I have a friend that makes 450k running a door to door solar panel sales team. Two years ago he was making about minimum wage. There’s a huge premium for being willing to knock on strangers doors
Sorry, I know that's snarky and rude. And there's definitely a big gray line of morality in life. They're not actively murdering anybody. Not directly. But their moral framework by definition is drastically different than mine - we have chosen our own spots on that gray line and they're incompatible.
(I've been exposed to various sides of that line, including being recruited and going through brainwashing I mean training for various door to door sales gigs).
The company had made sales do tech work and techs do sales work neither side liked that. Sales guys just ignored it and called techs on a Friday afternoon to take the tech call they didn't have time for (yeah right). Techs worked days and were also on call sales didn't have to be on call.
At the meeting sales guys were slick with fancy suits, greased back hair (yes in 2008?) and had company cars. Techs were in golf shirt and jeans company trucks full of parts.
We all had to take a test you were scored on your responses and given a colour. All the sales based on their responses were put in one colour group yellow I think and all the techs in green. Like oil and water.
Technically correct, but if you avoid doing the immoral things, you will probably notice that your more experienced colleagues make much more money than you. And if you refuse to improve your performance, you will probably get fired.
You're also unlikely to be earning less doing that than telling people they get a discount if they sign the contract before checking out any other window companies and sign up to the great value financing plan...
The article focuses on the sales person and for reasons of focus or otherwise, ignores the heard of elephants in the room - what happens to the buyers afterwards.
Vast majority of door to door sales is predicated on anything from severe informational asymmetry to outright fraud. It has to be - there's a REASON why they're paid so much per sold account. It's hard work and it's swimming against the tide. From experience, they are trained and incentivized to find a weakness, with ferocious persistence and evolving methodologies, and will thus statistically exploit those with weakness. They pray on the very best of human emotions and instincts - unwillingness to be rude, eagerness to be friendly, to relate. They build and exploit implicit trust. Their product is by definition not good value - if unconvinced, imagine same product but for the price minus the salesperson commission. As I mention in more detail in parallel thread [1], nothing about average door to door salesperson is real - they're not your buddy, they will not hold your hand through the process, they will not be there to help you or answer your calls if/when things don't work out. As primary outcome of their endevour, they collectively reduce our trust in each other and faith in humanity.
(And like anything else in the wide and exciting world of MLM-likes, there's layers. Not only do the salespeople target the elderly/vulnerable, The door to door salespeople themselves are targeted to be recruited from specifically vulnerable or impressionable, and overall success rate of the profession is lousy. Very few doctors or engineers become door to door salespersons - a struggling minimum-wage worker or a new immigrant are the typical pools; I was the Venn diagram of both. I don't expect your friend to relate the true nature of their job to you, or likely even to themselves. But see if you can talk to their average buyer and get their thoughts).
Want more? Tune in the next episode of the grouchy cranky old man, where I rip into real estate agents :=>
The more advertisements are present, the less effective they are, and the worse genuine conversations get.
Door-to-door sales relies on people not actually being rude - in fact, it depends on it. And it tries to rush people to rapid hastily thought-out sales by triggering fight or flight. I have no issue in threatening them with criminal trespass and respond in kind if they refuse to leave.
It's a whole other thing if I am looking for X, and I seek people/companies that provide X. That's consensual, and doesn't serve to destroy communication and conversation.
Sales doesn’t have to be, and in larger places often isn’t, immoral.
Without it, we’d all frankly be a whole lot poorer in many ways.
But hot damn, the immoral ones sure do seem to make a lot of money fast. At least before the cops show up.
Obviously it varies: at the other end of the spectrum I suspect people calling random mobile numbers pretending to be Microsoft get most of their "business" from a small number of elderly people even though they're least likely to answer the phone.