Comment by acuozzo
2 days ago
> you seem to be communication-averse
Not OP, but I worked for years as a telemarketer as a teenager, so I'm not afraid of speaking on the telephone. However, as I've aged I've found that I'm extraordinarily bad at thinking on my feet and it is for this reason that I loathe telephone calls now.
I was raised to be a people-pleaser and no matter how many times I read "When I say no, I feel guilty" my gut instinct during conversations in which I have to think on my feet is to do whatever is necessary to avoid conflict with the person with whom I'm speaking. With e-mail and other asynchronous communication methods, this is not the case for me as I have the time to craft the gentle-no or the push-back or to properly word the uncomfortable question.
This might be the very reason they prefer to call you, to force you into rushed decisions. Because otherwise I can't imagine the reason for spending scheduling time and minutes (hours) of chitchat just to answer a couple of very basic and totally repeatable question.
I have the same problem as the parent comment, and over time, I learned that people would take advantage of it, just as you mentioned. So, I decided to make my default response to every offer: 'Let me think about it, and I'll call you back.' Sometimes I only ask for one hour, but I always need some time to think on my own about the opportunity and make a sensible decision. This habit has improved things a lot for me!
Since getting married, I've gained an additional great excuse: 'I just need to check with my wife about this important decision.'
> Since getting married, I've gained an additional great excuse: 'I just need to check with my wife about this important decision.'
Tip for unmarried people: You can still use the trick above, no one would know or even care :)
Yup. Used to do sales. People are make way better decisions async (over email) than in person or on a call. People feel pressure to say yes in the moment and then the cost of later saying no is much greater than it would have been to say no over email.
The stress and all the negatives people are posting about here is the point.
Before you demonize any company doing this... Know just about every company with a product has a sales team of some kind and they are all operating with similar models. You are being annoyed by some sales people while the sales people at your company are annoying someone else.