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Door-to-Door

Door-to-door salesmen have existed for many years. Although it’s difficult to determine when the first door-to-door salesman made his first pitch, door-to-door salesmen gained a lot of their popularity following the release of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller in 1949, and by 1952, two percent of the entire American workforce was comprised of door-to-door salesmen.

Many American children’s organizations encourage children to sell products door-to-door in order to allow the children to gain important sales experience. The Boy Scouts of America, an organization aimed at teaching young boys certain values, skills, and self-reliance, encourages its members to sell popcorn, and the Girl Scouts of America, the equivalent of the Boy Scouts, but aimed at young girls, encourages its members to sell cookies.

In the time following the advent of telemarketing and emailed advertisements, door-to-door sales declined considerably. However, these days, with strong anti-telemarketing bans and better-designed spam filters for email, many American companies are returning to using door-to-door salespeople to sell their products.

Many telecommunications companies prefer to use door-to-door salespeople to sell their products. Some modern companies that use door-to-door salespeople include AT&T, Schwan’s Food Company, and ADT Security. In 2010 door-to-door sales was a $28.6 billion industry – a rise from $28.3 billion the previous year.

Resumé

A persuasive curriculum vitae (resumé) in the American context stresses achievements, awards and areas of special competence. It is not an official document produced by a neutral party such as a government agency or an educational institution, but rather a testament to how what was learned has been applied in the real world.

Resumés in the U.S. are in a way (self-)marketing documents. Americans highlight not only their subject area expertise, but also their character strengths, such as persistence, discipline, teamwork and, of course, leadership. Every American reader of an American resumé knows that they are carefully written subjective statements aimed at a specific effect.

War of Currents

Despite its name, the Current War is not happening now, but took place primarily in the late 1800s. It was a war fought between Serbian-born, American-immigrant Nikola Tesla and the American Thomas Edison.

Tesla had difficulty convincing the American public to use his alternating electric current to power their homes and businesses. Alternating current (AC) had the ability to provide electricity over long distances much better than Edison’s direct current (DC), which required power stations to be built close together.

Nevertheless, despite the demonstrable superiority of AC to the spread-out American public, Tesla had great difficulty convincing people to use his system of AC over Edison’s DC. This is because Edison was much better at marketing to the American public. He sold himself as well as his product, and also attempted to discredit AC by incorrectly claiming that it was more dangerous, which he demonstrated by publicly electrocuting stray animals using AC.

As a result of Edison’s marketing campaign DC was the standard electric current for many years. However, this began to change after George Westinghouse, an American engineer and entrepreneur, acquired Tesla’s patents for AC and the induction motor.

Westinghouse was much better at selling AC to Americans than Tesla had been, and the first major victory for Tesla’s current occurred during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, in which General Electric, using DC, bid to electrify the fair for $554,000, but lost to Westinghouse, who bid $399,000 using AC.

Shortly after this, Niagara Falls Power Company awarded Westinghouse a contract to begin harnessing the power of the waterfall for use, and on 16 Nov 1896 Buffalo, New York began to be powered by AC from Niagara Falls. General Electric also switched to AC, and it wasn’t long before AC destroyed DC. Even Edison eventually switched to the more productive AC.

Procopius and Anekdota

The Byzantine official Procopius wrote three historical works in Greek. In the first two, he dealt with wars and public works projects, but the third was something of a departure from this kind of history.

Referred to as Anekdota, from the Greek a meaning not, and ekdidonai meaning to publish, it contained bitter attacks on the emperor Justinian, his wife, and other notables of contemporary Constantinople.

Under the hood

German products focus on the technical. German advertising focuses on the technical. Cars are often presented without the driver, wristwatches without the wrist, newspapers without reader or author. Quality should speak for itself.

German tabloids may personalize the news by displaying large-format photos. Serious publications do not. Content should speak for itself. For Germans it is self-stated that a good product or service aims to serve people. A view under the hood of the car is, therefore, more persuasive than a happy face behind a steering wheel.

Methodology

German academic training focuses on methodology. The quality of results – whether in the natural sciences or in the humanities – is determined by the quality of methodology. German students are taught that the person applying the methodolgy, but not the methodology itself, is interchangeable:

“… the conclusions verifiable; the starting point and operating assumptions logical and understandable; the individual steps taken re-traceable; so that the same results are arrived at by anyone taking the same path of inquiry.”

The academic (scholar, scientist, inquirer) is fully detached from the topic substance, both in the execution of the inquiry and in the presentation of results. Message and messenger are kept separate.

Colleagues aren’t best friends

In 2010, Karriere.de, a web-portal on the subject of professions sponsored by the publications, conducted an interview with Simone Janson, an expert on career advice.

The interview was titled Kollegen sind nicht die besten Freunde – colleagues do not make the best of friends, in which she extensively discusses interactions and relations between colleagues. Her statements demonstrate in the German work environment the importance of having a clear boundary between one’s career and private life.

Bei der Arbeit ist zu enger privater Kontakt nicht immer von Vorteil. – Too close of personal contact at work is not always of benefit.

“One can choose one’s friends, but not one’s colleagues […] presumably everyone has had the experience of having a colleague share a lot of private information about themselves, and discussing their private concerns which they did not know how to handle at least once. Or they themselves have shared something private which they then realized was making their sympathetic colleague uncomfortable.”

“There also exist the long-term professional contacts, which eventually evolve into true friendships. Even I can’t succeed in maintaining a strict separation between the two areas. That would be synthetic and non-authentic. After all, no one can forcefully avoid conflict between fellow humans. These are part of cooperating, both at work and at home. Nevertheless, I still advise maintaining a certain professional distance wherever it is necessary.”

In public space

Because Germans separate strictly between their work and private spheres, they are very reserved in public. Just as they would never ask their boss about her hobbies or family, Germans very seldom initiate a conversation with a stranger in a public place like a bus, train, store or restaurant. Nor would they talk about aspects of their private life. Both would be inappropriate and make the other person feel uncomfortable.

Germans feel comfortable with periods of silence. They use quiet time to work, read, reflect, listen to music. Deutsche Bahn – German Rail – is modern, fast, affordable, and for the most part on-time. The routes offer beautiful views of the countryside, especially along the Rhine River from Koblenz to Mainz, one castle after the other sitting atop a hill.

Some train cars have rows of seats, two on each side separated by the aisle. Other cars have cabins seating six. It’s not at all unusual to enter the cabin, say “Guten Tag”, sit down, read, reflect, work on a laptop, or sleep and not exchange another word except perhaps “schöne Weiterreise” (literally “have a nice further-trip”), and this over several hours.

“Not about me!”

In German politics one hears time and again: Es geht hier um die Sache! – this is about substance. Or Es geht hier nicht um meine Person! – this is not about me as a person.

This is the German politician’s way of saying, that their political program, not them as a politician, is the focus, is at center stage. They want to persuade based on their message, not by who they are. As if one could make a clear distinction between the two.

In 2013 two women in the CDU (Christian Democratic Union – the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) – Katrin Albsteiger and Barbara Lanzinger – ran against each other in a party-internal race for an election to the Bundestag in Berlin. German political parties do not have primary races. Neither of them, however, spoke of a Machtkampf – literally: power battle – between them.

“This is not about me”, Albsteiger wrote. “This is not about my person”, Lanzinger said in an interview. But it was about them. As members of the same party they stood for the same political platform. They had no other choice but to persuade the other party members that they could win in the general election.

Party and Platform First

German political conventions demonstrate clearly that in Germany, substance is more important than form. For decades the podium was set to the side, with the stage dominated by up to fifty party leaders sitting in three or four extended rows.

And although in recent years the podium has been moved front and center, the stage continues to be dominated by party leaders. The message is clear. The party and its political platform remain front and center.

German political parties also do their best to keep hidden their internal power struggles. Instead they are presented as debates over substance which should be resolved internally and speedily. The politicians involved are quick to state that the battle is not about themselves or political office, but about important issues of substance.