Legitimate volume mail.

[Neil Schneider]

Stewart Stremler said:
> begin  quoting Neil Schneider as of Mon, May 03, 2004 at 12:05:53PM -0700:
>>
>> RBW1 said:
>>
>> > I also think this whole discussion is just part of the tail on the
>> > sleazy, but unfortunately completely necessary, world of sales
>> > marketing.
>>
>> I wish people would stop calling sales and marketing sleaze. When you go
>
> It's the 95% making a bad name for the rest.

Probably the other way round.

>> to look for a new job you are selling/marketing yourself. If you are a
>
> Well, you're negotiating, seeing if what you can provide fits what they
> need.  I've always been uncomfortable phrasing that in terms of "selling";

I've been a "professional salesman" and what you are describing is
professional selling. You may like to call it negotiating, but it's
selling.

> I'm looking to enter in to a particular sort of relationship, and "sales"
> and "relationship" in the same sentence inevitably leads to contemplating
> what "prositution" really means.

Because you have a prejudice that presupposes that selling is somehow a
direputable occupation. Because I've done it, I have no such prejudice.

Computer programmers are lazy useless clots, that do nothing but sit on
IRC all day, and playing MUDS.

>> consultant looking for new customers it's selling/marketing. Without
>
> Yup.
>
> Except that you should be looking for customers with an actual problem,
> not looking for customers who can be talked into using your services.
> There are a lot of consultants out there who "sell themselves" to the
> management, and then come in and "fix" a problem, leaving three other
> problems in their place.

Both are selling. You just have a selective description of selling. Would
you like to borrow my Xerox Professional Sales course, and see what they
describe as selling. Here's a clue, it involves asking the customer a lot
of questions about their needs. What you are describing is not a salesman,
but a huckster. No professional salesman would ever sell a customer
something they didn't need. Some salesman can convince themselves that
everyone needs their product, but that's something different.

> ("You need to upgrade. Those old UNIX systems are just too slow. You
> should upgrade to Windows NT! And it's cheaper! Look at how cheap the
> hardware is!" <-- that was a pretty common consultant's pitch in the
> mid/late 90s, and it worked, frightfully well, to the detriment of
> many companies. That's sleaze.)

I agree, but on the other hand, if I'm selling a product, and the customer
comes to me and says "I want to buy!" are you going to talk him out of
buying what you're selling?

>> sales/marketing, there would be no commerce and we would all be trading
>> potatoes for cucumbers down the street and riding horses.
>
> Without sales, yes, but without marketing? Perhaps not. It would be a
> different world, quite possibly a _better_ one.  You would still have
> commerce, but instead of marketing (an active form of advertisement),
> you'd have more passive ways of getting the word out.

Marketing and sales are two words for the same thing.

> A lot of salesmen *are* sleazy, because it's efficient to be that way.
> Those who show integrity, who don't stoop to sowing confusion and worry,
> who don't shade the truth ... often fail.

I've known a lot of salesman. Some I can't stand, others are quite good at
what they do, and would never mislead, or oversell a customer. I good
salesman leads a customer to his own conclusions. He doesn't force
something down the customer's throat.

> This is why it's important, as a customer, to keep an eye out for those
> companies who *don't* rely on sleaze.  When you find a business that
> does "the right thing" without coercion, take your business to 'em. Even
> if it costs a bit more... and when you see a company that acts, in your
> view, reprehensibly, look for ways to take your business elsewhere.

Good recommendation. However like everyone else, most business people are
looking for a free lunch. That's why con-men still exist. Most of the
cons, including many scams on the net, rely on the mark being greedy. It's
usually their own greed that gets them. And most of the cons I've read on
the net have been around in one form or another for more than a hundred
year. Guess what, they still work.

-- 
Neil Schneider                              pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net
                                           http://www.paccomp.com
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even labor into pleasant tasks. --James Baldwin