> 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 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.)