth do the rest. > You're just arguing against progress there I'm not arguing against progress. I'm arguing against the (potential) progress of your wallet, which is not at all correlated with progress of humanity as a whole. Again, if a product was truly progress then organic growth would be more than enough. As far as your wallet is concerned, you can make it progress through other, less annoying means, and actually create value in the process.
      - austhrow743 8y ago
        I'm definitely getting the impression that you're just asserting that outbound sales is "bad" in some general sense rather than specifically that its use means the business is a scam. Microsoft has one of the highest quality sales teams there is. Many of which are outbound focused. Do you consider Microsoft products to be scams? Most (all?) silicon Valley b2b startups utilise outbound sales heavily. /r/sales is full of people either in or looking to get in to saas. It's basically only behind medical devices in preferred products to sell as a salesperson right now. Do you believe the majority of b2b software companies are scams? If so, what is a scam to you? Sorry for the clarification request, and I will assume good faith if you get back with a reasonable answer, but I just can't see how the lines of argument you're putting forward pertain to your original assertion.