I found this to be relatively cynical. Not every type of salesperson is like the types explored in this article.
When I was in sales we were taught to disqualify prospects, precisely because we had to find those 5-10% for whom we could resolve business pain or provide value.
Most businesses don’t benefit from signing up customers bound to be unhappy. It costs money to sell to them in the first place. Typically your ideal customer profile (ICP) is going to be someone who is going to love your product and have a lot of money to spend on it with the need to buy a lot of it. We wouldn’t waste precious time trying to scam people who weren’t that.
So really I felt this article was mostly talking about the author’s lived experience of sleazy sales: telemarketers and panhandlers and inmates.
I think some of that philosophical exploration was extended much too far into societal changes like going from an agrarian to an industrial society.
The author seems to consider the role of sales to be like the great scam of modern society.
But the reality is, products that salespeople were selling like the cotton gin or the steam engine were absolutely things that buyers wanted and benefited from.
Another example was a friend of mine who worked for Apple retail. For some people retail is soul crushing, and you’d be correct to point out that many people are completely insufferable to deal with.
But the story I got from them was that, for the most part, selling at Apple (especially 10 years ago when their products were arguably more exciting) involved a lot of time spent with customers who were having a whole lot of fun buying stuff for themselves.
If only the author got to witness an elite salesperson selling things that people really like.