I don't like the selling style of many of these Yell sales people. Honestly, the best way to sell something to me is to tell me the truth, leave it with me, and if I decide to, I get back to them - possibly months later. I have done this too.
One Yell guy phoned me as I was about to start my van to go home after a long, hard day. I tried to keep it polite. He insisted that I listen to his spiel even though I told him the situation. So I humoured him for 5/10 minutes - something I won't normally do. I let him ramble on without interruption. At the end I told him that I was knackered, cold (it was winter), tired and hungry and that because he had peed me off by not listening in the first place, I wouldn't buy from him ever.
So many people seem to think that being a good salesperson is knowing about the product and having the gift of the gab. Plenty of talk can work OK if you are tuned in to NLP type techniques but, other than that, gab is next to worthless. All it does is give the potential buyer the subliminal feeling that what you have to say is more valuable than what they want to say or think. IMO, it's about being a good listener and knowing how to respond appropriately. Also, although knowing the product is important, it's far more important to be able to know your audience. I don't mean intimate details of their lives. I mean the ability to empathise. I could pretty much guarantee that most of the time, the person with empathic ability will outsell the person who knows the product well. Obviously having both is an even bigger plus.
Take the Yell salesperson for instance. I'm sure he knew his product well. How much was to be charged for x amount of space. How much bogus discount he could offer if pushed and still turn a profit. But when I tell him that I could pick up work far more cheaply than he is offering by knocking doors for x hours and that directory obtained work is often more tightly priced because many go through a list and use price as the only comparison, he is lost for a response. So he falls back on offering the directory based service even more cheaply - which isn't what I wanted at all.
And so on...........................