Sales people: Men or women - which are the most annoying?

[Dr Lobster*]

ignoring the occasional indian person who tries to sell me a free mobile phone, those of you who have to deal with sales people, what do you make of their tactics, persistance and gereral style?

and is their a difference between women and men?

i was discussing this with a colleauge just the other day, and we have come to the conclusion that women are much more annoying sales people than men are.

i deal with sales people everyday, i am responsible for the purchasing of several hundred thousand pounds worth of kit every year, so as you can imagine, i get a fair few people cold calling.

most of the time, you can pass them off (not interested in ip telephoney, not interested in your crappy white box unbranded pc's etc etc) but the worst kind, are those where i've been 'stupid' enough to ask for a quotation - and this is where the difference in sexes comes in.

i've got two particular characters (female) in mind, but if i ask them for a quote on something, a few days later, they'll ring me up questioning me as to why it wasn't ordered. they get most upset when i say i got it from somebody else cheaper - they always come back and say - 'why didn't you give me a ring, i could have matched that!!' bollocks to you, match in the first place then.

i've also had one female sales person say to me, that she can't do business with me because she keeps doing me quotes, but she never gets any business.

i don't ever use one company, and use others as 2nd and 3rd quotes, i just go with the cheapest, it's just that the specific company she works for isn't a big player, but i've known her ages, so i always give her a chance.

it's interesting, because the other main companies i deal with all have male sales reps, and they don't ever bug me with such nonsense.

what are your experiences?

[mr smuf]

i've got two particular characters (female) in mind, but if i ask them for a quote on something, a few days later, they'll ring me up questioning me as to why it wasn't ordered. they get most upset when i say i got it from somebody else cheaper - they always come back and say - 'why didn't you give me a ring, i could have matched that!!' bollocks to you, match in the first place then.

What, so YOU have to call someone back to get the same equipment for the same price? Fuck.

i've also had one female sales person say to me, that she can't do business with me because she keeps doing me quotes, but she never gets any business.

Oh fuck, tell the stupid slag to fuck herself

[Jamez]

Until yesterday, I was working for a very dodgy company which worked on behalf of Network 3 (mobile phone company) which meant cold calling O2 customers whos contracts were expiring within the next 2-6 weeks, and trying to get them onto 3.

In the morning we would go upstairs to a sparsely furnished room, with tables and chairs. no computers or any other kind of technology.

Then the boss would come in with a cardboard box with mobile phones and would give us each a phone and a list of sequential mobile numbers to call.

One side of the room was the 'leads' (usually the trainees or people under 18 ) who had the job of cold calling, and then passing bits of paper across the room to the sales people of people who said they were "interested".

I was on sales with the poor other sods. There were god knows how many bosses there, but none of them were more than 30 years old, and their cars ranged from Lotus, Mercedes, Ferrari and Jag.

We would regularly phone up people who had their numbers listed on TPS, which meant that if caught, the company could be fined up to £5,000 per number called! I spoke to several people a week who complained to me that I was breaking the "law" by phoning them.

I resigned yesterday, after 11 people were fired since Monday because they weren't selling enough phones. It really is a dodgy place!

[Cheese Head]

Hmm, I hate not being ablop and to go into a shop and look freely without being jumped on by staff. It really maks me feel uncomfortable. There's only one shop that doesn't annoy me when they do this because theyre actually infomative and helpful.