If I need something, I will search for it, read your website/marketing material and decide for myself. It is an automatic turn off if you call me first because you’d be taking my time, possibly interrupting me, and putting pressure on me to buy now that I otherwise wouldn’t have if I was evaluating the products myself.

> 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?

Define “high quality”. Is it high quality by conversion rate or is it by customer satisfaction, churn rate, etc? Because I too can build a “high quality” sales team by holding my future customers at gunpoint and achieving a 100% conversion rate.

While I don’t consider all Microsoft products to be scams, I definitely know a few that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for clueless people being conned into buying it by salespeople or consultants.

> Most (all?) silicon Valley b2b startups utilise outbound sales heavily

And I guess this is why Oracle, IBM and similar shitty companies are still in business, because they rely on clueless people falling for their sales tactics instead of actually making great products.

> If so, what is a scam to you?

A scam is something I would fall for that I wouldn’t normally fall for if it wasn’t for pressure/ideas from an uninvited salesman/scam artist. So like if I evaluate your product and decide it’s not for me, and then fall for it because of a salesman playing with my emotions (technically that wouldn’t work on me, but a lot of life insurance telemarketers will for example use the “think of your family” aspect to get a sale) or similar, then I would consider it a scam. A legal scam, but a scam nonetheless.