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Well, to be blunt, so what? That sucks for sales stuff, it's not like I said conferences are the only things that need to change. Maybe the practices there need
by mehrdadn 7y ago
Well, to be blunt, so what? That sucks for sales stuff, it's not like I said conferences are the only things that need to change. Maybe the practices there need to change there just like for conferences and other stuff. Nobody said it's easy or nice or effective or whatever for humans to do long distance. Just that you need to start sacrificing somewhere and I sure as heck find it more reasonable and humane to start at business sales trips than family visits.
- sokoloff 7y ago"So what?" Incentives. If subgroup A doesn't travel for sales, subgroup B who travels will likely outcompete them by more than the cost of the travel, or subgroup C who is large enough to have many local offices will outcompete A, making it harder for new entrants to a market to compete and concentrating business activities in select cities (which is great if you're rich enough to live in those prosperous cities). I'm not making moral value judgments here; I'm making economic value judgments as that drives much more behavior I think.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWhatever you do, either some subgroup will find a way to take advantage of it, or you'll find a way to mess with taxes and incentives and prices enough to mostly compensate for the side effects. That's not a counterargument for a solution, it's already a given in the problem statement. If you find some magical way to avoid any and all collateral economic damage, I'm all for it, but I don't see why people should just wait for others to come up with miracles that may never come just because some businesses will inevitably win and others will inevitably lose.
- seem_2211 7y agoAs someone in sales, I think I would be EXTREMELY supportive of all of my competition deciding to do the eco conscious thing, and declining to fly to clients. It'd be great. No chance that businesses will stop paying for people to travel. And their budgets are much bigger than individuals visiting family. Take a look at the entire private jet market - basically a very small wedge of HNWs and lots of executives flying for business.
- mehrdadn 7y agoYeah, it'd be great, until your clients stop viewing it as a noble thing and start seeing it as a disgusting and wasteful thing. Then your competition will be happier than you. People's expectations are malleable. It's not easy to change them, but it's necessary and it's possible. And once that happens, the game will change, and it will force you to change your tune accordingly.
- seem_2211 7y agoI'll happily take the opposite side of that bet.
- mehrdadn 7y agoThe opposite side of that bet? So you won't change your tune and you'll happily continue to do this even after your clients find it disgusting? Be my guest I guess...
- CalRobert 7y agoIt needs to be viewed as distasteful as holding sales meetings in a strip club.
- freeone3000 7y agoI have friends who have done this this year. Good luck with that.