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You have provided a great example of how worthless cold calling is to society. Ten percent of your interactions were even close to being considered not a nuisa

You have provided a great example of how worthless cold calling is to society. Ten percent of your interactions were even close to being considered not a nuisance (more like 3 percent were actually not a nuisance, someone listing to an advertisement willingly is still being interrupted and annoyed) Fuck that man, come on. If you are bothering 100 people to POSSIBLY help a couple people possibly find a service that might help them, you are spam.

Alupis 3y ago
Cold Calls aren't the problem though. Getting one random call a month or whatever never was an issue in the past. The issue is getting 10 completely silent calls per day, sometimes with an additional "your car warranty is expired" call. That's the issue everyone has a problem with - it's made answering your phone nearly useless.
csa 3y ago
> You have provided a great example of how worthless cold calling is to society. I think you are missing the big picture. Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people, and everything else is productive, it’s: - 90 minutes of aggregate inefficiency… - to benefit 7 folks who have a much better understanding of the market for their current and future needs… - and 3 people who are scaling their business for years via delegating something they are not good at to folks who are. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had many many dud 90-minute encounters (much less one minute encounters) that were all worth it for the one encounter that moved the needle. This could be sales leads, training, dates, finding new restaurants… there are many domains for which this is true. Frankly, I think that this is a fairly efficient ratio compared to most value-seeking activities in the world. Edit: Note that the close rate was close to 40% live (versus 10% calls) with a non-significant n, so I think the medium itself was one source of inefficiency. The product was clearly needed by our leads, but trust-building was tougher over the phone.
- lp0_on_fire 3y ago
  > Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people, and everything else is productive Most people aren't interested in being tricked into opening their wallet, sorry. If I want your services, I'll seek them out. You're not entitled to even a second of my time.
  - csa 3y ago
    > Most people aren't interested in being tricked into opening their wallet, sorry. I’m very curious about why “sales” automatically equates to “trickery” for you. Ethical, high quality sales is the efficient matching of goods and/or services with folks who want them. These types of sales exist and are not as uncommon as some HNers seem to think that they are. > If I want your services, I'll seek them out. You seem to assume that most people are good at finding services they need. In general, I have found this not to be the case both for me and many of my customers (at least not initially). For me personally, I spend a shit ton of time on discovery, and I still find that random ads and sales pitches introduce me to things that I was not aware of. FWIW, my service was a tech service, and my market was decidedly not tech savvy. One of the challenges of the sales process was getting them to understand and believe that we weren’t trying to bamboozle them (as many competitors were). We couldn’t sell them with technical explanations of why we were good or why some other option was not as good — we had to use non-technical explanations and an onboarding process that minimized the friction. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding was in the eating, so we retained customers for much longer than industry average, with most of our churn being due to businesses being sold, closing, or moving beyond what we offered (at which point we referred them to an ethical provider that was appropriate for their newfound needs). > You're not entitled to even a second of my time. Honestly, I think you’re living a lesser life (especially professionally) if you are not willing to defer seconds, minutes, or even hours to speculative engagements. It doesn’t take long to qualify a sales call for fit — the good sales people will know how to what itches they are good at scratching and whether you might have those itches.
    - constantly 3y ago
      Fingers crossed the FTC finds and fines you. If it’s big enough maybe you’ll have some empathy for your victims, or at least the calculus will change in society’s favor.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  From your point of view, it's great--there's no downside. A little "Aggregate inefficiency" as you put it. From the point of view of the victims (or leads, as you might describe them), 70% deftly avoided you and 20% were annoyed that you intruded on their lives, albeit briefly. Or put another way, for every new customer you got, you actively annoyed ~7 of them, and confirmed the problem of unsolicited phone calls for a further ~23 of them.

Alupis 3y ago

Cold Calls aren't the problem though. Getting one random call a month or whatever never was an issue in the past. The issue is getting 10 completely silent calls per day, sometimes with an additional "your car warranty is expired" call. That's the issue everyone has a problem with - it's made answering your phone nearly useless.

csa 3y ago

> You have provided a great example of how worthless cold calling is to society. I think you are missing the big picture. Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people, and everything else is productive, it’s: - 90 minutes of aggregate inefficiency… - to benefit 7 folks who have a much better understanding of the market for their current and future needs… - and 3 people who are scaling their business for years via delegating something they are not good at to folks who are. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had many many dud 90-minute encounters (much less one minute encounters) that were all worth it for the one encounter that moved the needle. This could be sales leads, training, dates, finding new restaurants… there are many domains for which this is true. Frankly, I think that this is a fairly efficient ratio compared to most value-seeking activities in the world. Edit: Note that the close rate was close to 40% live (versus 10% calls) with a non-significant n, so I think the medium itself was one source of inefficiency. The product was clearly needed by our leads, but trust-building was tougher over the phone.

lp0_on_fire 3y ago
> Assuming that we waste 1 minute of time for 90 people, and everything else is productive Most people aren't interested in being tricked into opening their wallet, sorry. If I want your services, I'll seek them out. You're not entitled to even a second of my time.
- csa 3y ago
  > Most people aren't interested in being tricked into opening their wallet, sorry. I’m very curious about why “sales” automatically equates to “trickery” for you. Ethical, high quality sales is the efficient matching of goods and/or services with folks who want them. These types of sales exist and are not as uncommon as some HNers seem to think that they are. > If I want your services, I'll seek them out. You seem to assume that most people are good at finding services they need. In general, I have found this not to be the case both for me and many of my customers (at least not initially). For me personally, I spend a shit ton of time on discovery, and I still find that random ads and sales pitches introduce me to things that I was not aware of. FWIW, my service was a tech service, and my market was decidedly not tech savvy. One of the challenges of the sales process was getting them to understand and believe that we weren’t trying to bamboozle them (as many competitors were). We couldn’t sell them with technical explanations of why we were good or why some other option was not as good — we had to use non-technical explanations and an onboarding process that minimized the friction. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding was in the eating, so we retained customers for much longer than industry average, with most of our churn being due to businesses being sold, closing, or moving beyond what we offered (at which point we referred them to an ethical provider that was appropriate for their newfound needs). > You're not entitled to even a second of my time. Honestly, I think you’re living a lesser life (especially professionally) if you are not willing to defer seconds, minutes, or even hours to speculative engagements. It doesn’t take long to qualify a sales call for fit — the good sales people will know how to what itches they are good at scratching and whether you might have those itches.
  - constantly 3y ago
    Fingers crossed the FTC finds and fines you. If it’s big enough maybe you’ll have some empathy for your victims, or at least the calculus will change in society’s favor.
ryandrake 3y ago
From your point of view, it's great--there's no downside. A little "Aggregate inefficiency" as you put it. From the point of view of the victims (or leads, as you might describe them), 70% deftly avoided you and 20% were annoyed that you intruded on their lives, albeit briefly. Or put another way, for every new customer you got, you actively annoyed ~7 of them, and confirmed the problem of unsolicited phone calls for a further ~23 of them.