> if i needed something i'd look up some options, compare them, and decide what to purchase based on my needs.  there are a lot of things that would benefit you that you're not aware of. good salesmen aren't selling products as much as they are pointing on the problems that they could fix for you. any easy example is insurance. if you've got a client list that's already buying insurance then you can easily cold call people to see if you can get them a better rate than what they're already paying.  there's an interesting bit of game theory. if someone comes to me looking to buy something i have an idea of their demand level. they're more interested, and likely to pay more, so they often get worse offers. by comparison, to convert someone i've got to offer something better than what they've already got. the salesman allows a company to keep base rates high, but also seek out the more tight fisted customers that need to be convinced/have better offers given.  tl;dr sales allows a company to hit multiple segments of the demand curve.
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