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I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. I understand why SPAM works - because it has a ver

I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. I understand why SPAM works - because it has a very small barrier to entry and it works on the idea of converting a small fraction of messages sent. But cold-calling takes man-hours and I can only imagine it's sole purpose is to catch individuals that simply would rather pay you to end the call rather than say "no." Even worse is door-to-door sales. My neighborhood has big "no soliciting" signs at the entrances, but at certain times of the year we get huge swaths of salesmen and it's typically for the exact same services at different times of year. Once I was working on my boat late at night in my garage with the door halfway open. I had a pesticide service salesman zip up my driveway on a segway and come inside my garage and start pitching. I couldn't help but to lose my stuff on him. Do these tactics really work? Is it a certain demographic? Because I just don't grok.

ryandrake 2y ago
A lot of people are gullible and/or socially have trouble saying "no" to people. I think cold calling and door-to-door sales preys on that. I have elderly family members who hate getting telemarketing cold calls, but they are from some time/culture where it's uncomfortable/difficult to directly tell someone "No, I'm not interested. Fuck off." That's often who's falling for these. If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This is true for everything I've ever purchased. The fact that they have to push it on me proves that it's negative-EV and I have no problem just hanging up or closing the door. I guess not everyone finds this easy.
- 6510 2y ago
  This is actually good. "Thanks for your time, the BRAWNDO CORPORATION won't call you again." If you manage to end it in 3-8 seconds they can do 360 such calls in an hour. If the guy costs $12 per hour that works out to little over 3 cent. And then, 20 months later a % of the "fuck off, leave me alone" guys need the product and remember how polite the call was. These usually do a good bit of research. They clearly call for information. If the price is good and they live 3 blocks away there are good odds they let you mow their lawn.
  - somat 2y ago
    Too true, Many people, including myself, tend to say "ha, I have never bought any thing based on an ad or salesman" But often that is not the point, the point is to get it in your head that the product exists. and when you do need one, when faced with several indistinguishable items, you go for the one that feels familiar, the one that was infiltrated into your head months ago. There is nothing super wrong with this, I mean, sales is necessary evil of doing business. necessary, because the whole point is to sell the thing, and evil, because you are coercing someone to do something they otherwise would not have done. But I think there is a healthy ratio here, and I try to make a point(often failing for the reason in the previous paragraph) to avoid products that lean too heavily on the unhealthy side of that ratio. those companies that believe sales is more important than the product.
    - 6510 2y ago
      If there are very few potential customers you just ask if it is at all possible to meet them. Same if you have only a few phone numbers from people who meet some set of requirements. If there are millions of prospects and you cant filter by anything the point is to figure out that they don't need or want your product. Do it fast and politely. Or not even that, the actual goal is to put in the calls without the negative psychological effect of mass rejection. Arguably, you can start calling before writing the business plan when you only have a half finished idea. If you find just one prospect who says your product would be a wonderful thing have them be more specific. Like that it is much easier to stay motivated. Rejection is much harder if you are deeply invested, wrote the plan, wrote the code, found investors, hired employees. While cold calling is heavily associated with shit products that doesn't mean your product is shit the moment you pick up the phone. Or maybe it is and you need to be told what is wrong with it repeatedly. You need to be talking with people who've made widgets for decades, they know their stuff. Who knows, maybe you don't even need an idea. If you just call 1000 people in the funeral sector they can tell you what software they need. Then try weddings, laundromats, plumbers etc Ask the dumb questions, what would be the right time to call someone in the $sectorName sector? What is their software budget? What are the repetitive administrative tasks? Is the sector patient and polite or do they tell you to fuck off and hang up?
- immibis 2y ago
  > If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This assumes it's a frictionless commodity. I want a pizza, I buy a pizza. I'm not interested in cold calls selling me pizza because if I wanted one, I would've already gone to the pizza shop down the road. However, not everything is like this. Jobs, for example, are the opposite extreme. If someone cold-calls me asking me a job interview, well, this actually happened (not via a phone call) and led to me moving halfway around the world and having to learn a second language. Did I get scammed? Ich denke nicht. In the realm of actual products, there are might be things you think about buying for a long time, and then eventually you see a good deal and buy it. Cold calls may help you find a good deal (I doubt it now - but back in the era when they weren't just spam) and then you may buy it. There's also just advertising, especially for B2B where everything is more opaque. I have no idea where to get advanced Ethernet switch ASICs ("merchant silicon" as they call it) and you can't even Google it because the information isn't public. If I was a networking company and some switch ASIC company called me to tell me they make switch ASICs and here's our product selection guide, that would actually be welcome information. (I'm not one, but let's imagine I was.)
- Eridrus 2y ago
  This assumes that you know everything there is to know about the world. Customers often do not know that products or even product categories exist and need to be informed about them.
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    This idea that there is a solution to every problem if you only knew about it is a hallmark of these things. A lot of products are solutions looking for a problem, and they work very hard to make you think you'll have a problem if you don't buy the product. As an example, a pest control company canvassed one of my friends' cul-de-sacs and essentially threatened to send all the pests into his house by poisoning them and repelling them from all the neighbors. If you have a pest problem exclusion is usually cheaper and better than poison or repellent. My wife paid for trapping and control on her house for years and then I went around over the course of a couple of weeks and closed the gaps in her siding that were added by telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and Comcast over the years. Mysteriously the pest problem went away after that. So it's not always the case that the product being advertised is a net positive. Often it's net neutral or net negative. But the advertiser sure wants you to do it anyway.
    - Eridrus 2y ago
      Not all products and services are good, yes. But you don't spring forth from the womb knowing about all the good ones either.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    I know ad and marketing folks tell themselves this to sleep at night, but it’s such a small factor in actual marketing and advertising that happens that it’s negligible.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
- dghughes 2y ago
  Elderly who are a prime market for a reason cash from retirement or life insurance and possible dementia. I don't know how many times I have told my own mother not to pick up the phone. At best she knows at worst she says she's knows it's a scam but "just wants to see who it is". At least she knows not to press 1 although "why what would it do?" often comes up. She has no credit card or Internet so VISA and Amazon scams are obviously fake. Of the calls to her land line phone nearly 100% are scam calls. Even my aunt who knows better called to ask my mother why [large company] needed her to get gift cards and not tell the police. The pressure of authority is strong for older people they can't fathom someone would dare impersonate police. Don't fall for your elderly relatives behaviour if they seems smart and not in any way gullible they still may be. It's shocking how easily some people are fooled even ones you think would never fall for such scams.
ralegh 2y ago
It sounds like you mostly didn’t have the problems they were pitching for. Imagine you urgently needed a pesticide guy! Maybe you’d too annoyed to buy but someone else might not. That’s my head canon on why google makes so much from search ads, they’re advertising to people who are trying to solve that specific problem right now.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  My ex used to write car commercials, and I asked her why they all had that goofy tone and all sounded the same in a weird way. I told her that I couldn't remember a single dealership from all the commercials I'd heard, since that tone lets me filter them out. She told me that was just because I wasn't in the market for a car, and if I was, that same tone would make the car commercials stand out. Sure enough, when I was in the market for a car years later, I realized she was right!
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Yep. HN (and similar community) conversations on this topic are always so snobby, but in reality all it points to is this community mostly wanting to buy different things. Everyone here is just as susceptible.
  - allenu 2y ago
    That's a great point. So much of advertising is just providing awareness, too. I may not be in the market for a particular product, but if I've heard their ads a million times, even if they're annoying, once I go to buy, I will probably give them more weight than some unknown brand, especially if it's a low stakes purchase.
dylan604 2y ago
The biggest door to door I get is from roofing/window where they canvas the neighborhood when doing a neighbor's house. I don't see the types of door to door where a car would drop off a couple of people to cover an area any more though. The No Soliciting is just not even a concern for them. It's not like it is enforceable in any way than a possibly rude door slamming in their face, and who cares about that?
- nemo44x 2y ago
  "Hey, we're doing some work in your neighborhood and since our trucks and team are already there we can get you a great deal..." I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow? Or the other tactic where they say "you might have noticed my truck around as I've done some work for <neighbor> and will be at <other neighbor>'s house later..." They name people whose door they knocked on, got their name, and likely rejected. But they use those names on other prospects which makes it sound like word of mouth, the best form of advertising! "Oh, if my neighbor is using this guy for <Service> he must be good"... Really a brilliant tactic that I bet fools some people. The only guy I really admired (but didn't use because I thought his prices were far too high) was a guy going door to door offering to clean the outside windows. He wanted $10/window and I was like no way. I'm sure he got a few customers.
  - allenu 2y ago
    I can see how "we're in your neighborhood so we thought you might want to use our services while we're here" could work. When I first moved into my house a few years ago, I wasn't familiar with tactics used by door to door salespeople, so I legitimately thought they were in the neighborhood and to save them on a second trip, they were seeing if they could drum up some additional business. It was only after just about every door-to-door salesman used that excuse that I clued in that he's probably just a sales guy going to random neighborhoods and not actually one of the workers on the ground doing the job. Anyway, my point is most people don't think about these things, and especially not new homeowners, and probably just take their word. Regarding the $10/window guy: I've been meaning to get out the ladder and clean all my windows myself but have been lazy, so if somebody actually showed up at my door, quoted a price, and said they'd do it right then and there, I might take them up on the offer. It's really just a numbers game for them.
dsr_ 2y ago
If the tactic results in a return on investment, somebody will do it -- even if it makes them unwelcome at family reunions. When the cost is extremely low -- spamming -- any return at all will justify it. When the cost is low and the return is relatively high -- cold calling -- it will happen. Only regulation and good enforcement of the regulation can stop these activities in a capitalist regime.
landryraccoon 2y ago
The fact that cold calling was expensive was a signal that the caller was legitimate. In the era where calling someone on the phone is cheap and highly optimized, getting a phone call is not a signal for quality. But back in the 1980s that wouldn’t have been the case. If a human being picked up the phone and called you, you would be more inclined to listen to them, simply because you knew it was expensive for them to call and it happened infrequently. Phone spam didn’t become a thing until much later.
13of40 2y ago
I think the answer is that much like an ad for a car or a mattress, the cold call isn't meant to take someone from zero to full interest, it's to find that one person in a hundred who's already thinking about it and just needs an opportunity presented to them. How many random people would you need to ask before you found someone who was pondering joining a gym this very morning and would love some more info about it?
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  You're probably right, but I don't get this attitude at all. I could have a burning desire to do X and no time, if you called me out of the blue offering X, I'd still say no thank you, sorry. It's entirely in my DNA that cold calls are never good. Wonder why other people haven't developed this.
  - scrapcode 2y ago
    Same here. It's simple math for me, really - even if your pitch is compelling and well-targeted to me somehow, it is highly unlikely that your offer and commission overhead are going to be better than something I can seek out myself.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 2y ago
My "No Soliciting" sign actually worked very well with everyone except religious organizations. I still haven't figured out how to deter them aside from saying "I'll listen to your sales pitch about God only after you listen to my sales pitch about Satan." Funny story, only once did that fail to get them to go away. In that case, it was a couple of Mormons and they took me up on the offer (leaving me wishing I actually had some sort of satanic sales pitch). They were very nice and pleasant company, and we ended up spending a couple of hours talking about the music of Frank Zappa. But I didn't become a Mormon.
- allenu 2y ago
  That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It reminds me of something I read that said if you are trying to sell something to someone and they're budging, ask them what it would take to change their mind. It's kind of a trick question, because often, whatever they request can be provided (or at least an equivalent), and once the salesperson provides it to them, it's very hard for them to say no. Most people want to appear consistent in their behaviors.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It really was. I think the reason they did and the others didn't was that they understood that I wasn't being serious, but the others thought I was. They laughed when I made the offer and said "sounds great!". But, to your point, once they agreed I wasn't really in a position to say "no, never mind" without losing a bit of face.
  - strix_varius 2y ago
    I was once offered a job across the country. I was flattered and a friend's recommendation was involved so I wanted to be polite. Instead of saying "no," I said thank you so much but looking at cost of living etc it would really take (to-me absurd offer, benefits, moving support, etc). They replied back: you drive a hard bargain but we can do that. Welcome aboard! ...shit. But yeah, I moved.
bjourne 2y ago
Yes, they work. Cold calling and similar methods are all about the the numbers so even if you are immune to them, enough people aren't. Pesticides isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps you'd be more swayed by Doctors without Borders soliciting donations for aid to Gaza or something? You want to tell Jenny the volunteer you're so cheap so can't make a $5 donation? And before you know it you have signed up for a $10 monthly donation. Jenny will send you a thank you card in the mail. :) Couple the emotional manipulation with some insistence and aggressiveness and you'll have lots of sales. BTW, I don't think you are immune. The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.
- marcusb 2y ago
  > The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money. I have to disagree on that point. I have a no soliciting sign. It is an IQ test - I don't do business with people who can't or won't read the sign. I used to work in sales and had to deal with rejection enough that I have absolutely no problem asking people if they can read the sign and closing the door in their face if they start to argue that what they are doing isn't "soliciting" for some technical reason.
  - behringer 2y ago
    And yet if I showed up with exactly what you need in my hand at a reasonable price you wouldn't even think about the sign. The sign doesn't mean anything.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      I would assume you’re screwing me and turn you down. If you’ve got enough margin to do sales that way, you’re screwing me, even if I can’t see it. It’s a no.
      - behringer 2y ago
        Everybody makes a margin, that's how the free market works. But let's say you're a communist and I show up with a compound and a few followers, I suspect we have a deal to discuss regardless of the sign ;)
nunez 2y ago
Sometimes the right QUALIFIED cold call/email at the right time with the right pitch can be very effective.
WalterBright 2y ago
My favorite door to door sales pitch is "buy a subscription to one of these magazines or I'll have to go back to doing drugs." I've had at least 3 of those salesmen.
- jasomill 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0
romanhn 2y ago
You know, I'm with you. Yet - I once had an ISP rep (Sonic) show up at my door letting me know that they're setting up 10Gbps fiber in the neighborhood and if I'm interested in getting 10x speed (was already on 1Gbps fiber from AT&T) at less than half the cost. I signed up on the spot, and I'm no stranger to saying no. So I suppose it's all about playing the numbers game looking for the right customer for that pitch.
gadders 2y ago
I did door to door selling in the US (as a Brit) as a summer job after graduating. The items weren't super expensive (maybe max $80 in the early '90s). I wasn't very good at it, but some people did quite well out of it. Admittedly, only earning student-amounts. I don't think you could have fed a family on it.
spacebanana7 2y ago
Many occupations involve receiving cold outreach and filtering for useful offers. Think YouTubers receiving sponsorship offers, journalists getting leads, recruiters getting candidates, VCs finding start-ups, and car dealers getting inventory. These people are often quite receptive to cold calls & emails if you can demonstrate credibility.
BeetleB 2y ago
> I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. Read a good sales book that talks about it. There are a few factors: Effective salespeople will narrow down the list to cold call - so it's not completely random. Examples: When trying to get a house for cheap, it's not hard to find a list of people in a locale who own more than 50% equity. Now it's a matter of cold calling and finding one who is in hard times and cannot sell (e.g. house is in poor enough condition that no bank will give out a mortgage). The home owners are at risk of defaulting, so you take the property off their hands for relatively cheap, fix it up, and sell it. This way the homeowners get money (as opposed to a foreclosure where they'd get nothing). Roofs: A lot of new homes have a 20 year roof. Look up neighborhoods built in the last 20-30 years. Go door to door and try to sell them a new roof. Many will buy, because they know they have to replace it sooner or later.[1] You can also tell them which of their neighbors recently got a new roof. Solar panels: Same idea: Find people with old roofs, and give them a "deal" for a new roof + solar panel combo. Getting that solar panel incentivizes them to change the roof. Really, the key is to have a systematic way to reduce your search space. Then you'll get more successes. [1] Pro tip: Never get your roof changed this way. I've actively gotten quotes for my roof, and the highest quote I got was cheaper than the lowest quote from the door to door salesmen.

ryandrake 2y ago

A lot of people are gullible and/or socially have trouble saying "no" to people. I think cold calling and door-to-door sales preys on that. I have elderly family members who hate getting telemarketing cold calls, but they are from some time/culture where it's uncomfortable/difficult to directly tell someone "No, I'm not interested. Fuck off." That's often who's falling for these. If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This is true for everything I've ever purchased. The fact that they have to push it on me proves that it's negative-EV and I have no problem just hanging up or closing the door. I guess not everyone finds this easy.

6510 2y ago
This is actually good. "Thanks for your time, the BRAWNDO CORPORATION won't call you again." If you manage to end it in 3-8 seconds they can do 360 such calls in an hour. If the guy costs $12 per hour that works out to little over 3 cent. And then, 20 months later a % of the "fuck off, leave me alone" guys need the product and remember how polite the call was. These usually do a good bit of research. They clearly call for information. If the price is good and they live 3 blocks away there are good odds they let you mow their lawn.
- somat 2y ago
  Too true, Many people, including myself, tend to say "ha, I have never bought any thing based on an ad or salesman" But often that is not the point, the point is to get it in your head that the product exists. and when you do need one, when faced with several indistinguishable items, you go for the one that feels familiar, the one that was infiltrated into your head months ago. There is nothing super wrong with this, I mean, sales is necessary evil of doing business. necessary, because the whole point is to sell the thing, and evil, because you are coercing someone to do something they otherwise would not have done. But I think there is a healthy ratio here, and I try to make a point(often failing for the reason in the previous paragraph) to avoid products that lean too heavily on the unhealthy side of that ratio. those companies that believe sales is more important than the product.
  - 6510 2y ago
    If there are very few potential customers you just ask if it is at all possible to meet them. Same if you have only a few phone numbers from people who meet some set of requirements. If there are millions of prospects and you cant filter by anything the point is to figure out that they don't need or want your product. Do it fast and politely. Or not even that, the actual goal is to put in the calls without the negative psychological effect of mass rejection. Arguably, you can start calling before writing the business plan when you only have a half finished idea. If you find just one prospect who says your product would be a wonderful thing have them be more specific. Like that it is much easier to stay motivated. Rejection is much harder if you are deeply invested, wrote the plan, wrote the code, found investors, hired employees. While cold calling is heavily associated with shit products that doesn't mean your product is shit the moment you pick up the phone. Or maybe it is and you need to be told what is wrong with it repeatedly. You need to be talking with people who've made widgets for decades, they know their stuff. Who knows, maybe you don't even need an idea. If you just call 1000 people in the funeral sector they can tell you what software they need. Then try weddings, laundromats, plumbers etc Ask the dumb questions, what would be the right time to call someone in the $sectorName sector? What is their software budget? What are the repetitive administrative tasks? Is the sector patient and polite or do they tell you to fuck off and hang up?
immibis 2y ago
> If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This assumes it's a frictionless commodity. I want a pizza, I buy a pizza. I'm not interested in cold calls selling me pizza because if I wanted one, I would've already gone to the pizza shop down the road. However, not everything is like this. Jobs, for example, are the opposite extreme. If someone cold-calls me asking me a job interview, well, this actually happened (not via a phone call) and led to me moving halfway around the world and having to learn a second language. Did I get scammed? Ich denke nicht. In the realm of actual products, there are might be things you think about buying for a long time, and then eventually you see a good deal and buy it. Cold calls may help you find a good deal (I doubt it now - but back in the era when they weren't just spam) and then you may buy it. There's also just advertising, especially for B2B where everything is more opaque. I have no idea where to get advanced Ethernet switch ASICs ("merchant silicon" as they call it) and you can't even Google it because the information isn't public. If I was a networking company and some switch ASIC company called me to tell me they make switch ASICs and here's our product selection guide, that would actually be welcome information. (I'm not one, but let's imagine I was.)
Eridrus 2y ago
This assumes that you know everything there is to know about the world. Customers often do not know that products or even product categories exist and need to be informed about them.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  This idea that there is a solution to every problem if you only knew about it is a hallmark of these things. A lot of products are solutions looking for a problem, and they work very hard to make you think you'll have a problem if you don't buy the product. As an example, a pest control company canvassed one of my friends' cul-de-sacs and essentially threatened to send all the pests into his house by poisoning them and repelling them from all the neighbors. If you have a pest problem exclusion is usually cheaper and better than poison or repellent. My wife paid for trapping and control on her house for years and then I went around over the course of a couple of weeks and closed the gaps in her siding that were added by telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and Comcast over the years. Mysteriously the pest problem went away after that. So it's not always the case that the product being advertised is a net positive. Often it's net neutral or net negative. But the advertiser sure wants you to do it anyway.
  - Eridrus 2y ago
    Not all products and services are good, yes. But you don't spring forth from the womb knowing about all the good ones either.
- vundercind 2y ago
  I know ad and marketing folks tell themselves this to sleep at night, but it’s such a small factor in actual marketing and advertising that happens that it’s negligible.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- tsimionescu 2y ago
dghughes 2y ago
Elderly who are a prime market for a reason cash from retirement or life insurance and possible dementia. I don't know how many times I have told my own mother not to pick up the phone. At best she knows at worst she says she's knows it's a scam but "just wants to see who it is". At least she knows not to press 1 although "why what would it do?" often comes up. She has no credit card or Internet so VISA and Amazon scams are obviously fake. Of the calls to her land line phone nearly 100% are scam calls. Even my aunt who knows better called to ask my mother why [large company] needed her to get gift cards and not tell the police. The pressure of authority is strong for older people they can't fathom someone would dare impersonate police. Don't fall for your elderly relatives behaviour if they seems smart and not in any way gullible they still may be. It's shocking how easily some people are fooled even ones you think would never fall for such scams.

ralegh 2y ago

It sounds like you mostly didn’t have the problems they were pitching for. Imagine you urgently needed a pesticide guy! Maybe you’d too annoyed to buy but someone else might not. That’s my head canon on why google makes so much from search ads, they’re advertising to people who are trying to solve that specific problem right now.

stronglikedan 2y ago
My ex used to write car commercials, and I asked her why they all had that goofy tone and all sounded the same in a weird way. I told her that I couldn't remember a single dealership from all the commercials I'd heard, since that tone lets me filter them out. She told me that was just because I wasn't in the market for a car, and if I was, that same tone would make the car commercials stand out. Sure enough, when I was in the market for a car years later, I realized she was right!
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Yep. HN (and similar community) conversations on this topic are always so snobby, but in reality all it points to is this community mostly wanting to buy different things. Everyone here is just as susceptible.
- allenu 2y ago
  That's a great point. So much of advertising is just providing awareness, too. I may not be in the market for a particular product, but if I've heard their ads a million times, even if they're annoying, once I go to buy, I will probably give them more weight than some unknown brand, especially if it's a low stakes purchase.

dylan604 2y ago

The biggest door to door I get is from roofing/window where they canvas the neighborhood when doing a neighbor's house. I don't see the types of door to door where a car would drop off a couple of people to cover an area any more though. The No Soliciting is just not even a concern for them. It's not like it is enforceable in any way than a possibly rude door slamming in their face, and who cares about that?

nemo44x 2y ago
"Hey, we're doing some work in your neighborhood and since our trucks and team are already there we can get you a great deal..." I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow? Or the other tactic where they say "you might have noticed my truck around as I've done some work for <neighbor> and will be at <other neighbor>'s house later..." They name people whose door they knocked on, got their name, and likely rejected. But they use those names on other prospects which makes it sound like word of mouth, the best form of advertising! "Oh, if my neighbor is using this guy for <Service> he must be good"... Really a brilliant tactic that I bet fools some people. The only guy I really admired (but didn't use because I thought his prices were far too high) was a guy going door to door offering to clean the outside windows. He wanted $10/window and I was like no way. I'm sure he got a few customers.
- allenu 2y ago
  I can see how "we're in your neighborhood so we thought you might want to use our services while we're here" could work. When I first moved into my house a few years ago, I wasn't familiar with tactics used by door to door salespeople, so I legitimately thought they were in the neighborhood and to save them on a second trip, they were seeing if they could drum up some additional business. It was only after just about every door-to-door salesman used that excuse that I clued in that he's probably just a sales guy going to random neighborhoods and not actually one of the workers on the ground doing the job. Anyway, my point is most people don't think about these things, and especially not new homeowners, and probably just take their word. Regarding the $10/window guy: I've been meaning to get out the ladder and clean all my windows myself but have been lazy, so if somebody actually showed up at my door, quoted a price, and said they'd do it right then and there, I might take them up on the offer. It's really just a numbers game for them.

dsr_ 2y ago

If the tactic results in a return on investment, somebody will do it -- even if it makes them unwelcome at family reunions. When the cost is extremely low -- spamming -- any return at all will justify it. When the cost is low and the return is relatively high -- cold calling -- it will happen. Only regulation and good enforcement of the regulation can stop these activities in a capitalist regime.

landryraccoon 2y ago

The fact that cold calling was expensive was a signal that the caller was legitimate. In the era where calling someone on the phone is cheap and highly optimized, getting a phone call is not a signal for quality. But back in the 1980s that wouldn’t have been the case. If a human being picked up the phone and called you, you would be more inclined to listen to them, simply because you knew it was expensive for them to call and it happened infrequently. Phone spam didn’t become a thing until much later.

13of40 2y ago

I think the answer is that much like an ad for a car or a mattress, the cold call isn't meant to take someone from zero to full interest, it's to find that one person in a hundred who's already thinking about it and just needs an opportunity presented to them. How many random people would you need to ask before you found someone who was pondering joining a gym this very morning and would love some more info about it?

tsimionescu 2y ago
You're probably right, but I don't get this attitude at all. I could have a burning desire to do X and no time, if you called me out of the blue offering X, I'd still say no thank you, sorry. It's entirely in my DNA that cold calls are never good. Wonder why other people haven't developed this.
- scrapcode 2y ago
  Same here. It's simple math for me, really - even if your pitch is compelling and well-targeted to me somehow, it is highly unlikely that your offer and commission overhead are going to be better than something I can seek out myself.

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JohnFen 2y ago

My "No Soliciting" sign actually worked very well with everyone except religious organizations. I still haven't figured out how to deter them aside from saying "I'll listen to your sales pitch about God only after you listen to my sales pitch about Satan." Funny story, only once did that fail to get them to go away. In that case, it was a couple of Mormons and they took me up on the offer (leaving me wishing I actually had some sort of satanic sales pitch). They were very nice and pleasant company, and we ended up spending a couple of hours talking about the music of Frank Zappa. But I didn't become a Mormon.

allenu 2y ago
That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It reminds me of something I read that said if you are trying to sell something to someone and they're budging, ask them what it would take to change their mind. It's kind of a trick question, because often, whatever they request can be provided (or at least an equivalent), and once the salesperson provides it to them, it's very hard for them to say no. Most people want to appear consistent in their behaviors.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It really was. I think the reason they did and the others didn't was that they understood that I wasn't being serious, but the others thought I was. They laughed when I made the offer and said "sounds great!". But, to your point, once they agreed I wasn't really in a position to say "no, never mind" without losing a bit of face.
- strix_varius 2y ago
  I was once offered a job across the country. I was flattered and a friend's recommendation was involved so I wanted to be polite. Instead of saying "no," I said thank you so much but looking at cost of living etc it would really take (to-me absurd offer, benefits, moving support, etc). They replied back: you drive a hard bargain but we can do that. Welcome aboard! ...shit. But yeah, I moved.

bjourne 2y ago

Yes, they work. Cold calling and similar methods are all about the the numbers so even if you are immune to them, enough people aren't. Pesticides isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps you'd be more swayed by Doctors without Borders soliciting donations for aid to Gaza or something? You want to tell Jenny the volunteer you're so cheap so can't make a $5 donation? And before you know it you have signed up for a $10 monthly donation. Jenny will send you a thank you card in the mail. :) Couple the emotional manipulation with some insistence and aggressiveness and you'll have lots of sales. BTW, I don't think you are immune. The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.

marcusb 2y ago
> The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money. I have to disagree on that point. I have a no soliciting sign. It is an IQ test - I don't do business with people who can't or won't read the sign. I used to work in sales and had to deal with rejection enough that I have absolutely no problem asking people if they can read the sign and closing the door in their face if they start to argue that what they are doing isn't "soliciting" for some technical reason.
- behringer 2y ago
  And yet if I showed up with exactly what you need in my hand at a reasonable price you wouldn't even think about the sign. The sign doesn't mean anything.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    I would assume you’re screwing me and turn you down. If you’ve got enough margin to do sales that way, you’re screwing me, even if I can’t see it. It’s a no.
    - behringer 2y ago
      Everybody makes a margin, that's how the free market works. But let's say you're a communist and I show up with a compound and a few followers, I suspect we have a deal to discuss regardless of the sign ;)

nunez 2y ago

Sometimes the right QUALIFIED cold call/email at the right time with the right pitch can be very effective.

WalterBright 2y ago

My favorite door to door sales pitch is "buy a subscription to one of these magazines or I'll have to go back to doing drugs." I've had at least 3 of those salesmen.

jasomill 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0

romanhn 2y ago

You know, I'm with you. Yet - I once had an ISP rep (Sonic) show up at my door letting me know that they're setting up 10Gbps fiber in the neighborhood and if I'm interested in getting 10x speed (was already on 1Gbps fiber from AT&T) at less than half the cost. I signed up on the spot, and I'm no stranger to saying no. So I suppose it's all about playing the numbers game looking for the right customer for that pitch.

gadders 2y ago

I did door to door selling in the US (as a Brit) as a summer job after graduating. The items weren't super expensive (maybe max $80 in the early '90s). I wasn't very good at it, but some people did quite well out of it. Admittedly, only earning student-amounts. I don't think you could have fed a family on it.

spacebanana7 2y ago

Many occupations involve receiving cold outreach and filtering for useful offers. Think YouTubers receiving sponsorship offers, journalists getting leads, recruiters getting candidates, VCs finding start-ups, and car dealers getting inventory. These people are often quite receptive to cold calls & emails if you can demonstrate credibility.

BeetleB 2y ago

> I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. Read a good sales book that talks about it. There are a few factors: Effective salespeople will narrow down the list to cold call - so it's not completely random. Examples: When trying to get a house for cheap, it's not hard to find a list of people in a locale who own more than 50% equity. Now it's a matter of cold calling and finding one who is in hard times and cannot sell (e.g. house is in poor enough condition that no bank will give out a mortgage). The home owners are at risk of defaulting, so you take the property off their hands for relatively cheap, fix it up, and sell it. This way the homeowners get money (as opposed to a foreclosure where they'd get nothing). Roofs: A lot of new homes have a 20 year roof. Look up neighborhoods built in the last 20-30 years. Go door to door and try to sell them a new roof. Many will buy, because they know they have to replace it sooner or later.[1] You can also tell them which of their neighbors recently got a new roof. Solar panels: Same idea: Find people with old roofs, and give them a "deal" for a new roof + solar panel combo. Getting that solar panel incentivizes them to change the roof. Really, the key is to have a systematic way to reduce your search space. Then you'll get more successes. [1] Pro tip: Never get your roof changed this way. I've actively gotten quotes for my roof, and the highest quote I got was cheaper than the lowest quote from the door to door salesmen.