This is something that has really been getting on my nerves lately. You ask someone a question and they don’t answer. This can be face-to-face, over the phone, by email, on facebook or wherever. You ask a question and the other person ignores it or answers with a question. For example, you ask the simple question “What would you like for dinner tonight?” and the response “What would you like for dinner?” Is that an echo I hear?
Every day I deal with sales people trying to sell me this or that and they are the absolute worst about answering direct, clear as crystal questions. For example, a common question might be “How many unique visitors does your site have?” and the typical response “We are the greatest thing since sliced bread and you know, [insert their competitor’s name] isn’t even in our class.” Did I ask about your competitor or sliced bread? A simple “We have 30,000 visitors per month,” would have sufficed. Heaven forbid you ask more than one question over email. You might as well have sent a blank email because the response will have nothing to do with anything relevant.
A perfect example is a salesperson who I had to deal with this week. It was Friday afternoon and they suddenly got it in their head that they had to do a deal in the next two hours. Mind you, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled this stunt. “You need to sign this contract right now because I’ve got three other people waiting to take this spot if you don’t want it… and oh yeah, it is 10 times more expensive than last year and everyone else is willing to pay full price.” Several things are wrong with this tactic – but I will save that for another post. In the response to their kind offer (they, after all, took the time to email us out of “courtesy” because we already work with them), it clearly stated there are several questions that need answering before we can make a decision. The almost instantaneous response failed to answer a single one and went straight back to “Now or else!”
Well – I wish them luck selling their crap ad space with the oversupply of ad inventory that exists and the crummy economy further depressing prices.
