Notions (No)

You'd never know how disheartening a "No" from a potential customer/client is until you're on the receiving end.

My place abode while in school is the hostel and students usually hawk their wares from room to room. The message always goes thus, "I have slippers for sale" or "I have your natural black soap for sale" et cetera. 

Then, my answer could either go this way:

If the person knocks and says "I have slippers for...."

"I'm not interested", I'd always interrupt midway. 

If it was any of my roommates that answered, they would allow the person to advertise her wares and then comment on how pretty it is before regretfully announcing that they weren't buying.

As for me, I would tell my roomies that I didn't see the point, so my being blunt about my lack of interest. "Why waste someone's time if you aren't buying in the first place?"

Fast-forward to a few months later. My sister had begun baking cupcakes in the hostel and was selling it same room by room.

So this particular day, I had really immensed myself in the baking process. The selling prospects was looking great for me cos the cakes were not only sweet but "rose" really well.

Then she began her sales. A few doors down the line, my sister (as dramatic as she could be at times never just knocks) says "Kpai Kpai (whilst knocking), I have cupcakes for sale."

"Not interested", the person shouted. She didn't stop there but lunged into a complaint about people keep disturbing others in this hostel.

Kai, the thing hit me. I vexed for a couple of minutes before my mind told me, "Will you take a good look at yourself? You are getting angry for exactly what you do every single time. Such hypocrisy"

From that day, I totally melted my attitude towards sellers. However, this one is still second hand experience cos I wasn't the one that got the utmost rejection from the girl.

Now onto my first hand experience. Currently, I am on the Editorial committee of the Rotaract Club of my school. As such, we are still on the prepping of the brochure of for the Rotary Year and so soliciting Features and supports from other Rotaractors.

This means that I was required to slide into DMs, Talk to people to subscribe.

At first, I was just doing a formal message, a broadcast that I just send to everyone the same thing. So it's always standoffish.

The thing is, I wasn't getting much feedback. People would read the message and just blatantly ignore it. The WhatsApp tick will show the 2 blue ticks and no response.

Now, I'll like to add that I don't exactly know which one is worse, "Hearing a Big fat No" or "Getting Totally Ignored"

So it wasn't working. I had to get into the informal mode, exchanging formalities before subtly asking if the person hadn't been seeing my previous messages. 

Some give explanations, others acquiesce because you just spoke with them. But at least, I understood my ground with said persons instead of those that Ignored the messages.

What this taught me is that interaction is essential especially in the customer/client business. That sometimes, it's humane to just give someone a minute to advertise his/her wares.

Now, I'm not about to give a lesson on whether or not one is supposed to sit through an advertisement by someone when said person aren't interested in buying the wares. I'm just saying my truth.

Amaghị m na the thing na-afụ ụfụ n'obi that much. At least, when you chat with the person, you give the seller a motivation of some sort, that his/her wares are good but you just can't.

An abrupt "No" screams all sort of things for the person. He might actually think that his goods are not marketable or isn't worth nothing. 

Or that He/She is wasting time in the business. Especially if it's someone that's going room by room in Unn Hostel (A huge nightmare, I tell you)

In any case, anaghị zị m asị mba like before. Infact, these days I smile as though I've been waiting for the seller to come my way (even though I'm most likely not buying anything). If not for anything, ka the person nwegodu hope na ihe ọ na-ele.

Ọ dịghị easy ma ọlị.