Moron Enterprises

I spend a lot of time on the phone with customers, and I’ve learned a few things about sales.

Sound confident and people don’t question what you’re telling them. You can sell more stuff that way. There is no need to lie to people in doing this. You are presenting them with products they can use at a price they are willing to pay. You are just convincing them to do it now, rather than later.

The other thing I realized is that people are not comfortable with silence and talk way more than they should, giving out needless information. Sometimes this lets me know exactly where I need to price myself, but most of the time it’s people just rambling on with additional information after they’ve told me everything I need to know. From my own experience I know they are just to try to elicit a confirmation of what they’re already saying, because they’re not positive about what they’re doing.

I have a tendency to tune out people when I think they are in these rambling modes. I did this recently, and after about thirty seconds of not listening to him while saying, “Uh huh,” I realized he was going over another application with me. Well, I obviously had no idea what he was saying so I told him, “I’m having trouble hearing you. What was that last thing you said?” Fortunately he was on his cell phone and he said he could call me back from a land line. It reminds of this story.

The moral of the story is to listen more, speak less, and be confident when you do decide speak. It’s either that or to be really good at weaseling your way out of sticky situations.