My article does take it for granted that the reader is an ethical person selling a genuinely valuable product to a customer she hopes to establish a long-term relationship with. We should not misconstrue “effective” with “cooperative”. They are not always exactly the same thing.
In my work experience there are few leeches in positions of high leverage. The most successful people I know usually aren’t predatory. In the rare cases where I do see them behaving badly, meanness is a disadvantage. They win small contests at the expense of big gains.
The only time I’ve ever seen manipulative high-pressure sales outcompete the cooperative sales techniques in a long-run business setting is canvassing (for tiny amount of money), scams and selling used cars. What these have in common is either they’re one-off interactions or the customer cannot evaluate the quality of the product. If you’re in a one-off interaction then swindling your customer may be a winning strategy.
I try to avoid consequence-free interactions entirely when doing business because they suck. You earn a little bit of money at the expense of networks, reputation and capital. There is no exponential growth curve. You cannot add another zero. Manipulating customers is for desperate sellers like canvassers and telemarketers.
If you’re going to optimize a number, the one to choose is your growth rate. Suppose as before that you only extract half as much from users as you could, but that you’re able to grow 6% a week instead of 5%. Now how are you doing compared to the rapacious founder after two years? You’re already ahead—$214k a month versus $160k—and pulling away fast. In another year you’ll be making $4.4 million a month to the rapacious founder’s $2 million.
Obviously one case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. What makes startups different is that usually it doesn’t. Startups usually win by making something so great that people recommend it to their friends. And being rapacious not only doesn’t help you do that, but probably hurts.
I do agree though that they tend to be examples of customer service (assisting a customer to place an order), rather than sales (generating interest in ordering).
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that all sales is “manipulative, high-pressure sales!”. This appears to be a mental stumbling block for many technical-type people.
Here’s a fictional, non-strawman example of sales activity:
I sell steel manifolds (blocks of steel with ‘pipelines’ cut out). A lot of potential customers don’t use manifolds in their manufacturing equipment, they use plastic pipes to transfer fluids… these are prone to breaking, and causing production delays. Switching to a steel manifold is a larger cost upfront, but will keep them operating seamlessly for many years with no issues… saving them time and money. This is a great buying decision, but due to inertia, there aren’t customers beating our doors down to buy our manifolds! It is my job as a salesperson to contact a potential customer, alert them to the sub-optimal state of their current situation (a lot just accept it!), talk to them about the benefits of using steel manifolds, and walk them through the decision-making process. This is very much salesperson-driven, not customer-driven, and ends with both happy.
You make good points.
My article does take it for granted that the reader is an ethical person selling a genuinely valuable product to a customer she hopes to establish a long-term relationship with. We should not misconstrue “effective” with “cooperative”. They are not always exactly the same thing.
In my work experience there are few leeches in positions of high leverage. The most successful people I know usually aren’t predatory. In the rare cases where I do see them behaving badly, meanness is a disadvantage. They win small contests at the expense of big gains.
The only time I’ve ever seen manipulative high-pressure sales outcompete the cooperative sales techniques in a long-run business setting is canvassing (for tiny amount of money), scams and selling used cars. What these have in common is either they’re one-off interactions or the customer cannot evaluate the quality of the product. If you’re in a one-off interaction then swindling your customer may be a winning strategy.
I try to avoid consequence-free interactions entirely when doing business because they suck. You earn a little bit of money at the expense of networks, reputation and capital. There is no exponential growth curve. You cannot add another zero. Manipulating customers is for desperate sellers like canvassers and telemarketers.
High pressure sales makes sense when your reputation doesn’t matter. Such places are soul-destroying to operate within. They are local maxima.
My friend didn’t deliberately omit information as part of a deep plot. She just forgot to include it.
These business writing emails are great.
I do agree though that they tend to be examples of customer service (assisting a customer to place an order), rather than sales (generating interest in ordering).
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that all sales is “manipulative, high-pressure sales!”. This appears to be a mental stumbling block for many technical-type people.
Here’s a fictional, non-strawman example of sales activity: