What I should do, of course, is start a new thread with this title, but I'm vain enough to want a ready-made audience.
Seriously though, at the heart of this and the other COLD CALLING thread is the issue of what sales and marketing activity is acceptable or effective, and to whom. Going back as far as we can imagine, I guess some people thought that the noisy market in the village square was (still is!) "intrusive".
We might also consider where, and when, any marketing or selling message or method is acceptable to us. If, for example, you want to resort to the "old" Google-it trick as someone suggested, do you mind that the companies you will then encounter are the ones who have best sussed all the dark arts involved in SEO or price comparison sites? Not necessarily the same thing as best price/service/quality/convenience/etc..
Or do you mind billboards up and down your road? Newspaper and magazine ads? Radio or TV ads in the middle of your movie or whatever? Mailshots? Emails? Text messages? Knock on the door? Meeting random or targeted business folk in network meetings? Or online in forums? Obviously its horses for courses which is why it is all still going on.
What has tended to happen here in the UK though is that the Mr Grumpy attitude has held sway, and this has tarred ALL sales people, using whatever method, with the same brush. Certainly when I was selling advertising space, I used to include in my (young man meets young woman) chat up lines that I was in Publishing first, the on the advertising side second before theyd extract the sales word out of me! Im in selling, back then at least, had a similar effect to Ive got leprosy (with apologies to any lepers reading).
And yet we all have met and done business with some of the smoothest, best informed, professional, helpful, useful and/or profit-inducing sales people on the planet right here in the UK. Indeed the entire country and all of our wealth is based on the very fact that we do. Apart from a bit of North Sea oil, all we ever do, and have ever done, is to buy in someone elses raw material, beat/bash/tweak it into something bigger and better (add value) and then sell it back to them. Or invent a service and sell them that. UK PLC, is a sales organisation, and all of your livelihoods are based on that fact.
You will also have caught yourself recommending one of these sales people, and/or the company they represent, on to another contact, but you might avoid the sales word yourself? (Like I know a really good printer, not the cheapest I dont think, but you always get good quality stuff from them, and on time. Here, give my contact Bill a call).
So OK, it is of course the case that some firms/products/services get completely caught up in a single form of approach and completely overdo it (is Viagra any good by the way?), and pity the poor sales people who get sucked into the profession in this way, to only experience the worst of the worst. Or indeed, come to that, the poor gatekeeper stuck on an unprotected desk fielding a mind-boggling barrage of pushy rude and arrogant visitors or callers, with mountains of junk mail and email spam to sort through as well, let alone demands from lazy bosses that she source a new print supplier, given that the last lot of cheapskates messed up so badly.
Im just wondering though, if sales people in general were thought of a bit less in the way that Gordon Brown sees them (hefty insult to Dave Cameron was to call him a shallow salesman), and a bit more the way that our American cousins see them (4th sexiest profession after brain surgeon I think) would we get a bit more harmony between buyer and seller? Not to mention a better quality of person being attracted into the profession in the first place?
