The Cold, Hard Sell

Quail Marketing in Hajikabul, Azerbaijan

We’ve all been there, sat at home watching daytime television, when the ring of a telephone breaks the monotony. A barely detectable feeling of excitement wells up as you approach the phone, racking your brain as to who this mystery caller might be. Quickly, excitement is replaced with annoyance as you realise that the voice on the other end of the line is attempting to sell you insurance. It’s the dreaded cold call.

You aren't in the market for insurance, so you insist that Income Protection will not be necessary. That’s when the pitch changes. Now it is the job of the sales representative to suggest something that you are interested in, on the off chance that a sale can still be made. “We also provide cover for your home…” drones the battle-wearied voice in your ear. You don’t even consider it, and hang up.

Fruit vendor in Baku

The Azeri men and women took their cold calling much more literally than their UK counterparts, their yells almost freezing solid in the bitter Siberian crosswind. Rather than a phone line, the selling arena was the streets of rural Azerbaijan. Instead of insurance, quails were the product of choice.

The whole idea that you could sell quail to a person pedalling through the snow and ice twenty-five kilometres from the next town, Hajikabul, was as ridiculous as alien abduction insurance. But that wasn’t about to stop these eternal optimists.

The men were stationed at 100m intervals along the road. The first man, a heavy-set middle-aged campaigner, tried to sell me one of his finest dead quail using vociferous persuasive techniques, running to keep pace with me as long as he possibly could and enthusiastically shouting prices that rapidly descended the further I managed to cycle away from him. I chuckled; in my experience as far as sales goes, nothing scares a person off like being chased by a man clutching a bird corpse.

Before long, I was in the realm of the second salesman, a skinny teenage boy, who had an alternative approach. He calmly tried to point out the benefits of buying a dead quail from him, namely, that it was already dead, ready for consumption, and would fit in one of the bags I had attached to my bicycle. Given that the young fellow didn’t speak a word of English, this was quite an achievement.

I turned my gaze up the road, attempting to suss out my next adversary. It was a younger guy, maybe mid-twenties, and he was so slight that he almost looked like a dark wisp against the white snow bank. He froze, pondering his approach in light of his colleagues’ failed efforts moments earlier. As I closed to within earshot, I swore I could hear the light bulb go on inside his head. Abruptly, he dropped the lifeless bird in his hand to the tarmac and crouched, eagerly rummaging through the white potato sack behind him. A broad, cheeky smile spread across the man’s face as he locked eyes with me. Standing up, with a glint in his eye, the man dragged a live quail, still thrashing around, out of the sack and held it aloft triumphantly.

Meat vendor in Ganja

Still beaming, the charismatic seller mischievously hinted that the freshness of his produce surpassed that of his competitors by nodding in the direction I had just come and disapprovingly wagging his finger, before nodding towards the live bounty in his grip and giving it the all-conquering, thumbs-up seal of approval.  He did, after all, have a point. The freshness of a dinner cannot be questioned if it is still trying to fly away.

I am not ashamed to say I was actually temped. I wanted to reward the sheer audacity and likeability of my new friend but, other than a handlebar trophy, I had no use for a quail, not dead and absolutely not alive. Likewise, I had no use for insurance, neither income protection nor home insurance. I am still being called with regard to insurance back here in the UK, and I am certain that those men are still out there on that stretch of road in Azerbaijan, trying to sell quails. I have come to learn that common ground is often found in the most unfamiliar places.

Now, I am aware that there is a big difference between selling birds on the roadside and selling insurance on the phone, but often-times there is a lack of genuine enthusiasm on the part of many salespeople in the UK. To be slightly melodramatic, our culture, with all its perceived politeness and guards against social discomfort, occasionally strips salespeople of their charisma. The shamelessness, cheek and bravado of those Azeri salesmen were brazenly endearing, and I for one would be thrilled to see more of it.

WORDS BY DANNY GORDON