You wouldn’t need “outbound sales” if you had a product that people wanted. They would be calling you with their wallets open if it was the case.
You only need outbound sales/scammers if you have a product that you think that people need even though they’ve been living without just fine for ages.
> Some of it is scams, plenty isn't.
Please give me some examples of how some are scams but plenty are not. From personal experiences it's always been the opposite for me. I feel like telemarketing is only used where the product/deal is so bad/unneeded that it wouldn't sell through normal, respectful channels, requiring the use of a telemarketer to put pressure onto the innocent victim to push them towards a purchase.
The idea that if you need to tell people about it for them to know about it and potentially buy it, then the offer is a scam, is baffling to me.
As for inbound leads, their existence doesn't stop outbound sales being productive. they're not mutually exclusive at all. In fact they're complimentary. Outbound sales results in customers, having customers creates awareness of product in the market, people that hear about it through those customers become inbound leads.
Regarding people living fine without the new product. You're just arguing against progress there. Which as a definite luddite and potential anarcho-primitivist, I am all for. But "scam" isn't a synonym for just "bad", and any definition that includes just creating needs would have to include most of modern commerce. Definitely including any and all software developers.
If you have a product that solves problem X, make a website, blog posts, send samples to journalists for reviews, etc about how your product solves problem X, and let search engines & organic growth do the rest.
> You're just arguing against progress there
I'm not arguing against progress. I'm arguing against the (potential) progress of your wallet, which is not at all correlated with progress of humanity as a whole. Again, if a product was truly progress then organic growth would be more than enough. As far as your wallet is concerned, you can make it progress through other, less annoying means, and actually create value in the process.
Microsoft has one of the highest quality sales teams there is. Many of which are outbound focused. Do you consider Microsoft products to be scams?
Most (all?) silicon Valley b2b startups utilise outbound sales heavily. /r/sales is full of people either in or looking to get in to saas. It's basically only behind medical devices in preferred products to sell as a salesperson right now. Do you believe the majority of b2b software companies are scams?
If so, what is a scam to you?
Sorry for the clarification request, and I will assume good faith if you get back with a reasonable answer, but I just can't see how the lines of argument you're putting forward pertain to your original assertion.
"They're just fine without it" is a pretty good counterargument, not just against marketing, but against speaking your mind, applying for a job, asserting yourself in any way, and the pursuit of science, knowledge, or advancement of any kind. If the status quo is good, it is only because someone improved it from what it was before. It can be improved again.
If you solve my problems I will find it, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. You can't imagine the number of times I've searched Google or asked friends about solutions to problem X.
> do not make any effort to put it in front of them or argue for its merits
If your product solves problem X, make a website or blog posts explaining that and let Google do the rest. Post it to Product Hunt or Hacker News. Reach out to journalists/bloggers and offer them a sample for review. Even buy some ads - sure, ads are cancer and will be blocked on my side, but I still prefer them compared to telemarketing.
> it will likely end up ignored and forgotten
If your product is so revolutionary that you feel it's OK to interrupt people by calling them and trying to sell it to them, then this is not something you should worry about. Such a revolutionary product will become mainstream in a matter of days. ;)
If your product isn't that revolutionary, then maybe you should instead work on making it revolutionary instead of paying monkeys to spam people. And finally, if that still doesn't work, then remember that nobody is entitled to any business and that interrupting everyone else just so you can have it your way is still not right.
> is a pretty good counterargument, not just against marketing, but against speaking your mind, applying for a job, asserting yourself in any way, and the pursuit of science, knowledge, or advancement of any kind
Seems like this is a pretty good counter-argument to a bullshit marketing model as well. Why improve my marketing model if the status-quo is good (as long as it's not me getting spammed)?
Speaking your mind, applying for jobs and asserting yourself is something you can do by yourself without bothering anyone. This kind of bullshit marketing does bother everyone - I haven't met a single person yet who was happy to receive telemarketing calls - I think this says a lot about what you're preaching. ;)
While I’ve never bought anything from a telemarketer, it doesn’t mean that thier product is not legit.
Now I’m not sure how prevalent scams are in the B2B industry (although I would expect there are still a lot of salespeople preying on clueless people that would fall for marketing BS instead of actually evaluating the product), but in B2C, every telemarketing call I’ve received was a really bad deal at best (that a quick Google search would beat), and an outright scam at worst.
Every B2B company that does large contracts that I’m aware of has sales people.
