Almost nothing I repeat-buy is sold to me by a salesperson. Is there marketing? Sure. Salesperson? No. In fact having a salesperson involved almost always means it’s something unwanted or unpleasant (door-to-door window salesmen, cars) and I’m inclined to avoid them and shop on my own if it’s an option—I figure if a place is paying salesmen, I’m paying those salesmen if I buy from them, and I’d rather keep that money, and besides I don’t want to spend my time playing Which Pop-Sales Book Did You Read Last with Jim and his “salesman of the month, April 2013” plaque and mass-produced golf art.
B2B sales are different but incentives there aren’t the same as for individuals—I might take more sales pitches in private life if someone was paying me to do it, it wasn’t my money on the line, and so on.
Yeah, ads, shelf placement. Marketing. No interaction with a salesperson. I take them as a really strong signal to walk away from whatever they’re selling. Ditto any direct communication that appears personalized. Cold calls. Hell even unexpected calls from my bank trying to sell me something or “check in”. No, no, no if you’re talking to me you want something and there’s nothing I want to give you so, bye, and even if I think no maybe I do want that I’ll just hang up faster because you’re (maybe) a pro so I can’t trust any of this—if I didn’t initiate the communication, I don’t need it, so, bye.
Actually, I take that back: recruiters sell to me quite a bit. Though they’re trying to convince someone else to give us both money, not me to give them money, so that’s a bit different in that I’m not purchasing anything they’re “selling”.
Before I moved to a smaller town, there was a grocery store I bought regularly from due to optimal location and relatively middle-level prices. I was pretty sociable back then, and befriended some employees. This eventually led to them warning me about buying meat on certain days - turns out, they were forced to wash stale meat with detergent to erase the bad smell, and sell it as fresh. I recently confirmed it with one of the ex-employees, turns out their manager actually opposed that, but this was forced by the higher ups in the management of the whole shop chain.
That, and bunch of other stories (some second-hand, some first-hand), essentially ruined my trust in regular small business.
Did you continue to buy from them? I doubt it. Do you recommend them to others? I doubt that. Such practices tend to not work out well in the long term.
I've been investing in stocks ever since my first job. I've done reasonably well, and I focus on companies that focus on making their customers happy - and they do better than average long term. That's great salesmanship.
Only bread, cheese and processed products in original packaging, so I guess this proves your point. But they are doing fine to this day, because there's only so many people you could tell (for various personal reasons I didn't want to pursue anything serious, like ratting them out to safety inspectors and hoping they didn't bribe the local inspector, like a certain bookstore I know of... but that's another story), and people tend to stick to their local grocery stores anyway (price and location sensitivity).
For what it's worth, despite that I'm now distrusting businesses by default, I try to compensate for that; if there's a store or service provider that I feel treats me fairly, and I don't see any obvious signs of deception in their overall business practices, I tend to stick to them despite cheaper options available. I feel fair business should be rewarded, and I do my best to put my money where my mouth is in this area.
