Montreal is the capital of the North American telemarketing industry.
As the second-largest French-speaking city in the world, with a cheap labour force and low cost of living, Montreal is the ideal place for telemarketing companies. This means that many of us, the people you know that live here, have worked these kinds of jobs when we were young and broke. It let us get up late, make our own schedules, and make a decent wage. The only downside is the feeling of crushing defeat that comes with every single call we had to make.
Telemarketing is one of many reasons why we feel that sales, like marketing, is dirty. But we forget that, in some ways, we are selling all the time, to everyone.
- Co-workers
- Ourselves
- Significant other
- Children
- Family
- Boss
We sell to everyone, about everything. We sell our worldview and our politics. We convince them what we want to eat for dinner. All of this puts aside what we actually do for a living, which is often to actually sell a product or service to someone for a living. But we don’t get a feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we do it. Why?
Sales is antithesis to the way we behave as human beings. We have to be pushy and sometimes bother people. We have a lot of discomfort to break through. It can be tough and most of us quit. But we also find new ways to sell what we do:
- Blogs
- Speeches
- Television
- Religion
We use these ways to avoid going through the feeling that we had while doing the door-to-door, telemarketing type. But there’s another way to deal with this feeling we get. Some people push through it. Some people keep going and become successful, while others push through it and become cynical.
Which ones are right?
When I think about it, part of the idea of the way we sell to ourselves now (including what’s written in Trust Agents) is to avoid stepping on other people’s toes– not for them, but for us. So we can avoid that feeling that we’re intruding and being dirty.
But those that push through it sometimes become some of the most successful people in the world.
Who’s right, and who’s wrong? You tell me.
(Written as a complement to Mitch’s Life is Marketing post, here.)
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