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In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

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Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#151

Post by vasco »

intended wrote: post #143
vasco wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reward positive stories that include crime, just because other people "might also be doing it" is ehhh. That's literally what criminals tell themselves, that everyone else does it. For a liar and a cheater, it's basic modus operandi to tell you some of their lies to give themselves a veneer of honesty. Agree with you in some sense, it is what it is, but why trust anything else they say to "rescue the story"? That'…

Is it not that we grant that person no reward, and instead take from their story lessons to our benefit? The little in the story that speaks about the author, is necessary as a vehicle to narrate the experience. The crux of the story is sales, and how it worked. The core point was the dehumanization, as well as the people who are the most effective in this era. Also, I can appreciate someones shoes, while acknowlding…

A more mature position than mine, thanks for perspective.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#153

Post by tsimionescu »

kqr wrote: post #111
bee_rider wrote: post #62

> I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States. Oh neat, how? > Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.…

This is not... good sales. This is making the numbers. The customers acquired with this method are not good customers. To future salespeople in here: please work on selecting customers carefully, and pitch only to great two-way fits. That way, both customer and your organisation will thrive. I get that the salesperson is judged by volume closed, but this gives the rest of the organisation churn problems to deal with.

I doubt there is such a thing as good sales from telemarketing. It's almost by definition a way to make a buck with no cares whatsoever if the person will ever return.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#154

Post by LtWorf »

llm_trw wrote: post #100
eru wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans surely do love to make things illegal.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent... Three felonies a day for everyone. More if you use a computer. It's kind of amazing how no one seems to care that the only reason why they aren't in prison currently is that no one's bothered to arrest them yet.

It's by design to be able to go after anyone. Well known dictatorship method.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#155

Post by khafra »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139
vasco wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appealing to be recorded in secret is a weird one to read in the morning. Another solution to your problem that respects the law is for them to not record you.

> Another solution to your problem that respects the law is for them to not record you You'd run a customer-service operation that has no record of who said what?

I worked in a professional services department that did not record calls, except at the request of the customer. We took copious notes on each call, shared things that showed up repeatedly over a few days to weeks in wikis, and shared things that showed up repeatedly over a single morning in Slack channels.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#156

Post by Cthulhu_ »

douglee650 wrote: post #99
creer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how often "illegally" is the American Way. I only wish it were a joke.

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime"

Or to translate a dutch expression, "whoever does not steal or inherit will work until they die" (it rhymes in dutch).

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#157

Post by anovikov »

astrange wrote: post #108
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So... the thing that made him America's top telemarketer was... illegally omitting the disclosures... which everyone was doing... but also, it made him uniquely successful because many of his colleagues didn't do it? And Uber is a taxi company that doesn't own taxis, AirBnB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels. Find a hyper-successful company or person, and start digging. The secret 99/100 times is crime (or incred…

Hotel chains frequently don't own hotels, but rather franchise their name to them. Similarly, taxi companies are much less ethical than you're implying here. Often more criminal too.

Isn't it "always" rather than "frequently"? In case of hotels. Hotel chains are brand operators, their job is to build up brand value through ads, enforcing quality standards within hotels of their chain, and managing their loyalty program. They are not supposed to operate hotels, let alone own them.

Because entities that operate hotels (paying royalty to the hotel chain), almost always do not own the hotels per se i.e. real estate. They rent it. From holding companies that did not build it, they bought them ready from real estate developers who start a project targeting several potential buyers usually picking the actual one while construction is near finishing. And the developer is also not building the building, construction company does it, the developer just manages the land deal, licensing, permitting, and architectural designs, asking construction company to do particular phases of work with a particular budget. And that one then subcontracts different things to different entities, who in turn manage imports of the labor force and materials and manage people who do the work... The chain is looong.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#158

Post by sangnoir »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
sangnoir wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is software sales, which has long cycles, ongoing relationships and is a tiny sliver of the "hires salesmen" industry. For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples.

> For commoditized markets like phone plans, cable TV / ISPs, paper, or roof repairs after a hurricane, the ones who get the most sales are the ones without scruples You’re describing low value, low recurrence sales. Those are numbers, not relationship, games, with high churn at that.

I think low recurrence is the bigger factor for sleaziness: roof replacement aren't low value, same goes for the archetype for sleazy sales tactics: car salesman.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#159

Post by dotancohen » 

  > it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—it matters how you make people feel. If you make them feel good, they’ll say yes. If you don’t, you could be selling a pill that reverses male-pattern baldness and makes you lose weight without exercise, and they’ll still turn you down flat.
The old adage is as true as ever. People do not remember what you did or what you said. People remember how you made them feel.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#160

Post by Cthulhu_ »

wraptile wrote: post #77
bee_rider wrote: post #62

> I know a good salesman when I see one. I was, briefly, the No. 1 telemarketer in the United States. Oh neat, how? > Unlike many of my less successful colleagues, I quickly learned to take yes for an answer; though we were legally required to read a long list of mandatory disclosures to all our sales, I noticed that this often broke the spell and gave people an opening to back out or “wait and ask the wife about it.…

This is why sales is such a difficult medium to respect even if it's clearly a craft. There's a dance but no music.

It varies to be honest, the one in the article - telemarketing, or broader speaking, selling something they don't need to someone - is scummy. But when working in IT you have to make a decision on a solution, be it a library, a service, or something like that; the role of sales becomes more difficult then, and will involve presentations, live demos, POCs, etc.
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