When someone is too eager to sell that doesn’t listen can easily become unreasonable.  Earlier today I received a phone call; this one of those calls which would normally be filtered by my assistant but this morning she was on holiday.

The sales person was a woman; gender is irrelevant for the sake of this post but this caller was female.  As soon as she clarifies who I am she starts explaining that she is providing credit cards payments; as I am keen to save both her and my time I stop her immediately stating that we are ok.  She ask what we are using and I reply: we use Worldpay Zinc and it is fine for us.  She further clarifies: “ah so you pay as you go” and I confirm.  At that point she could have asked a simple question like how much money we transact per month and have an extra topic for discussion but she immediately stated that they have a better solution.

At that point I interrupted her to explain that on average we get paid £100 per month with cards and the total monthly bill is less than £3 but she would not listen and repeated that they can offer a better deal.  At that point I got irritated, asked how on Earth she could possibly be more convenient than £3 per month and I closed the conversation.

How is it possible that people are trained to sell but not to listen and, more than anything  else, they have no idea about how to understand when it’s time to call it the day?