The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script | Hacker News Reader

The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script

jointhefollowup.com

429 pointsnicconley271 comments

This is not the actual sales script. It's a script for the so-called canvassing call. Or so it was called back when I worked in boiler rooms cca. 2007. You hire a bunch of losers pay them no wage and all they do is telemarketing "can I call you with an opportunity?" i.e. you simply pre-qualify people for the real call. You show off some fake credibility, present yourself like a real business and says stuff like 'we only send couple of trade recommendations a year'. Then a week later the real sales guy give the prospect a hyped up call about this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Most people, about 95% making these first calls never make it higher. Either they quickly gather this job is a BS scam or they're too stupid to realize that and that stupidity often prevents them from going higher up. A few cynical ones like the manipulative aspects of it.

The job of a firm is to create illusion of excessive wealth and rockstar lifestyle of these "brokers" (strippers, cocaine, etc.) to attract some kind of talent. Most of the directors are faking the size of their wealth. E.g. coming to job on rented Bentley. They also lie about the nature of the job to hire people for "canvassing" as it doesn't matter how long you stay, if you only deliver 20 leads per first day and quit that's still a win. A bulk of the leads come from people who were tricked into the job and quit asap.

Most people who make it through are the ones cynical enough to stay around, then they harvest work of the ones who quit earlier. E.g. you collect leads, small clients etc. I have a friend who made it far, his lifestyle was just like Wolf of Wallstreet but more excessive. That movie btw. it's watered down - which is hard to believe for most as you'd expect Hollywood to overblow things.

Your post may be about high finance, but you just described the ISR role in tech sales, too. :)

What does ISR stand for ?

Inside Sales Rep

Yup, down to the qualification script.

> That movie btw. it's watered down

Ever read Straight to Hell? That seems less watered down at the very least.

>>You hire a bunch of losers pay them no wage and all they do is telemarketing

Isn't this what SDRs do?

There's telesales and telemarketing. In sales you close deals which requires skills. There's very few actual sales people in the market today, most just end up in this role because they can't get another job and then simply do manual marketing (adding people on linkedin, sending out cold emails, talking to non decision makers). Some are lucky to work in a company with great product and even there I see them slow down momentum. In fact I've seen a few startups miss their chance because they hired fake sales people early on.

Er, that distinction isn’t quite right. In any B2B enterprise company, there are SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) and AEs (Account Executives).

AEs are the sales people. They’re the ones who close the deals.

SDRs pretty much do nothing but qualify. If they close a deal, great, but sometimes that’s not even a good thing because it possibly could have been a bigger deal, if they had the AE script/training. But if they do well at qualifying as an SDR, they can often move up to AE, and so on.

But yes, SDRs are generally folks straight out of college or switching careers. It requires no prior knowledge, just the audacity and ability to cold call someone and be charismatic and personable enough to get them past the qualifying questions and hopefully schedule a follow up call.

You may be thinking of ISRs (Inside Sales Representatives) which are effectively SDRs who are authorized (and trained) to close very small deals, as compared to the AEs.

This actually requires a different set of skills, as AEs are often speaking to people in a “board room,” literally or figuratively, and sales cycles are long, meaning the contracts have to be huge to make it worth it (plus good AEs are expensive).

ISR sales can’t be long, as volume matters more than absolute price for inside sales, since that absolute price is orders of magnitude lower than an enterprise sale. As a result, the amount of time spent on each candidate customer has to be an order of magnitude lower as well, so qualifying a customer out of the top of the funnel is more important than almost anything else. The biggest waste of time is spending hours or weeks with a customer who was never going to buy in the first place, and novice sales people make that mistake all the time.

So yeah, I’m not sure what distinction you were trying to make between “telesales” and “telemarketing,” but that distinction really doesn’t exist.

Aside: literally every single startup hires bad sales people early on. Every single one. I have never seen one that doesn’t. It is, in my estimation, impossible to know what to look for in the right sales person until you’ve made a bunch of sales, which is why it’s so important for founders to make the first bunch of sales. But founders are a wholly different breed from sales people, and reading sales people is exceptionally hard.

For ISRs and SDRs, the solution is easy: hire them, train them, see if they perform, and fire them if they don’t and reward them if they do. Because SDRs and ISRs are so cheap, relatively speaking, as it’s an entry-level role, it’s a fairly low risk as long as you’re actually willing to put in the effort to train them and cut your losses when they’re not working out.

AEs are harder because their base is generally much higher, but they should come with a prepped “Rolodex”, ready to close deals quickly. If you don’t have a pipeline, solve that problem first.

Sorry for the rant, but seemed important.

Source: I’m a serial founder, have run sales teams, some successful and others not. I’m an engineer who happens to be good at sales, but finding good sales people is still a dark art.

OK seems like things changed a bit. Back in the day AE was someone who would work in lower level, less aggressive sales (fewer deals, bigger size) doing a mix of business dev and customer support - or it would be companies trying to add "manager" to the job title back when word manager carried some weight. Been talking from my own experience from basically 15-18 years ago from London and Europe.

This is a great breakdown and I can confirm that it closely matches my own experience with B2B tech company sales.

Just shot you an email, would love to pick your brain on the sales side of startups.

I guess it must work, or they wouldn't keep doing it, but why would anyone entertain a cold caller to any degree? In my experience there's a 0% chance it will be useful or a good deal, and a very high likelyhood it's an outright scam.

I do think it's good to be polite to anyone who calls, but it doesn't matter what they say or ask, the answer is always a polite "Please don't call me again."

This pitch worked much better in the 80s and 90s when

A) most investors had a broker not just for advice, but because there was no easy way to trade individually or get live stock quotes until the internet was widespread and matured

B) telephone sales in general were more common then and less likely to be a scam (Stratton Oakmont and other boiler rooms played a large role in shifting public opinion on this)

C) The most desirable prospects (High Net Worth Individuals) were accustomed to dealing with legitimate brokers over the phone and being solicited by brokers from other legitimate firms in such a way

D) The markets were raging in such a way that everyone had FOMO and was dying to hear of a hot new tip

Almost nobody legitimate in the financial advising world acquires customers via cold call pitching anymore. Cold calling is still part of the toolkit for other sales niches (eg, tech sales) but it's a tough road with a low success rate.

>telephone sales in general were more common then and less likely to be a scam

Caller had to pay long distance costs at the time and really until you got in the later 90s early 2000's did you start seeing unlimited long distance everywhere.

Getting cold calls from random people way back then was super rate because it was expensive.

"Extremely cheap global telecommunications accessible to everyone" came with a lot of drawbacks we didn't consider at the time they started to become viable. Although all the spam in our inboxes should have been a clue.

With enough technological development we can make everything in the future like getting off from the airport train in a big third world city and surrounded by beggars and fraudsters. Robocalls, AI blogspam, Email, Facebook etc.

Not exactly an advantage to pay a fee to a middleman. It's more like frictionless communication should be the default, and we had a period where friction accidentally acted as signal

I want frictionless communication with the people I've already communicated with, but very high friction communication with people I've never talked to before. I'd love a way to charge $10 to get into my inbox. If it ends up being a long lost friend or whatever, I'll Venmo them back the $10.

This use case is actually the reason we have bitcoin, tho it's a shame it took off as a protest to banks instead of getting implemented as a functional anti-spam tool. To this day spam is regularly in my inbox and I have to check my spam folder for legitamate messages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Well, no. That’s the reason we have hash cash (the pow algo for bitcoin)

Bitcoin itself, as with most early cryptocurrencies, is and was a protest against banks and centralized finance.

fair enough, I should say it was a prerequisite

There's nothing stopping this from happening. Build encryption into the email protocols and hide the decrypt key behind a block chain that costs even $0.01 of a fungible token to access.

the blockchain, as usual, is not necessary, the header is proof enough on that a penny worth of energy[0] was expended in generating the hash

[0] (or however much energy you want to demand before throwing the message in the spam folder - you just require whatever number of leading zeros in the hash ie crank up the difficulty, bitcoin's innovation was assigning ownership to these proofs-of-work via signatures and implementing a mechanism to update and broadcast that ownership)

Ye imagine if you got 50c for each call or email you received not on a whitelist and the social contract was to refund it by pressing #1 after the call ended or whatever.

Pay numbers are a thing so I guess it should be doable.

Yes please. SMS too.

If I was your long lost friend I probably wouldn't pay the $10 upfront.

Not much of a friend then eh

You can send everyone not on a list to spam and auto respond with a link to pay you $10 to get on the white list

should be doable

Not currently doable with phone calls.

From what I understand, the caller ID feature is completely useless. There is no willingness to implement rules that guarantee the number the call is coming from is the owner of the number. The best you can do is call them back and hope the routing doesn't get screwed up.

Depends on the circuit that you are dialling out onto.

I know where I work there are some rules about presenting whatever number you want on our trunk provider, but this is something they have put in place themselves with no "legal" reason for them to do it. We've been working with them for years so we are one of their trusted clients and have the ability to present any number we want as long as we have permission to do so from the number owner.

The fact its up to the trunk provider to put these rules in place and not just standard everywhere is wild to me.

There’s lots of services like this that I have seen, including a popular one where you can donate $1 to a charity in order for your email to reach someone’s inbox.

You'll have to just to send your reply!

You don't actually want frictionless communication. Frictionless communication will drown you in a mountain of spam.

A 'Frictionless' ability to transmit puts all the friction, pain, and negative externalities onto the recipient.

I mean if the signal isn't replaced by anything, then the onus is put on to the person receiving the call. If years ago, there was a barrier for an army of phone scammers from across the world throwing everything they can think of at an old person with borderline dementia, and suddenly that went away..I don't know how you can really justify the "frictionless communication" outside of a couple of options. A) "Well it's their fault, they should be on their guard all the time everyone is always trying to scam and manipulate you" -- (idk about you but this seems pretty grim and inhumane) B) "well it's a net benefit for ~someone~ so we should all be happy about it, and refer to A)"

> It's more like frictionless communication should be the default

No. We should have complete control on how much friction anybody gets to communicating with us. And frictionless should absolutely not be the default.

Friction is signal.

I recall I used to individually send snaps to like 30 friends each time, back before Snapchat invented Stories. I had to think a tiny bit, and put a tiny bit of effort, for each person. We lost that when people started posting to stories only.

This is a great point. "More common" wasn't the best choice of words because it implies a higher frequency, which was not the case. "More acceptable/accepted/normalized" would have been better phrasing.

I mean, if you want to be pedantic about it, I suppose it depends on whether or not “telephone sales” implies something actually being sold.

Up until the early 90's if you wanted a stock price intraday, you had to call your broker. Your alternative was waiting until the morning and getting previous close from NYT or WSJ.

Totally.-

PS. Brings back memories. Won an US, national high school "paper trading" contest back in the day. Out of 14000 participants. Was quite proud ...

Trick to winning is to make a couple of insane bets that end up panning out, yeah?

Can't speak to that, but I remember spending hours and hours and hours pouring over stock listings after hours.-

I distinctly remember we used a newspaper that I think is still around called IBD "Investors Business Daily", and they had this system that worked really well ("C-A-N-S-L-I-M").-

And I remember pouring over thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of possibilities each day, and basically doing fundamental and technical analysis. I would filter out the candidates with broad technical analysis and then review the fundamentals of each, looking up each company on huge binders - yes, paper - from a subscription service the school had that had all financial and other info for all listed companies.-

And it worked out. At some point, I caught a few big ones that just went ballistic. And it worked out great. One of the things it did is it taught me the value of effort. And I distinctly remember another thing, too. I distinctly remember being called by the organization to let me know I was winning, having won, all but certainly.-

And the day after that, right before the closing of the ranking, running out of trades - because one had a limited amount of trades to perform during the competition. So I could not close a position I had, which had earned me a lot, so I wound up at a loss after having won, which, and I shall never forget this, ended up with my teacher basically saying, "I have seen how much effort you put into this, so I will give you -my account- to handle, so you can continue trading, so you will always remember that hard work and effort pays off in the end".-

In the end I did loose my ranking and with too little time could not catch up, even with the second account.-

So, I lost, but - in a way - I won, because I "won" that lesson ...

And gush bump it, it's a lesson I've never forgotten.-

So thank you, Mr. Brown.-

IBD - The ol' cup and handle. I still use it to this day when selling puts.

I mean they had (O'Neil and Co.) some great, solid points.-

(And, in the days before the internet their listings were great ...)

Did you become a trader?

Ah! The "fundamental" question :)

No, I did not.-

PS. Funny thing is I remember being asked, by the organization - whether I was going to go into finance at the time. Of course, I emphatically said that I was.-

I guess "life" took over. It is what happens to you while you make other plans, after all ...

... but the lesson(s) learned have remained with me.-

I remember doing something similar with a website in high school. Some people made reasonable investments and did well. Some people made insane bets that panned out and did better. The winner correctly guessed that the site wouldn't properly account for stock splits and merges and went hunting for stocks that were about to merge.

> The winner correctly guessed that the site wouldn't properly account for stock splits and merges and went hunting for stocks that were about to merge.

Smart, actually.-

Ahh, the "Stock Market Game". It still exists: https://www.stockmarketgame.org/

It's more sophisticated now, and like you, when I was in school (middle school in the late 80s), we just tracked our portfolio performance using daily newspapers. I remember buying a couple of symbols for companies I'd never even heard of, and knew nothing about. Probably not the best that this was a thing led by our social studies teacher.

Fascinating to know that it still exists. Thank you for bringing it up ...

Actually, these "wargames" serve another IMHO crucial purpose - and another lesson I gathered from the whole experience, early: Learn to invest. And learn to invest as an structural part of one's development.-

Also worth noting companies like Cutco use a similar script and a cold-calling approach, it doesn't work nearly as well as it used to though because most people don't answer numbers they don't know, so they train people to leave a message and say that a close friend (the reference) told you to call them

Remember, this was not too far removed from the era of https://youtu.be/2MXqb1a3Apg?si=J7Q_9hBYin2KWKwN

In our world of limited source credibility and disdain for expertise, this video and the script do seem like throwbacks to another time.

I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling. I understand why SPAM works - because it has a very small barrier to entry and it works on the idea of converting a small fraction of messages sent. But cold-calling takes man-hours and I can only imagine it's sole purpose is to catch individuals that simply would rather pay you to end the call rather than say "no."

Even worse is door-to-door sales. My neighborhood has big "no soliciting" signs at the entrances, but at certain times of the year we get huge swaths of salesmen and it's typically for the exact same services at different times of year. Once I was working on my boat late at night in my garage with the door halfway open. I had a pesticide service salesman zip up my driveway on a segway and come inside my garage and start pitching. I couldn't help but to lose my stuff on him. Do these tactics really work? Is it a certain demographic? Because I just don't grok.

Yes, they work. Cold calling and similar methods are all about the the numbers so even if you are immune to them, enough people aren't. Pesticides isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps you'd be more swayed by Doctors without Borders soliciting donations for aid to Gaza or something? You want to tell Jenny the volunteer you're so cheap so can't make a $5 donation? And before you know it you have signed up for a $10 monthly donation. Jenny will send you a thank you card in the mail. :) Couple the emotional manipulation with some insistence and aggressiveness and you'll have lots of sales.

BTW, I don't think you are immune. The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.

> Doctors without Borders soliciting donations

We had such a visit recently; we were so appalled at the very idea that DwB would stoop so low as to send door-to-door solicitors around the town, that we immediately assumed this person was scoping the block for a potential break-in. Because he asked about our neighbor and we accidentally let it slip that he's away, we put up a hidden surveillance camera[0] overlooking the stairway and both our doors' for a couple days, just in case someone decides to come back at night. We also immediately queried Doctors Without Borders about this, warning them about a potential crime done using their brand.

Imagine our surprise where Doctors Without Borders responded to confirm that the person who visited us was, in fact, legitimately soliciting donations for them, and that they actually do door-to-door. Something in me died that day.

[0] - We repurposed a nanny cam for this, where by "nanny cam" I mean Ubiquiti G4 Instant, because the only way you can get a baby camera these days that doesn't send videos of your kids to random third-party servers is by buying industrial surveillance hardware.

I'm kind of surprised by your response.

If everyone who was soliciting was like Doctors without Borders, there wouldn't be a problem. That's a worthy cause.

The problem is the scammers, not DWB. The fact that you think it's legitimate causes trying to get support that are the problem and not the scammers makes my head spin.

I disagree with the last statement. I have seen a handful of people close to me get scammed and have developed a “no thank you” attitude to everything.

Want to donate to save this or that? No thank you

Want this super great deal on this awesome thing? No thank you

Want free money? No thank you

If I want something I’ll Google it and do some research and then just get that thing. I’m glad to overpay to do things my way. Nothing would change my mind. Ever.

Ever?

Aging might.

My dad was like you.

Found out recently he has a girlfriend stuck in Nigeria that he was on his way to the bank to help.

My opinion in recent years is that, completely by accident, we made the internet more secure then the phone system.

On the internet we have - for it's faults - the DNS and X.509 certificate systems. When I go to my bank's website, I know it's my bank.

We desperately need telecommunications to implement the same thing - i.e. businesses must present a valid cryptographic certificate which ties back to their registration number when using the phone system.

At the very least, so someone claiming to be a business would have a clear "invalid certificate" message displayed on the receiver.

Could individuals implement this on top of the current phone system?

E.g., each call starts with an attempted modem conversation to validate certificates, keys, etc.

And then the call is forwarded to the recipient's actual phone depending on rules related to that first step.

> The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.

I have to disagree on that point. I have a no soliciting sign. It is an IQ test - I don't do business with people who can't or won't read the sign. I used to work in sales and had to deal with rejection enough that I have absolutely no problem asking people if they can read the sign and closing the door in their face if they start to argue that what they are doing isn't "soliciting" for some technical reason.

And yet if I showed up with exactly what you need in my hand at a reasonable price you wouldn't even think about the sign. The sign doesn't mean anything.

It’s wild to me people can say things like this so confidently. I’ve said no to everything my entire life. I don’t care what you’re offering, I’m already seething with rage that I have to talk to you. If I want something I’ll look for it same rules as avoiding phishing.

Really? If you're hungry and your coworker shows up with a pizza you just tell them to fuck off?

:wave:

Hey, the rest of the thread is over here. It looks like you moved the goalposts so far away you might be lost.

Not really, it's exactly my point. If you're a game collector and I show up with a game at a good price, that's a sale. If I pull into your driveway with the classic car you're looking for the sale is on the table. The sign means nothing, what matters is what you've got and how much it'll cost.

Those are very niche. How would you have known that's what I'm looking for? Sounds like groundwork for a larger crime. I'll say I'm busy but take your name and number and later do OSINT research on you to level the playing field. Why would I engage someone who knows where my family sleeps when I don't know where theirs sleeps?

Successful cold callers research their customers beforehand to know what they want, and don't call people who probably aren't interested.

If you're a game collector and I show up with a rare game, you're probably interested. Even if you don't buy it, at least I'm not wasting your time. If I show up with an Ethernet switch ASIC, you're probably not interested and I am wasting your time. That's why Marvell would cold-call Juniper and Cisco, not Antonio Romero Monteiro.

Turns out I've never in my life had a successful cold caller reach out to me, I guess. I can't think of a single reason in 2024 that a random telephone call would get me to part ways with my money. In fact, I've had very few instances where a salesperson adds value to a transaction period.

Showing up on my doorstep uninvited is at best an invasion of privacy, and at worst a crime in progress that I interrupted.

So you don't want a free pizza because the neighbour's 3 year old son ordered 30 of them on doordash and their freezer isn't big enough?

Definitely not, but I like my neighbors and like maintaining good relations with people in the nighrborhood, so I would forgive them.

You know, I thought about this overnight. I'm pretty sure I feel this way partially because talking to people real time isn't free for me, it has a cost. I have to mask neurodivergence all day to get along in the corporate world, I do not want to put the mask on again unexpectedly when there's a knock at the door. It's my off time, it's like getting paged or something.

The second part is the privacy aspect, I don't want to do business in a power asymmetry -- they can reach me where I sleep but I cannot do the same to them. I don't want anyone I engage in a business relationship with to get any ideas of any type about who/what they see at my home, from judging negatively to jealously to planning to come back and take it. It's unnecessary risk surface for a business transaction.

All this person has done is illustrate a sociopathic inability to understand other peoples’ experiences. Nothing they have said is remotely interesting and is an obvious no from my perspective. The only situation I’d even pick up a phone or answer the door is the neighbor. That would be a no thanks. The fact that they keep pushing and clearly think their juvenile worldview applies to everyone reinforces my original statement. It’s wild to me people can say these things with a straight face.

I would assume you’re screwing me and turn you down. If you’ve got enough margin to do sales that way, you’re screwing me, even if I can’t see it. It’s a no.

Everybody makes a margin, that's how the free market works.

But let's say you're a communist and I show up with a compound and a few followers, I suspect we have a deal to discuss regardless of the sign ;)

> enough margin

Yes, it would mean something, and, yes, I would think about the sign. In fact, I did this about a month ago to someone who was selling a service I was actively in the market for. As I said, and I can only say this to you again, I can't understand it for you: the sign is an IQ test. I will not do business with someone who cannot or will not read the sign.

You could be offering hundred dollar bills for my garbage - I wouldn't even listen.

Everybody wants something and everybody has a price they'll pay for it.

Not from random strangers soliciting it. The chance that they are going to scam you is much too high to trust anything they offer.

Even in such a situation – and that's actually happened before – I'd still say no and buy the product from a competitor, even if that means paying twice as much.

Also, the last time a doctors without borders person showed up, I tried pressuring her into joining a local protest a few days later until she got uncomfortable and decided to leave.

All types of forceful advertising – be that online ads or door-to-door salesmen – are absolute bullshit and shouldn't exist in a civilized society.

My doorbell is labeled "no soliciting" for a reason.

I'm immune because I don't answer my phone if you're not in my limited contacts list, and if you're an unknown number, you automatically go straight to voicemail.

Drastic measures like this had to be taken because I had a DBA for awhile and foolishly listed my actual number with the business. Basically my number is forever 'on the list', so, I made my own list.

Of course, if you're on my list and you call asking for ten bucks, well, I'll probably give it to you.

Not disagreeing that it must work, however, I think immunity is possible with a simple heuristic: Say no to all inbounds.

Or more specifically, if you get a call and it's not from someone you know then you simply hang up. Relevant information comes from you seeking it out, not the other way around.

For privacy sake, and having encountered too many scammers, I have a hard rule about never giving money or personal info to any request, for any reason. If it's something I want to buy or participate in, I will follow up through other channels after some online research. If it's a business I already buy from, still a scam, I will use their website on my own. If it is emotionally charged or urgent, it is definitely a scam.

The most manipulated I've been in recent years is when I actually feel bad for the salesperson because their job sucks so much.

I have personally never bought / donated anything from / to a cold-caller or a door-to-door salesman. At most it might pique my interest into doing my own research into the field/product and seek out the market leader on my own.

>BTW, I don't think you are immune. The only truly immune people are those that don't understand the language and/or have no money.

Incorrect - I'm immune because I presume 100% of solicitations are scams and behave as such. I don't listen to solicitations from anyone. I will just hang up, end the conversation, walk away, or close the door.

Even if I did listen to a solicitation and I was interested in the product or giving to the cause I would never actually buy anything, remember, I am presuming Jenny is a scammer. Jenny isn't getting any money from me no matter what she's selling.

A lot of people are gullible and/or socially have trouble saying "no" to people. I think cold calling and door-to-door sales preys on that. I have elderly family members who hate getting telemarketing cold calls, but they are from some time/culture where it's uncomfortable/difficult to directly tell someone "No, I'm not interested. Fuck off." That's often who's falling for these.

If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself. This is true for everything I've ever purchased. The fact that they have to push it on me proves that it's negative-EV and I have no problem just hanging up or closing the door. I guess not everyone finds this easy.

> If I actually needed what the salesman was selling, I would have bought it already myself.

This assumes it's a frictionless commodity. I want a pizza, I buy a pizza. I'm not interested in cold calls selling me pizza because if I wanted one, I would've already gone to the pizza shop down the road.

However, not everything is like this. Jobs, for example, are the opposite extreme. If someone cold-calls me asking me a job interview, well, this actually happened (not via a phone call) and led to me moving halfway around the world and having to learn a second language. Did I get scammed? Ich denke nicht.

In the realm of actual products, there are might be things you think about buying for a long time, and then eventually you see a good deal and buy it. Cold calls may help you find a good deal (I doubt it now - but back in the era when they weren't just spam) and then you may buy it.

There's also just advertising, especially for B2B where everything is more opaque. I have no idea where to get advanced Ethernet switch ASICs ("merchant silicon" as they call it) and you can't even Google it because the information isn't public. If I was a networking company and some switch ASIC company called me to tell me they make switch ASICs and here's our product selection guide, that would actually be welcome information. (I'm not one, but let's imagine I was.)

This is actually good. "Thanks for your time, the BRAWNDO CORPORATION won't call you again."

If you manage to end it in 3-8 seconds they can do 360 such calls in an hour. If the guy costs $12 per hour that works out to little over 3 cent.

And then, 20 months later a % of the "fuck off, leave me alone" guys need the product and remember how polite the call was. These usually do a good bit of research. They clearly call for information. If the price is good and they live 3 blocks away there are good odds they let you mow their lawn.

Too true, Many people, including myself, tend to say "ha, I have never bought any thing based on an ad or salesman" But often that is not the point, the point is to get it in your head that the product exists. and when you do need one, when faced with several indistinguishable items, you go for the one that feels familiar, the one that was infiltrated into your head months ago.

There is nothing super wrong with this, I mean, sales is necessary evil of doing business. necessary, because the whole point is to sell the thing, and evil, because you are coercing someone to do something they otherwise would not have done. But I think there is a healthy ratio here, and I try to make a point(often failing for the reason in the previous paragraph) to avoid products that lean too heavily on the unhealthy side of that ratio. those companies that believe sales is more important than the product.

If there are very few potential customers you just ask if it is at all possible to meet them. Same if you have only a few phone numbers from people who meet some set of requirements.

If there are millions of prospects and you cant filter by anything the point is to figure out that they don't need or want your product. Do it fast and politely.

Or not even that, the actual goal is to put in the calls without the negative psychological effect of mass rejection.

Arguably, you can start calling before writing the business plan when you only have a half finished idea. If you find just one prospect who says your product would be a wonderful thing have them be more specific. Like that it is much easier to stay motivated. Rejection is much harder if you are deeply invested, wrote the plan, wrote the code, found investors, hired employees.

While cold calling is heavily associated with shit products that doesn't mean your product is shit the moment you pick up the phone. Or maybe it is and you need to be told what is wrong with it repeatedly. You need to be talking with people who've made widgets for decades, they know their stuff.

Who knows, maybe you don't even need an idea. If you just call 1000 people in the funeral sector they can tell you what software they need. Then try weddings, laundromats, plumbers etc

Ask the dumb questions, what would be the right time to call someone in the $sectorName sector? What is their software budget? What are the repetitive administrative tasks? Is the sector patient and polite or do they tell you to fuck off and hang up?

Elderly who are a prime market for a reason cash from retirement or life insurance and possible dementia.

I don't know how many times I have told my own mother not to pick up the phone. At best she knows at worst she says she's knows it's a scam but "just wants to see who it is". At least she knows not to press 1 although "why what would it do?" often comes up. She has no credit card or Internet so VISA and Amazon scams are obviously fake. Of the calls to her land line phone nearly 100% are scam calls.

Even my aunt who knows better called to ask my mother why [large company] needed her to get gift cards and not tell the police. The pressure of authority is strong for older people they can't fathom someone would dare impersonate police.

Don't fall for your elderly relatives behaviour if they seems smart and not in any way gullible they still may be. It's shocking how easily some people are fooled even ones you think would never fall for such scams.

This assumes that you know everything there is to know about the world.

Customers often do not know that products or even product categories exist and need to be informed about them.

That's what word of mouth is for. Ads and cold calls are not reliable sources of information, they are universally lies with some rare smidgen of truth sometimes hidden inside.

Ah yes, when I get together with my homies, I love to talk about B2B SaaS products.

This idea that there is a solution to every problem if you only knew about it is a hallmark of these things. A lot of products are solutions looking for a problem, and they work very hard to make you think you'll have a problem if you don't buy the product.

As an example, a pest control company canvassed one of my friends' cul-de-sacs and essentially threatened to send all the pests into his house by poisoning them and repelling them from all the neighbors. If you have a pest problem exclusion is usually cheaper and better than poison or repellent. My wife paid for trapping and control on her house for years and then I went around over the course of a couple of weeks and closed the gaps in her siding that were added by telecommunications companies like Verizon and AT&T and Comcast over the years. Mysteriously the pest problem went away after that.

So it's not always the case that the product being advertised is a net positive. Often it's net neutral or net negative. But the advertiser sure wants you to do it anyway.

Not all products and services are good, yes. But you don't spring forth from the womb knowing about all the good ones either.

I know ad and marketing folks tell themselves this to sleep at night, but it’s such a small factor in actual marketing and advertising that happens that it’s negligible.

I think the answer is that much like an ad for a car or a mattress, the cold call isn't meant to take someone from zero to full interest, it's to find that one person in a hundred who's already thinking about it and just needs an opportunity presented to them.

How many random people would you need to ask before you found someone who was pondering joining a gym this very morning and would love some more info about it?

You're probably right, but I don't get this attitude at all. I could have a burning desire to do X and no time, if you called me out of the blue offering X, I'd still say no thank you, sorry. It's entirely in my DNA that cold calls are never good. Wonder why other people haven't developed this.

Same here. It's simple math for me, really - even if your pitch is compelling and well-targeted to me somehow, it is highly unlikely that your offer and commission overhead are going to be better than something I can seek out myself.

My "No Soliciting" sign actually worked very well with everyone except religious organizations. I still haven't figured out how to deter them aside from saying "I'll listen to your sales pitch about God only after you listen to my sales pitch about Satan."

Funny story, only once did that fail to get them to go away. In that case, it was a couple of Mormons and they took me up on the offer (leaving me wishing I actually had some sort of satanic sales pitch). They were very nice and pleasant company, and we ended up spending a couple of hours talking about the music of Frank Zappa.

But I didn't become a Mormon.

Pro tip about Mormon missionaries (I've never been a Mormon but have been visited by them): the easiest way to get them to go away permanently is to get on their blacklist; they have them believe it or not. It is basically a "do not visit this house" list. And the easiest way to do that is to try to convert them to a different religion from Mormonism. If you're really good at it, they'll consider you a threat to their missionary work and blacklist you.

Now, you might be thinking "Nah, that sounds too much like work" but consider the benefit: you won't be blacklisted only by Mormon missionary trainer 1 and trainee 2, but no Mormon will ever visit your home ever again, because you are in their LDS ward.

While I really dislike anyone knocking on my door to sell me something, regardless of what that thing is, I do have to admit...

Mormons are usually the least objectionable of all the door-knockers. They tend to be genuinely friendly (or at least are able to fake it really well), respectful, don't do the "hard sell", and when I tell them I'm not interested, they honor my statement and leave without trying to change my mind or guilt-trip me.

I just put up a camera at the front door and check it before answering, if they're holding a clipboard or the like I leave them standing there.

That was smart of them to take you up on your offer! It reminds me of something I read that said if you are trying to sell something to someone and they're budging, ask them what it would take to change their mind. It's kind of a trick question, because often, whatever they request can be provided (or at least an equivalent), and once the salesperson provides it to them, it's very hard for them to say no. Most people want to appear consistent in their behaviors.

> That was smart of them to take you up on your offer!

It really was. I think the reason they did and the others didn't was that they understood that I wasn't being serious, but the others thought I was. They laughed when I made the offer and said "sounds great!".

But, to your point, once they agreed I wasn't really in a position to say "no, never mind" without losing a bit of face.

I was once offered a job across the country. I was flattered and a friend's recommendation was involved so I wanted to be polite. Instead of saying "no," I said thank you so much but looking at cost of living etc it would really take (to-me absurd offer, benefits, moving support, etc). They replied back: you drive a hard bargain but we can do that. Welcome aboard!

...shit. But yeah, I moved.

Well, how did it work out?

Really well, at least in the long run. I stopped being a "big fish" in a small-town pond and ended up discovering more cool opportunities than I thought existed.

Mormon salesmissionaries are trained to do whatever you want. They'll mow your lawn for you.

The fact that cold calling was expensive was a signal that the caller was legitimate.

In the era where calling someone on the phone is cheap and highly optimized, getting a phone call is not a signal for quality.

But back in the 1980s that wouldn’t have been the case. If a human being picked up the phone and called you, you would be more inclined to listen to them, simply because you knew it was expensive for them to call and it happened infrequently. Phone spam didn’t become a thing until much later.

The biggest door to door I get is from roofing/window where they canvas the neighborhood when doing a neighbor's house. I don't see the types of door to door where a car would drop off a couple of people to cover an area any more though. The No Soliciting is just not even a concern for them. It's not like it is enforceable in any way than a possibly rude door slamming in their face, and who cares about that?

"Hey, we're doing some work in your neighborhood and since our trucks and team are already there we can get you a great deal..."

I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow?

Or the other tactic where they say "you might have noticed my truck around as I've done some work for <neighbor> and will be at <other neighbor>'s house later..."

They name people whose door they knocked on, got their name, and likely rejected. But they use those names on other prospects which makes it sound like word of mouth, the best form of advertising! "Oh, if my neighbor is using this guy for <Service> he must be good"... Really a brilliant tactic that I bet fools some people.

The only guy I really admired (but didn't use because I thought his prices were far too high) was a guy going door to door offering to clean the outside windows. He wanted $10/window and I was like no way. I'm sure he got a few customers.

I can see how "we're in your neighborhood so we thought you might want to use our services while we're here" could work. When I first moved into my house a few years ago, I wasn't familiar with tactics used by door to door salespeople, so I legitimately thought they were in the neighborhood and to save them on a second trip, they were seeing if they could drum up some additional business.

It was only after just about every door-to-door salesman used that excuse that I clued in that he's probably just a sales guy going to random neighborhoods and not actually one of the workers on the ground doing the job. Anyway, my point is most people don't think about these things, and especially not new homeowners, and probably just take their word.

Regarding the $10/window guy: I've been meaning to get out the ladder and clean all my windows myself but have been lazy, so if somebody actually showed up at my door, quoted a price, and said they'd do it right then and there, I might take them up on the offer. It's really just a numbers game for them.

For me it would have been over $400 since I have over 40 individual windows. I’d do it for $150, maybe $200. But not $400. I’m guessing he was able to pull a few though.

As for the “in the area” thing, it sounds logical at first and I’ve heard of neighbors negotiating a discount by getting the same job done by the same vendor but for jobs that take a good while if not multiple days, it just doesn’t matter.

> I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow?

This seems obvious to me. My neighbours were getting their gutters cleaned and needed to come in to our garden, I asked the guys if they'd do ours as well. We didn't negotiate too hard on price, but I'm sure if pushed they would have taken something less than they'd charge to drive out and set up their equipment from scratch.

Maybe but probably not since they likely have jobs lined up for the next few months and aren’t about to work for less than they know they can get. It’s not like these guys are taking a horse and carriage 50 miles to a town to setup camp and try and sell out of whatever they’re peddling. They drive like 15 minutes. And they aren’t desperate for work.

Like a contractor like this wouldn't be willing to call up the customer they have scheduled next to say they were delayed for a reason other than what it actually was. However, on the flip side the expectation that they would drop everything just to service this one random request does seem a bit entitled.

What they would do is quote a much higher price since they’re aware the prospect isn’t price comparing and probably thinks they’re getting a deal because “they’re already here”. Why on Earth would they risk a higher priced job cancelling so they can do a lower priced job instead? lol! No. They will always do the better paying job first. If your contractor delays you it’s because another person is paying better.

I think you're assuming people are much more rational then they are in practice. Sure, if it were a company calculating all of those things, you'd be right. But I think it's not at all unlikely that a contractor would feel better doing an extra job close by, even for slightly lower pay, and even if they are delaying a slightly higher paying job farther away. Just like consumers have all sorts of biases that mean they don't always act in the most rational way, producers do to - especially individuals and small businesses.

Sometimes they actually do have equipment nearby, like a whole driveway repaving setup!

My favorite door to door sales pitch is "buy a subscription to one of these magazines or I'll have to go back to doing drugs." I've had at least 3 of those salesmen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wnCkhi9b0

> I'm interested in more lit on the subject, but I never understood how anyone sells anything via cold-calling.

Read a good sales book that talks about it.

There are a few factors: Effective salespeople will narrow down the list to cold call - so it's not completely random. Examples:

When trying to get a house for cheap, it's not hard to find a list of people in a locale who own more than 50% equity. Now it's a matter of cold calling and finding one who is in hard times and cannot sell (e.g. house is in poor enough condition that no bank will give out a mortgage). The home owners are at risk of defaulting, so you take the property off their hands for relatively cheap, fix it up, and sell it. This way the homeowners get money (as opposed to a foreclosure where they'd get nothing).

Roofs: A lot of new homes have a 20 year roof. Look up neighborhoods built in the last 20-30 years. Go door to door and try to sell them a new roof. Many will buy, because they know they have to replace it sooner or later.[1] You can also tell them which of their neighbors recently got a new roof.

Solar panels: Same idea: Find people with old roofs, and give them a "deal" for a new roof + solar panel combo. Getting that solar panel incentivizes them to change the roof.

Really, the key is to have a systematic way to reduce your search space. Then you'll get more successes.

[1] Pro tip: Never get your roof changed this way. I've actively gotten quotes for my roof, and the highest quote I got was cheaper than the lowest quote from the door to door salesmen.

You know, I'm with you. Yet - I once had an ISP rep (Sonic) show up at my door letting me know that they're setting up 10Gbps fiber in the neighborhood and if I'm interested in getting 10x speed (was already on 1Gbps fiber from AT&T) at less than half the cost. I signed up on the spot, and I'm no stranger to saying no. So I suppose it's all about playing the numbers game looking for the right customer for that pitch.

It sounds like you mostly didn’t have the problems they were pitching for. Imagine you urgently needed a pesticide guy! Maybe you’d too annoyed to buy but someone else might not. That’s my head canon on why google makes so much from search ads, they’re advertising to people who are trying to solve that specific problem right now.

My ex used to write car commercials, and I asked her why they all had that goofy tone and all sounded the same in a weird way. I told her that I couldn't remember a single dealership from all the commercials I'd heard, since that tone lets me filter them out. She told me that was just because I wasn't in the market for a car, and if I was, that same tone would make the car commercials stand out. Sure enough, when I was in the market for a car years later, I realized she was right!

Yep. HN (and similar community) conversations on this topic are always so snobby, but in reality all it points to is this community mostly wanting to buy different things. Everyone here is just as susceptible.

That's a great point. So much of advertising is just providing awareness, too. I may not be in the market for a particular product, but if I've heard their ads a million times, even if they're annoying, once I go to buy, I will probably give them more weight than some unknown brand, especially if it's a low stakes purchase.

Sometimes the right QUALIFIED cold call/email at the right time with the right pitch can be very effective.

If the tactic results in a return on investment, somebody will do it -- even if it makes them unwelcome at family reunions.

When the cost is extremely low -- spamming -- any return at all will justify it.

When the cost is low and the return is relatively high -- cold calling -- it will happen.

Only regulation and good enforcement of the regulation can stop these activities in a capitalist regime.

Many occupations involve receiving cold outreach and filtering for useful offers.

Think YouTubers receiving sponsorship offers, journalists getting leads, recruiters getting candidates, VCs finding start-ups, and car dealers getting inventory.

These people are often quite receptive to cold calls & emails if you can demonstrate credibility.

I did door to door selling in the US (as a Brit) as a summer job after graduating. The items weren't super expensive (maybe max $80 in the early '90s).

I wasn't very good at it, but some people did quite well out of it. Admittedly, only earning student-amounts. I don't think you could have fed a family on it.

Probably because things are a bit different now than in the 80's and 90's?

1. We used to do a lot more business over phone calls back in those days, so people were more willing to entertain cold phone calls

2. Technology has allowed automating phone call scams, so we get a lot more of those nowadays

3. Calling internationally is dirt cheap now, so you can have call centers full of scammers in cheap countries

4. Everyone is using text messaging with their friends and family so phone calls are more likely to be scams

To expand on point 3, unlimited long distance and VOIP. At least before 1984 things like long distance calls where HYPER expensive via AT&T domination of the long distance market. After the breakup the market slowly trended to unlimited long distance.

After that point it required the invention of high speed internet and compression algorithms. Calling internationally over dedicated channels remained insanely expensive even after long distance mostly disappeared. Now the foreign call is handled via IP until it reaches the country of origin and is dumped into POTS via a local VOIP provider.

I remember every other TV commercial ending with an address for where to send my self-addressed stamped envelope.

It surprises me too. When my current company was getting off the ground last year I was cold calling to find our first customers for our MVP. This is in the B2B software space. I would make about 70 calls a day and it would shock me how many people not only pick up, but stay on the phone to hear me out. I landed a number of accounts this way to get the momentum rolling.

And it was awkward for me too, I don't even have a background in sales. I'm sure a talented salesperson could have done much better than me at retaining their attention after the first opening sentences.

I think it's more welcome in B2B transactions because there are less ways to find products and less transactions in general. Whatever you're selling, there's a good chance the company didn't even know they wanted it until you reached out to them.

It goes like this at trade shows too. I can find the available types of pizza by visiting any pizza shop, but to find the available types of 5G base station I'll probably have to attend Mobile World Congress, or they'll have to discover me (if I'm a more publicly visible and quite big company) and then call me.

I think cold calling works decently for a certain subset of business people. There are folks out there that have genuine needs that salespeople can meet. At my last job, I didn't have authority to buy nor any real interest in the risk that such an opportunity could mean for the business. My boss, on the other hand, had lots of authority and would occasionally listen to pitches because they could benefit both parties. 95% of the time things didn't go further than the first call, but every now and then it would be a good fit. Anyone more senior than him probably didn't have the time for cold calls, but there is a sweet spot in the org where they can be effective. Since my boss had the ear of the budget setters, he could pitch them the idea and reap the benefit. Like other commenters have pointed out, cold calling and spam aren't so different in the sense that if they never worked, nobody would do them.

For example, I worked with with the woman in charge of our modeling team. She had a big issue managing a growing, international workflow. They used spreadsheets when the team was smaller, but that solution didn't scale and was starting to show cracks. Her boss gave her significant budget to fix the problem, but she had no idea how to spend it. I told her that one call to a Jira sales rep (or equivalent) and all her problems would evaporate. One call could have potentially saved our firm tons of money and provided another firm with a very good, sticky customer. As far as I'm aware, she was so overworked as-is that she never reached out/researched it.

Go ask the elderly why they love cold callers and scammers. It is beyond my comprehension how their minds work. If Moses split the sea in front of their own eyes they wouldn't trust him to lend him five dollars, but as soon as there's a scammer on the phone or on the internet, wallets open wide.

I would guess many of them are lonely and are just happy for the attention.

My father made a friend, an elderly man, who was being taken advantage of by some locals. Basically helping themselves to anything in his house, asking for cash, drives places, etc. And he was glad to give it because he had no one else in his life at the time. What's money with no one to share it with? Finally met my Dad, who, thankfully, got his friend to move out-of-state to live with his only surviving family before he passed

Well, that's where the word "phony" comes from.

That's a phony etymology of "phony", which predates telephony.

It’s a lot better than the scam calls I get where an Indian guy says “Do you remember signing up for x, you won!” on a scratchy connection where I can clearly hear everyone else in the crowded room calling other people.

Not efficient compared to what?

Compared to online marketing? Or cold emailing? Or talking to random people in the street?

I can't actually imagine a more efficient way to get a significant nr of sales from strangers than cold calling personally.

Of course contacting people who already know you is better, but the problem for a business is that in most/all cases that list of people who know you is not long enough.

I remember getting a cold call in 2014 from (supposedly) an investment company in Hong Kong. I was curious to hear what kind of pitch they had for someone like me living in Finland.

They claimed to have access to a block of NVidia stock available at a discount to the market price (I think it was around 10-15% off) and they needed investor funds immediately to buy the whole block. The minimum investment was $10k. When I sounded interested, my call was moved to a different young man who had a much more aggressive tone. That's where I hung up.

After the call, I remember thinking: "This is actually a good investment idea. I should buy some NVDA, but not from these weirdos in Hong Kong."

— Dear reader, did I buy the stock then? Of course not. Looks like NVDA is up about 260x since that call. (Insane. I had to double-check that.)

Imagine if someone actually sent $10k to this cold-calling Hong Kong company and just forgot about it. Now that $10k would be worth 2.6 million dollars. You see NVidia in the news and get excited about cashing out to buy a mansion... You call their phone in Hong Kong. "This number has been disconnected." No trace online of the investment advisor who got your $10k. That would sting far worse than just realizing early on that you'd been scammed.

You would send them 10K USD and you could forget about 10K forever. What a great opportunity. I'm not even sure the were from Hong Kong, probably some scam from mainland China.

This is a very common active Bitcoin "investment" scam today.

> This is a very common active Bitcoin "investment" scam today.

Are you saying that now that BlackRock's CEO is endorsing it, El Savlador's president is buying it as reserve for the country and Trump promising to use Bitcoin as a strategic reserve, it could go 260x and that, hence, if we get such a scammy phone call we should hung up and open an account on Coinbase (a HN unicorn btw) to buy Bitcoins?

This is like asking who would ever click on an online ad, yet they sell billions of dollars of merchandise every year. It's a numbers game.

Most cons like that are have huge failure rates. But all it takes is one or two to fall for it for it to be worthwhile.

> I do think it's good to be polite to anyone who calls

Out of curiosity, why?

It might be (probably is) my asocial personality and the fact that getting interrupted is very triggering for me.*

But while I am amenable to the argument that there is no use in being rude to someone who cold calls, I can't help but pick on your choice of words: "good to be polite to anyone"

Is it morally good to be polite to someone who wants to harm you? Perhaps if they are physically threatening you and politeness is part of your deescalation strategy. But a cold caller? I like to believe that there is a special rung of hell reserved for cold callers (right next to lawyers and people who talk at the theatre).

I don't go out of my way to be mean or nasty to them because there is nothing of value that can come from that.

But they certainly don't deserve a "please" in front of "delete this number click" in my personal opinion.

* - While I'm not a huge fan of smart phones, they do have one killer feature that has won me over: the ability to set the default ring tone to silence and assign people in my contacts a ring tone that will actually get my attention.

> Is it morally good to be polite to someone who wants to harm you?

It's not. People who advocate for it here are cold callers themselves.

Cold callers were less of a problem 30 years ago. Now the entire US phone system is open to competition. You might think that was a good thing, but it's also what allows cheap VOIP calls appearing to be from "local" numbers to bother you night and day.

Bring back Ma Bell. She wouldn't have put up with this crap.

Even with modern marketing like tv ads, display ads, or even paper mailers the expected conversion rate is tiny. It's always a numbers game. If you have a sales script that captures 0.7% of people who hear it while your competition is capturing 0.4% then you have a huge advantage. But you still have to reach thousands of targets to sustain a business.

There was once a recruiter who cold called me and I ended up taking the job that they reached out about, so I guess it works sometimes?

Obviously recruiting is a bit different, because of course I have to go interview at a place and whatnot, but it's the only example of where a cold call worked on me.

No it ain’t: recruiting is sales. You’re selling a candidate on the job, and your employer the candidate.

Retirees are bored and want to feel like they are part of something

After we've called you 50 times using different company names the deals get really competitive. Is Monday good for you?

> but why would anyone entertain a cold caller

I'd like for you to meet my dad.

Cold calling still works today.

People are gullible and want to believe the best in others. Cynics don’t make good victims.

Old people are lonely. It’s not complicated.

Some of the tactics in the script are explained in Never Split the Difference which I highly recommend for sales but especially negotiation (the article author also mentions the book author, Chris Voss).

The sales script doesn’t seem to have anything nefarious really. Just some tactics to keep the call going and typical early sales qualification to move a prospect to the next stage of a pipeline or out of the pipeline. Typical SDR/BDR work. I’d assume what’s said in later stages is more juicy.

The mildly interesting insight to me is how the call starts with trying to get the prospect to schedule a follow up using an incentive (the market report), before getting into the qualifying questions, which are meant to determine if the prospect is going to be a match for the offer. It makes sense from the standpoint you really want another call scheduled so you don’t get their voicemail and you might lose the opportunity to schedule that later in the call.

I wish the author added text from the actual sale past the qualification stage, but I’m guessing that wasn’t really scripted.

First, great book recommendation: _Never Split the Difference_ is packed with insights about negotiating, bargaining, and generally cooperation and decision-making. Reader: if you haven't, read it.

On starting with incentive before qualification: this is actually quite common. See: Cutco knives, CDs by mail, most current online courses/programs. Heck even startups doing lead gen offering analyses.

This is both what gets people invested (I jump at the free thing, so I'll jump through the rest of hoops now) AND what the seller uses to establish credibility (if they're giving way something this valuable, imagine what else they have!). A gift to someone implies you see them as important/valuable, and people eat that shit up.

There's a lot of ego/insecurity at play in sales. The person being marketed to wanting to feel seen/discovered/worthwhile, and the seller playing into it.

Reminds me of the Tony Robbins recording that made the rounds again recently [1]. Shocking that this stuff works … but it does.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY_zyLEiNYk

I think this book was 2/5 stars for me max. Way overhyped and indeed, only mostly applicable to some FBI hostage situation negotiators. Even a rather toxic book I'd say, but some small things here or there are admittedly quite useful.

Indeed. A lot of advice is only good when you don't need to maintain a relationship. I had a manager who kept saying variants of "How can I do that?" Within a year multiple people left the team. It works the first few times, but you get sick of that quickly enough.

My prior comments on the book:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29940964

If you follow his more recent material you get to the core - tactical empathy. While I don’t buy into all the Voss stuff, there is a Zen like quality to the discipline of truly operating the conversation from the POV of the other player while not losing your own grounding on what you want. It’s definitely made a positive impact in my own outcomes & dramatically lowered my rate of failure.

The later stages are more juicy, and what are covered in the book and movie (wolf of walstreet).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhEBKwNZKI

This for example starts with "you expressed interest in xyz stock" or however, I can't exactly remember, but basically it's the followup call to their list of prequalified leads generated from the calls in this article.

Chapter level detailed summary for quick overview of main ideas from the book: https://www.booksummary.pro/Never_Split_the_Difference_summa...

Feels like it's written by AI. I like the summaries here: https://littlerbooks.com/summary/never-split-the-difference

Thanks for the book rec. Is there anything in this article that isn’t contained in the book apart from the incentive?

The attention grabbing and objection handling pieces are discussed in Never Split the Difference, amongst other ways to negotiate a deal. Basically ask lots of what/how questions until the other party negotiates themselves to your position.

The rest of the script is just qualification questions, which you can find written about everywhere if you look up BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and MEDDPICC (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition).

I wish I had a good book recommendation for qualifying, but it’s the easier part of the sales process: you’re just asking questions and listening, setting yourself up for the next stage. Once you know whether the prospect has a problem you can solve, then you launch into the real sale, generally a presentation or demo tailored to the prospect’s problems and goals.

YC posted a pretty good, compact video on enterprise SaaS sales recently, which explains the typical sales lifecycle at a high level and contains further resources: https://youtu.be/0fKYVl12VTA

Thanks for taking the time to give me all these resources. I’ve got a lot of reading and watching to do.

No problem! As an outsider to sales myself, I only realized after a friend who does this for a living as an account executive explained to me how much of sales is simply asking good questions and being a good listener. Quite opposite of what I thought sales was and much simpler when you think about it that way. Good luck!

Cold calling is the hardest! It's probable my greatest weakness (of many!) as an entrepreneur. Not just cold sales calling but any equivalent. I don't like to get a random call so I feel I'm interrupting the person at the other end.

I am fascinated by employees I've had who love cold calling and are great at it. They are even energised by it! Most have a mirror in their cube smile on your call and the other person can hear it through the phone). One thing about all of them I've spoken with: they are certain that the person they're calling needs our product (and if not they're happy to get off the phone as quickly as possible so they can call someone else). Maybe the Stratton Oakmont sales folks thought that, though my impression was that instead they saw the callee as a sheep to be shorn.

I am astonished at people who can just make a friend or at least an interesting connection while waiting in line for the bathroom.

>Stratton Oakmont sales folks

Just call them what they were — con artists.

The blog post is more sympathetic, but I probably should have just said that.

With most scams I can’t believe most people involved didn’t know.

_Although this line is taught by many sales trainers, it’s becoming overused and immediately lets prospects know it’s a sales call._ _Instead, try opening with something like:_ _(...)_

_This opener feels less salesy, and is actually the reason why you called._

I wonder what does it feel to work in an industry where your main goal is to convince other people you are not a part of it.

It's a fucking nightmare where you're begging on your hands and knees for people to give you money. I was ok at it when I was a 360 recruiter (the sales half was opening up positions that I would then recruit for), but no matter I framed it, to me it always felt like begging.

The office culture is half/half trying to wokeify your sales by being "not that kind of sales guy" like the line you quoted, while still kinda worshiping people like Jordan Belfort and internalizing the highest levels of hustle culture.

I became an engineer and wrote that part of my life off. I still sometimes wake up an hour before my alarm with thoughts spinning through my head of how I could have sold better. Ugh.

On the other hand When you frame sales as helping to solve real problems it flips this toxic script and transforms the entire profession into something that can be amazing to be a part of.

That's what I was trying to express about rationalization: no matter what way you cut it, you're still begging people for money. What you offer is never unique, no matter how much you want to pretend it is - you just want to be the one to actually convince them to buy YOUR SaaS product / recruitment services / whatever. I was very passionate about helping my clients and I really enjoyed the idea of helping my candidates get good jobs, doesn't change the fact that I was one of, god, tens? hundreds? of agencies in the houston oil and gas market.

Especial in B2B many products are more unique than you think

Then you're not sales, you're consulting.

But most likely, when you are sales, you are sales. And you're not solving real problems.

I find this framing to be extremely far away from the reality of any sales conversations I've been a part of. Flipping it like this is a rationalization that helps you sleep better, not some deep insight that the sales profession is great actually.

This is self-deception, which - if done well - can be a very effective salve for one's mental health & help you survive/thrive in the industry.

> by being "not that kind of sales guy"

Like 90 % of recruiters sending me a message with the same "unique" twist in their messaging. Got this the other day:

> Hi, Andreas (not my name, it's Mats...), I'd like to take this a different way than the usual recruiter mail. Not sure if you're in the market now? But ... [same drivel as any other recruiting email I've ever gotten]

I thought about it throughout my life why I am not just flipping to sales, specially when I was short on money.

Each time, I reminded myself that I lack the emotional fortitude to take the amount of rejection sales people get. I am too vested and convinced "left brain" person to be able to understand then accept rejection. The thing I am pitching makes perfect logical sense to me.

Basically, to be in sales, specially cold calling, one must have very, very thick skin, and ignore the majority rejection.

I thought I was similar to you until I founded a startup and started doing sales. It didn't take as long as I thought to get used to it. It's a muscle you build with any customer facing job - yeah, better to think of it as a muscle rather than a skin callous.

I’ve found framing this as “signal hunting” as helped tremendously. Now I’m asking questions with genuine curiosity & continuously learning. Finding little moments of signal that convert to momentum is a fun positive feedback loop that has helped me find PMF.

How do you know this if you've never done sales?

> Do we all kind of wish we worked at Stratton Oakmont for a year and made tons of money….? Probably.

Not even a little bit. I hate calling people that are expecting my call, and I could never get over selling something I knew was bogus, even for a ton of money.

Yeah, that was a startling admission to put in the post. If I were a shitty person who wanted to do scam people, I would probably just do it. It isn’t rocket science. But I have this weird quirk where I don’t like causing other people misery.

For many money is really that important, even if they are actually doing rather well in the scheme of things.

I'd rather make 1% of the money but not scam anyone during the process.

Yeah, basically saying "would you commit federal felonies defrauding gullible people for millions? hell yeah!"

Quite telling of the morals of a lot of "sales" people

Agreed.

Someone else is getting flak for saying the same as you, only summing it up in a single word: "gross". According to dang it's against HN guidelines to single this sentence out, even though it's the single most striking sentence of the (rather short) article.

It's a disappointing world where most people don't consider this gross.

I never "cold" called but I lukewarm called expired real estate listings before using scripts.

They definitely work. Listed total strangers after a phone call. Remember it's a % game. If you call 30 people might get 20 angry no's, 5 friendly no's, 3 so so leads and 2 hot leads.

I always wondered why all these sales emails use exactly the same language. Right now my inbox is filled with “quick questions”. now I have an answer: apparently people write whole books on individual word choices.

It seems the sales industry would benefit from considering the possibility of heterogeneous effects. I can see these techniques working for some, but they are off-putting for me and are a great way to get immediately blocked.

I shudder to think how people can do this as a daily and never reflect on how they're spending their time manipulating others and arguably making the world a worse place. Don't get me wrong, I used to do it myself and I was very good at it, I just don't understand how someone can keep doing it when there are more moral options.

We all just understand what we want to understand. For you this is a natural response because it's the only way your brain has to reconcile that you're a good person (which is something our brains are trying to do all the time).

At the time you just did it. Then you felt bad about it and stopped. So now you think worse of the people that do it, but wait, you can't think bad about the people that do it because you also did it, so you instead change the form to "think bad of people that _keep_ doing it".

If you had never done it, you'd say "who can even do this for a day!?!?". For someone that hasn't even considered it, you might be a terrible person for even having considered doing it, much less actually doing it for a while. Careful about moralizing.

I do it too btw, I'm just blind to the ones I do.

I just don't understand why other people who do it don't stop. You're deceiving people and making the world worse by doing so. Fair enough?

They are just like you were up until the point you decided to stop. How is it difficult to understand when you say you were in the exact same shoes?

I had limited options. We're talking here about sales people at top orgs pulling six figures, they have choices, especially in terms of technique. They have just decided to make this their career and use techniques like that to manipulate others. Fair enough?

I'm not judging anyone here btw, it's just interesting banter, I hope you don't take it the wrong way. I also agree with you that it is objectively worse to do it for 20 years than 2 years.

That being said, the "I had limited options" is in my opinion a bullshit excuse, specially for this specific situation. Nobody's "few options" is working for a financial fraud operation. When you're out of options you work construction or drive a long haul truck or whatever.

> That being said, the "I had limited options" is in my opinion a bullshit excuse, specially for this specific situation.

I had irregular work waiting tables, doing MLM door-to-door shit which scammed me out of my money, I had to borrow money to make ends meet. Sales was the first consistent full time job I got that paid slightly over minimum. I did it a few years and hated it, then got into tech.

I'm just stating if you're over six figures and you're doing sales and using manipulative tricks like OP you're not a good person. You're claiming this is only because I stopped doing it and yes; its because I stopped doing it. I'm sure I'd find some excuse that its ok if I still was; but that's why I wanted to stop, cause I didn't want to reach for the excuse.

Here's a thought; still do sales but don't manipulate other people to flog them shit, especially if it isn't the right choice for them.

I am sure those people also think their options are limited, or they think if they don’t do it, someone else will anyway, or a million other justifications people tell themselves just like you told yourself when you were doing it.

The same rationale people give themselves for working on ads, social networks, mobile games that keep charging money to level up, selling liquor and tobacco in convenience stores, selling sugary food, selling deep fried food, etc.

> On average, sellers spend 23.8 hours (or 52%) of their week creating messaging.

Stuff like this is like... bait, right?

Anyone serious about stock trading at the time knew who they were and what they did. They also advertised heavily in print. So anyone who stayed on the call for more than short time had some interest. I had coworkers who "invested" with them.

the psychology of sales is fascinating and alien to me. I admire friends who are great salesmen, and really actually enjoy doing some sales myself because who doesn't like having something valuable to show and share, but there's a side to it I couldn't handle as a living.

some people, and a lot of them in corporate envs when they buy something, they like the excitement of spending the money, but they want the feel like it was taken from them, and that they aren't responsible for it going wrong. they want the excitement without the responsibility, literally to be seduced.

nobody wants the truth, the risks, details, or anything real, they want a story that lets them press the money button without judgment or blowback, and that's what most sales are. I'm too neurotic for it and make a living doing other things, and tech people bitch about sales and marketing all the time, but as an art, I respect and appreciate it.

Detail question on one of the recommendations in the article: wouldn't "are you busy?" be more effective than "do you have a second?"

Working from the hypothesis that people generally don't have seconds they are willing to give away to anyone who calls, but they are busy to varying degrees.

The pitch was designed to elicit a 'Yes' response at every turn (the idea being that the prospective client would be conditioned to saying 'Yes' over and over and be more amenable to the final hammer swing of 'send me x dollars for y shares'). Most pitches were directed at the kind of business owners and execs who end up on lead services like Dun & Bradstreet, but sometimes also targeted individuals at their homes; in either case, the prospect is either running a business or just arrived home from work and is tending to kids/dinner/chores/etc. Ask someone in either scenario if they're busy and the default answer is yes; they're always busy. But ask them if they have a second, and they're more likely to say yes. Everyone has a second, even if they're busy, and the very wording of the question implies this will be a brief and laconic interaction that won't interrupt their day. Busy is a negative primer, have a second is a positive one.

The article contains a few rebuttal snippets, but the full "straight line" pitch had rebuttals for every step of the interaction and every possible response from a prospect. They called it the "straight line" because the idea was that at all moments of the conversation, you are constantly guiding the prospect along a straight line to the desired conclusion (a sale), and any diversion from this straight line in the form of customer protest/question/disinterest needs to be quickly and somewhat aggressively countered with a rebuttal and then followed with a slick line that elicits a return to the previous direction.

Since I'm already rambling, I'll add another detail that isn't in the article; Belfort didn't come up with this pitch himself, it was developed originally at Lehman Brothers (one of the leading firms) and was used in some form at all of the big wirehouse brokerages (eg, the original Merrill Lynch "thundering herd" or LF Rothschild, where Belfort learned it).

Belfort's "innovation" was not the script, it was taking the script out of the hands of elite white-shoe brokers (who sold legitimate stocks to clients) and teaching it to unscrupulous boiler room scammers (who made their money by tricking prospects into buying penny stocks that Stratton Oakmont then dumped).

I was under the impression that this "yes momentum" thing didn't really work because people get defensive when you make them say yes to things.

And also everyone knows when someone asks for a second they are really asking for much more. On the other hand, if someone readily admits to being busy (and thus cannot listen well to you), it's better for both of you that you call again some other time.

The white shoes were also unscrupulous; they just weren't outright frauds

I dunno. “Are you busy?” sounds open ended and is a bit presumptive (I don’t know you, what business is it of yours?). Do you have a second seems more casual and nonchalant without being particularly rude while succinctly indicating you aren’t asking for lengthy or in depth attention. You’re playing on a natural tendency many people have for simple charity, and then once you’re in… well, lots of us have felt trapped in unwanted situations because of a fear of being rude, right?

From what I read he doesn't ask whether someone is busy but only acknowledges they know they are busy and moves on with the pitch

I suspect the latter question works better because it's softer and doesn't give as much of an out as the former. We're all busy. It's much easier to answer in the affirmative and if anything, highlighting the busy nature of your day makes it easier to say "leave me alone", but the latter is harder to answer no to, at least socially. A second or two, surely you can spare that. He's not asking for much! (Obviously, it's figuratively "a second" and more like a few minutes, but at least there's some daylight for the caller to squeeze their foot in the door.)

A lot sales pitches really prey on people's general desire not to be rude to another human being, so choosing the right phrasing to make the mark feel bad for breaking a social convention if they say no is by design.

People saying 'well it must work, they're still using it'. Really? I am one of those people that as soon as I smell 'sales' talk I shut it down. If it is a phone call, just put the phone down. If it's first a handshake, don't reciprocate, and if it's an email... well, you know the rest. It's not rude to ignore a rude person. This attitude came from my dad at a time when door to door salesman traipsed the streets looking for suckers. George Carlin was right, salesmen are second only to clergymen, in the bullshit department.

I'm 100% the same. I'm an engineering director at a tech company so basically one of my top strengths is ignoring sales attempts.

That said, during university I worked for the development center of the school (fundraising) at the Phonathon (alumni cold-call center) and rose the ranks to the top donation earner and then supervisor.

I had a memorized script with branching IF statements all the way down and brought in hundreds of thousands to different departments at the university. This type of thing absolutely works. Especially on older generations in departments that made more money.

Pity party calls were the easiest. Medical school alumns that were inching toward retirement reaaaally go for the "we don't have enough doctors for our population, help" angle.

You seem to have no needs for anything?

At my job I get offers all the time and if they are interesting, I hear them out. It's a win-win

>You seem to have no needs for anything?

Needing something and being sold something are not always consecutive.

I watched a video where a guy asked people how many moons the earth has, the person on the video said seven. I am not surprised in any way the script had huge success.

great post! very helpful.

I watched the film for the first time recently and was mostly disappointed. The best scenes focused on the sales tactics and the industry-specific insights, but at least twice in the film the main character starts explaining something and cuts himself of with "but you don't really care about all that". Then, on to more repetitive scenes about paying for sex and taking sedatives.

And was I supposed to like the main character? In any way, shape or form? I feel I can relate more to full-fledged anti-heroes like Walter White or The Wire's Omar than I can to this basic jackass.

You might like the movie Boiler Room, which was inspired by Stratton Oakmont and the other penny stock shops that operated in the suburbs of NYC. Great ensemble cast and a much more grounded story.

> And was I supposed to like the main character? In any way, shape or form?

No.

And yet so many people seem to mess up this simple thing.

> And was I supposed to like the main character?

No, the whole point is that you should not like him.

However the film doesn’t do a good job at that. I see often comments about how people are missing the point of this movie.

You have this good looking guy with a Lambo, the hottest girl, a yatch, partying and all that, and then you see the downfall. But the movie focuses too much on the first part, and little on the latter, because obviously that’s where the fun is.

And IIRC the actual guy, Jordan Bedfort, spent less than two years in prison, and now gives motivational speeches and the like. Dare I say lots of guys would think it was worth it, and they aren’t really missing the point, more like they don’t agree with it?

> However the film doesn’t do a good job at that. I see often comments about how people are missing the point of this movie.

To be fair, it's very hard in cinema to have people "get" the point without spoon-feeding it to them, which could fail anyway and make it a worse movie to boot. I'm sure you can think of tons of other examples.

Who was it that said it's impossible to make an anti-war movie because you always end up making it look cool on screen [1]? I think it's the same with any movie parodying or even denouncing something, unless it's turned into a manifesto. And this also bit Scorsese with this movie.

[1] Though in my opinion Netflix's "All Quiet On The Western Front" comes pretty close. I don't think anybody watched that movie and kept thinking war is cool or full of glory.

François Truffaut expressed that sentiment, though the various quotes I've seen attributed to him were not verbatim. The closest I could find was "Every film about war ends up being pro-war[1]"

1: https://www.newspapers.com/article/chicago-tribune-it-is-imp...

The Wall https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4218696/ does for me. From what I recall, "people" largley didn't like it, probably because it's not a happy, feel-good, good-guys-win-in-the-end movie. Though who the good-guys are in that movie is obviously not obvious.

>To be fair, it's very hard in cinema to have people "get" the point without spoon-feeding it to them

And plenty of people will happily ignore any subtext you create, and most of the text you create, to just consume a portion of the imagery you put out. Neonazis LOVE all sorts of movies and characters that are supposed to be warnings about how bad Fascism is.

Yet they do NOT love Mel Brook's "The producers", because it makes Nazis look goofy. If you are trying to turn people off something, the absolute minimum bar is to demonstrate it's frank stupidity. You must eschew any and all "Coolness". This was also used to turn people away from the KKK when their stupid club rituals and limp handshake were shared without the normal framing.

You make an excellent point. Goofiness. Maybe that's the key.

A good read is "Billion Dollar Whale", which details the 1MDB scandal that actually funded the Wolf of Wall Street movie.

Jho Low scammed ~$5 Billion, and used some of the funds to befriend Leonardo DiCaprio (by throwing lavish parties), as well as fund the movie.

> And was I supposed to like the main character?

The whole point of the movie you watched was that he's a disgusting piece of human garbage. There are tons of people around him that treat him like some kind of deity, but he's like the worst human being you can possibly know. It's a societal criticism.

>>And was I supposed to like the main character?

Do you watch every film through the lens of what you're "supposed" to feel? Some people watch this film thinking he was a hero, some people think he was a scumbag, plus a million opinions everywhere in between. Feel how you want to feel, it's a story not an educational video.

>Do we all kind of wish we worked at Stratton Oakmont for a year and made tons of money….? Probably.

Gross.

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I respect that. I would argue though that this definitely is "something interesting" to discuss. I find it fascinating that the author clearly called out the illegality yet thinks it okay to do anyway, and even more interesting that they project that mindset onto others by assuming we would all do the same. But I felt my one-word answer did more to encompass my thoughts then a paragraph would have.

Dang, in general this is a good guideline that you enforce.

In this particular article, though, I think the OP's comment is relevant. "Gross" sums up pretty much how many of us feel about the quoted assertion and the overall tone of the article.

Let's put it another way. Think about an hypothetical article relevant to HN (say, something about how you can "hack" a human's response to suggestions using pheromones or whatnot) analyzing how a famous rapist used these techniques, and included the statement "Was this person a rapist? Yes. But wouldn't most of us want to use these techniques on women? Sure!".

Wouldn't it be appropriate to call such a statement gross, and wouldn't it also overshadow the rest of the article?

Let's put it another way.

Let's not put it that way, maybe?

The parallel is poor because one of these things is so much more provocative than the other you that you can't meaningfully compare the responses as analogous. The sane thing to do with an article approvingly invoking nonconsensual sexual abuse to make an unrelated point is to flag it and if it doesn't die, send the moderators an email so they can squish it.

sums up pretty much how many of us feel

The (however aspirational) goal is interesting conversation and a visible tally of everyone's id-level response to something has its own joys and merits (e.g. at concert venues, sports arenas, rallies) but 'interesting conversation' is not among them.

On the contrary, let's. Because it's apt.

Here's an even better parallel: it's gross to dream of having the business acumen of successful drug lords or mobsters. They may excel at what they do, but still, saying "who hasn't dreamt of making lots of money like they did?" would be gross.

> The (however aspirational) goal is interesting conversation and a visible tally of everyone's id-level response to something has its own joys and merits (e.g. at concert venues, sports arenas, rallies) but 'interesting conversation' is not among them.

You lost me. Lots of words with little relation to anything I said.

I think I explained how it's quite inapt and your response is 'it's apt'. If you think 'please don't type reflexive one word comments into HN' has 'some hypothetical about rape' as a response worth talking about, we're best off leaving things here.

Well, you did a bad job at explaining.

Both are scummy behaviors aimed at "hacking"/exploiting the human psyche for ill intents. And, in any case, I provided an even more apt comparison in the followup comment: drug lords and mobsters. Or scam artists of any kind. Such an article wouldn't be flagged on HN if it explains something technical or about the human psyche; but it's ok to respond "gross" if it contains a sentence such as the one which sparked this conversation.

> we're best off leaving things here

Agreed.

> If you can look past the $200M they defrauded from 1,500 investors… they were actually a pretty successful sales team.

The operative word being "if". I'm kinda with OP here either way.

That reads a lot like "if you can look past the fact Famous Serial Killer murdered people, you have to admit he was pretty skilled with knives!".

Please write more substantial and intellectually stimulating comments on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The article suggests that its author would have enjoyed an opportunity to work with the disreputable firm Stratton Oakmont, and that their motivation to do so is purely personal gain.

And while this alone would cause us to doubt the character of the author, they then go on to claim that "we", the readers of the article, share this amoral viewpoint. Or perhaps implies that we _should_ share it if we don't already.

I find this outlook to be reprehensible. Even thinking about it causes my stomach to tense.

(There, 3 paragraphs that say exactly what the OP said in 1 word. Happy?)

> (There, 3 paragraphs that say exactly what the OP said in 1 word. Happy?)

Yes, I think that’s a better comment, sans the snark.

Regardless, as another commenter pointed out, the quote is missing some important context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174244

In general, I find the rest of the article more interesting, and focusing on the ethical leanings of the author less relevant. I’d rather see more discussion about the sales script.

> focusing on the ethical leanings of the author less relevant. I’d rather see more discussion about the sales script.

But why? Granted that discussion of ethical considerations are more likely to be divisive / inflammatory. But this is also pretty much the only direction to go if you want to make any discussion of a freaking sales-script intellectually satisfying and promote curiosity/inquiry.

This is literally just a guide to the most effective ways to manipulate people. We can try to avoid labeling that sort of thing as "evil", but then again if the abstracted psychology itself is what is interesting rather than the practical aspects of how to trick people, we should probably be looking at psych-papers instead of sales-scripts from famous scams?

> Regardless, as another commenter pointed out, the quote is missing some important context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174244

It's a stretch to call that "important context" given that:

1. There is an entire article between those two sentences.

2. The desire to work for the company is not couched by that conditional

While I did find the rest of the article fascinating -- I find the tricks and traps of conmen fascinating -- I do not think the missing context was at all important. It was actually a cop-out. Any Stratton Oakmont business acumen was overshadowed (and possibly caused by) their willingness to commit fraud. It's not something that can be glossed over.

By “intellectually stimulating”, they meant “with enough verbosity and with a high enough frequency of multisyllabic words that this sewing circle of self-congratulatory computer operators feels intellectually engaged by it”.

“Gross” contributed just as much as the 50 highly upvoted “stochastic parrot” or “WFH or die” rants I see here every day, with the added bonus of its concise nature making it easy to read.

HN needs more of these comments!

I mean, it's gross, but most of us work for monsters if you go far enough up the chain.

For the last two years, I've been trying to break into the trading world, not because I think it's this hyper-ethical thing [1], but because it pays well and it seems interesting, and I'm not really ashamed to admit it. Does that make me a whore or a mercenary or sellout? Absolutely, there's really no getting around that, but I think if most people are being honest, we're all a little selfish.

I don't think I'm an especially selfish person, and I would like to think I wouldn't defraud anyone, but I certainly have worked for companies that used very questionable labor practices in developing nations where it's hard to justify outside of "it's really cheap and it's not illegal", an of course that upsets me a little, but fundamentally Tombert is a for-profit enterprise just as much as the business that hires me.

Similarly, while it's obviously bad that they defrauded people, I don't think that that author was saying that it's good, or even good to want it. They said "kind of", sort of implying that "yeah, a part of me really would have liked to have a lot of cash and it would have been cool to get it", which I don't really think is that bad. I've thought about directly stealing money from rich people before, it would be nice to have a million bucks, but I've never done it because that would be unethical.

[1] I've actually changed my opinions on High Frequency Trading, which I used to say was evil and I don't think that anymore. I'm still not 100% convinced that option trading is ethical though.

Right. You've got to live with the ethics of the things you do (and don't do.)

I mean, he's not wrong. I'd have loved to have worked there for a year and have made tons of money.

Sure he is - he said "we all", but I count at least three of us in this specific chain who find it gross.

He also said "kind of" and "probably".

Doesn't pretty much everyone wish that they had more money? I "kind of" want to steal a Lamborghini when I see them, but I don't do it because that would be unethical because robbing people is unethical. I don't think it's gross to at least think about it.

I mean, I don't know, maybe "we all" was a bit hyperbolic but I don't think it was so bad.

I can only speak for myself. I want to have enough money to be able to comfortably provide for myself and my family, while also allowing us to be able to go and do the things we love. And - that's where we're at. We're firmly "middle class" and I'm content with the amount of money I'm making. I don't really care if I had more (it'd be nice, sure, but I don't need it), and I don't really care about fancy, overpriced, high-end goods that are, essentially, just status symbols (eg, Lamborghinis).

I also have enough money, and I'm also firmly middle class, and I'm also able to afford to do stuff I enjoy, but if I won the lottery I'm not going to say "no" to the money [1].

I don't really want to buy a Lamborghini because I agree, it's an expensive status symbol, but similarly if someone gave one to me for free, I'd take it because I think they're cool (or I could flip it for a lot of money). Sometimes I, if only for a moment, will think about how easy it might be to steal a Lamborghini and how it would be cool if I did.

(I'm just using Lamborghini as an example though, replace it with anything that you think is cool but too expensive to actually justify buying).

Does it make me a gross jerk for thinking about it? Maybe, but I don't think so; considering a bad thing isn't the same as doing that bad thing. It lives very firmly in my brain, and I'm quite confident that I wouldn't actually do anything like that.

[1] I don't actually play the lottery, just an example.

> He also said "kind of" and "probably".

Those are "probably" "kind of" weasel words to make the assertion seem less gross when it is, indeed, very gross.

This is not like dreaming of getting a Lamborghini for free. It's like "kind of" dreaming of living the life of a successful drug cartel boss. Gross.

It’s not a weasel word, because I don’t think what they were trying to say was unclear.

Maybe you’re some angel who has never wanted to do anything wrong for a single moment in your life, power to you if you are, but I think you are in the vast, vast minority.

Most people have considered doing a bad thing at least once and probably considerably more than that. I don’t think they’re bad for thinking it. I feel like that’s what the writer was trying to say.

Maybe "weasel word" wasn't the best term, what I meant is that "kind of", "probably" are words they used to deflate the emphasis of their sentence in order to make it seem less gross. This is a technique to make the meaning seem less harsh/disgusting/shocking and easier to agree with -- and you can bet they know it and use it purposefully, the whole article is written by salespeople about other salespeople and is precisely about techniques like this (see how they describe the tactical use of "fair enough", "I'm not trying to [...]", etc).

But it is gross because we can see past all of this, and the meaning of the sentence remains pretty bad.

> Maybe you’re some angel who has never wanted to do anything wrong

I've never wanted to rob or scam people, no. I'm not in the minority either.

> I've never wanted to rob or scam people, no. I'm not in the minority either.

Ok, well then I think you're lying. I don't think you're just misremembering or anything, I actively think you are being dishonest if you are genuinely saying that you've never even once wanted to steal something, if only for a moment. I'm not accusing you of actually stealing anything, but if you're claiming that you've never even once thought "it would be cool to take that thing that that person has so I could have it", then I just think you're not telling the truth.

Frankly this sanctimonious holier-than-thou pretending-to-be-offended stuff is really tiring; you decided to make a comment saying "gross" purely so you could act judgemental for something that, fundamentally, you know really wasn't that bad.

EDIT:

Sorry, for some reason I misremembered, I thought you wrote the original "gross" comment.

I still think you're lying though.

You wouldn’t care that every dollar you had was taken from some else via fraud?

The stock market is just a wealth or money transfer scheme from the naive rich-wannabe to the wealthy who can manipulate the market. Sure, a long-term investment might work in the meantime, until it’s no longer a “long-term” sometime in the future.

The US stock market specifically has had immense growth over the last several decades due to consistent US and international liquidity inflows. The story hasn't been the same for other markets internationally.

Note that liquidity inflows are the same thing as a trade deficit and 48% of the country is shouting loudly about ending the trade deficit.

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