tricks of the trade
Link to this article on main site: eep... now I'm bragging.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have learned a few things. One of my favorite life lessons is that a little assertiveness can prevent a lot of silent suffering. As an example: I've seen a lot of respectable, well-educated adults get completely flustered when it comes to telemarketers. I've seen people take the phone off the hook and walk away, say hurtful things, fly into a tantrum, wait meekly and listen to the entire sales pitch with family members holding on the other line, or simply hang up. The telemarketers call back the next day, and the whole thing grows into a cycle of fear of answering your own phone.
I'm not sure how I started doing this, but somehow I learned to simply interrupt the telemarketer with, "I'm sorry, we don't take promotional calls at this number. Would you please remove this number from your list?" That's all it takes. Most of the people I've used this with have been very kind and gracious, and I never get the call again. And the telemarketer never sells my number to 15 of his best telemarketing buddies. In the one or two cases where people have persisted, I just inform them that there has been a mistake, they should not be calling the number, and they need to remove it from their database. Period.
It works.
I guess this is kind of a long way of introducing two assertiveness stories that Susannah linked in her blog this morning. I'm re-linking because frankly, both are awesome.
Kathrynt: "What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!"
Kathrynt: How to make an idiot shut up.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have learned a few things. One of my favorite life lessons is that a little assertiveness can prevent a lot of silent suffering. As an example: I've seen a lot of respectable, well-educated adults get completely flustered when it comes to telemarketers. I've seen people take the phone off the hook and walk away, say hurtful things, fly into a tantrum, wait meekly and listen to the entire sales pitch with family members holding on the other line, or simply hang up. The telemarketers call back the next day, and the whole thing grows into a cycle of fear of answering your own phone.
I'm not sure how I started doing this, but somehow I learned to simply interrupt the telemarketer with, "I'm sorry, we don't take promotional calls at this number. Would you please remove this number from your list?" That's all it takes. Most of the people I've used this with have been very kind and gracious, and I never get the call again. And the telemarketer never sells my number to 15 of his best telemarketing buddies. In the one or two cases where people have persisted, I just inform them that there has been a mistake, they should not be calling the number, and they need to remove it from their database. Period.
It works.
I guess this is kind of a long way of introducing two assertiveness stories that Susannah linked in her blog this morning. I'm re-linking because frankly, both are awesome.
Kathrynt: "What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!"
Kathrynt: How to make an idiot shut up.