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I have a friend that makes 450k running a door to door solar panel sales team. Two years ago he was making about minimum wage. There’s a huge premium for being

I have a friend that makes 450k running a door to door solar panel sales team. Two years ago he was making about minimum wage. There’s a huge premium for being willing to knock on strangers doors

NikolaNovak 4y ago
There's always big money in immoral shady dealings. Sorry, I know that's snarky and rude. And there's definitely a big gray line of morality in life. They're not actively murdering anybody. Not directly. But their moral framework by definition is drastically different than mine - we have chosen our own spots on that gray line and they're incompatible. (I've been exposed to various sides of that line, including being recruited and going through brainwashing I mean training for various door to door sales gigs).
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  It’s not inherently immoral to be in sales. If you actually do believe that solar panels are a good investment for a house and believe the company you’re working for does good work, working to inform other people of this would be from your view a moral positive. In practice of course it is easy to end up lying to increase your paycheck, or fooling yourself into believing your company is good because your paycheck relies on it. But if someone chooses a good company and doesn’t lie to potential clients, I think that’s fine.
  - dghughes 4y ago
    At an old job we had to go to a "retreat" of a sort where the sales guys and technicians all schmoozed. The company had made sales do tech work and techs do sales work neither side liked that. Sales guys just ignored it and called techs on a Friday afternoon to take the tech call they didn't have time for (yeah right). Techs worked days and were also on call sales didn't have to be on call. At the meeting sales guys were slick with fancy suits, greased back hair (yes in 2008?) and had company cars. Techs were in golf shirt and jeans company trucks full of parts. We all had to take a test you were scored on your responses and given a colour. All the sales based on their responses were put in one colour group yellow I think and all the techs in green. Like oil and water.
  - Viliam1234 4y ago
    > It’s not inherently immoral to be in sales. Technically correct, but if you avoid doing the immoral things, you will probably notice that your more experienced colleagues make much more money than you. And if you refuse to improve your performance, you will probably get fired.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Depends a huge amount on where you work. You're not getting enterprise deals through cheesy pressure sales tactics, and you're not renewing enterprise deals by saying yes to everything. You're also unlikely to be earning less doing that than telling people they get a discount if they sign the contract before checking out any other window companies and sign up to the great value financing plan...
- greatpostman 4y ago
  Immoral? What? It’s humiliating and confrontational, but not immoral
  - kurtreed 4y ago
    I think the issue is that there's an externality: you go around annoying people.
  - p0zero 4y ago
    Certainly immoral. Sales people are the scum of the earth. Just ask literally anybody,
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    I don't think sales, in general / in principle, has to be immoral. There's shades and details etc. We can argue value to business vs value to consumer, but in general sales, there's nuances. But we are not talking general sales here - we are talking door to door salespeople specifically. The article focuses on the sales person and for reasons of focus or otherwise, ignores the heard of elephants in the room - what happens to the buyers afterwards. Vast majority of door to door sales is predicated on anything from severe informational asymmetry to outright fraud. It has to be - there's a REASON why they're paid so much per sold account. It's hard work and it's swimming against the tide. From experience, they are trained and incentivized to find a weakness, with ferocious persistence and evolving methodologies, and will thus statistically exploit those with weakness. They pray on the very best of human emotions and instincts - unwillingness to be rude, eagerness to be friendly, to relate. They build and exploit implicit trust. Their product is by definition not good value - if unconvinced, imagine same product but for the price minus the salesperson commission. As I mention in more detail in parallel thread [1], nothing about average door to door salesperson is real - they're not your buddy, they will not hold your hand through the process, they will not be there to help you or answer your calls if/when things don't work out. As primary outcome of their endevour, they collectively reduce our trust in each other and faith in humanity. (And like anything else in the wide and exciting world of MLM-likes, there's layers. Not only do the salespeople target the elderly/vulnerable, The door to door salespeople themselves are targeted to be recruited from specifically vulnerable or impressionable, and overall success rate of the profession is lousy. Very few doctors or engineers become door to door salespersons - a struggling minimum-wage worker or a new immigrant are the typical pools; I was the Venn diagram of both. I don't expect your friend to relate the true nature of their job to you, or likely even to themselves. But see if you can talk to their average buyer and get their thoughts). Want more? Tune in the next episode of the grouchy cranky old man, where I rip into real estate agents :=> 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33718726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33718726
- lazide 4y ago
  A lot of people (overall) benefit by having someone overcome the friction people have built into doing things to provide them interesting options. Sometimes even the people buying. Sales doesn’t have to be, and in larger places often isn’t, immoral. Without it, we’d all frankly be a whole lot poorer in many ways. But hot damn, the immoral ones sure do seem to make a lot of money fast. At least before the cops show up.
p0zero 4y ago
You mean there’s a huge premium for being willing to scam people and lie to their faces? How old are you?
- notch656a 4y ago
  The people that buy these things tend to be the elderly. I shamefully worked as a telemarketer when I got my work permit as a child; almost no one at their top mental acuity game is buying this shit on a whim from these kind of techniques. It's pretty sad. And almost all the 'salesmen' were high on xanax and other anti-anxiety medication to deal with both the rejection and to drown away their feelings about what they were doing.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    I did door to door charity fundraising and there's a more straightforward reason why the people that engage tend to be the elderly: they're in all day (and quite likely to be bored enough to talk to strangers on doorsteps even if or especially if their mental acuity is great). Obviously it varies: at the other end of the spectrum I suspect people calling random mobile numbers pretending to be Microsoft get most of their "business" from a small number of elderly people even though they're least likely to answer the phone.
- tedmiston 4y ago
  What is the scam here exactly? Inflated equipment prices? Distorted ROI? Something else?
fijiaarone 4y ago
Your friend makes good money running a sales team — in other words he doesn’t knock on doors.
rs999gti 4y ago
I respect the hustle. By my home is my refuge, I don’t like ads when I browse the web, why do I want salesmen and religious types bothering me at home?

I have a friend that makes 450k running a door to door solar panel sales team. Two years ago he was making about minimum wage. There’s a huge premium for being willing to knock on strangers doors

NikolaNovak 4y ago

There's always big money in immoral shady dealings. Sorry, I know that's snarky and rude. And there's definitely a big gray line of morality in life. They're not actively murdering anybody. Not directly. But their moral framework by definition is drastically different than mine - we have chosen our own spots on that gray line and they're incompatible. (I've been exposed to various sides of that line, including being recruited and going through brainwashing I mean training for various door to door sales gigs).

NineStarPoint 4y ago
It’s not inherently immoral to be in sales. If you actually do believe that solar panels are a good investment for a house and believe the company you’re working for does good work, working to inform other people of this would be from your view a moral positive. In practice of course it is easy to end up lying to increase your paycheck, or fooling yourself into believing your company is good because your paycheck relies on it. But if someone chooses a good company and doesn’t lie to potential clients, I think that’s fine.
- dghughes 4y ago
  At an old job we had to go to a "retreat" of a sort where the sales guys and technicians all schmoozed. The company had made sales do tech work and techs do sales work neither side liked that. Sales guys just ignored it and called techs on a Friday afternoon to take the tech call they didn't have time for (yeah right). Techs worked days and were also on call sales didn't have to be on call. At the meeting sales guys were slick with fancy suits, greased back hair (yes in 2008?) and had company cars. Techs were in golf shirt and jeans company trucks full of parts. We all had to take a test you were scored on your responses and given a colour. All the sales based on their responses were put in one colour group yellow I think and all the techs in green. Like oil and water.
- Viliam1234 4y ago
  > It’s not inherently immoral to be in sales. Technically correct, but if you avoid doing the immoral things, you will probably notice that your more experienced colleagues make much more money than you. And if you refuse to improve your performance, you will probably get fired.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Depends a huge amount on where you work. You're not getting enterprise deals through cheesy pressure sales tactics, and you're not renewing enterprise deals by saying yes to everything. You're also unlikely to be earning less doing that than telling people they get a discount if they sign the contract before checking out any other window companies and sign up to the great value financing plan...
greatpostman 4y ago
Immoral? What? It’s humiliating and confrontational, but not immoral
- kurtreed 4y ago
  I think the issue is that there's an externality: you go around annoying people.
- p0zero 4y ago
  Certainly immoral. Sales people are the scum of the earth. Just ask literally anybody,
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  I don't think sales, in general / in principle, has to be immoral. There's shades and details etc. We can argue value to business vs value to consumer, but in general sales, there's nuances. But we are not talking general sales here - we are talking door to door salespeople specifically. The article focuses on the sales person and for reasons of focus or otherwise, ignores the heard of elephants in the room - what happens to the buyers afterwards. Vast majority of door to door sales is predicated on anything from severe informational asymmetry to outright fraud. It has to be - there's a REASON why they're paid so much per sold account. It's hard work and it's swimming against the tide. From experience, they are trained and incentivized to find a weakness, with ferocious persistence and evolving methodologies, and will thus statistically exploit those with weakness. They pray on the very best of human emotions and instincts - unwillingness to be rude, eagerness to be friendly, to relate. They build and exploit implicit trust. Their product is by definition not good value - if unconvinced, imagine same product but for the price minus the salesperson commission. As I mention in more detail in parallel thread [1], nothing about average door to door salesperson is real - they're not your buddy, they will not hold your hand through the process, they will not be there to help you or answer your calls if/when things don't work out. As primary outcome of their endevour, they collectively reduce our trust in each other and faith in humanity. (And like anything else in the wide and exciting world of MLM-likes, there's layers. Not only do the salespeople target the elderly/vulnerable, The door to door salespeople themselves are targeted to be recruited from specifically vulnerable or impressionable, and overall success rate of the profession is lousy. Very few doctors or engineers become door to door salespersons - a struggling minimum-wage worker or a new immigrant are the typical pools; I was the Venn diagram of both. I don't expect your friend to relate the true nature of their job to you, or likely even to themselves. But see if you can talk to their average buyer and get their thoughts). Want more? Tune in the next episode of the grouchy cranky old man, where I rip into real estate agents :=> 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33718726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33718726
lazide 4y ago
A lot of people (overall) benefit by having someone overcome the friction people have built into doing things to provide them interesting options. Sometimes even the people buying. Sales doesn’t have to be, and in larger places often isn’t, immoral. Without it, we’d all frankly be a whole lot poorer in many ways. But hot damn, the immoral ones sure do seem to make a lot of money fast. At least before the cops show up.

p0zero 4y ago

You mean there’s a huge premium for being willing to scam people and lie to their faces? How old are you?

notch656a 4y ago
The people that buy these things tend to be the elderly. I shamefully worked as a telemarketer when I got my work permit as a child; almost no one at their top mental acuity game is buying this shit on a whim from these kind of techniques. It's pretty sad. And almost all the 'salesmen' were high on xanax and other anti-anxiety medication to deal with both the rejection and to drown away their feelings about what they were doing.
- notahacker 4y ago
  I did door to door charity fundraising and there's a more straightforward reason why the people that engage tend to be the elderly: they're in all day (and quite likely to be bored enough to talk to strangers on doorsteps even if or especially if their mental acuity is great). Obviously it varies: at the other end of the spectrum I suspect people calling random mobile numbers pretending to be Microsoft get most of their "business" from a small number of elderly people even though they're least likely to answer the phone.
tedmiston 4y ago
What is the scam here exactly? Inflated equipment prices? Distorted ROI? Something else?

fijiaarone 4y ago

Your friend makes good money running a sales team — in other words he doesn’t knock on doors.

rs999gti 4y ago

I respect the hustle. By my home is my refuge, I don’t like ads when I browse the web, why do I want salesmen and religious types bothering me at home?