(music) Monday’s Boring Objects LMBYTS #1345 5th May 2025

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep and today is Monday's Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. It is 5th, Monday the 5th of May 2025.

It's 5 minutes past 5 p.m. What else? What other juicy information can I tell you? I'm trying to think. Well, first of all, I've got no idea what I'm going to talk about. Yeah, genuinely do not know what I'm going to talk about.

So before I do that, before I talk about what I don't know what I'm going to talk about, I just want to wish everyone well. Hope you're doing okay and let you know I do have a Facebook group called Jason Newland's Boring Group. I have a YouTube channel at Jason Newland, where it's now it's now my podcast.

So I upload all the latest recordings. I no longer have a SoundCloud account. Well, the two SoundCloud accounts I got, I deleted, which has caused a little bit of a problem, which I didn't kind of think about, unfortunately.

So apologies to anyone that was listening to me on SoundCloud. I nearly said to anyone that is listening to me on SoundCloud, but and I mean, what you could do if you wanted to, you could always start up a SoundCloud account yourself, download my recordings, just upload them to SoundCloud for other people to listen to. And that's something you could do on other platforms.

So you could share what I do. All my recordings are on my website, I've been working over the weekend on my website. And I mean, this was always work to do.

But what I've done is right at the top of the page, there is a, they call it a carousel. So you can just click through and find each podcast that you want. So deep sleep, whisper, relax, sleep and panic attack, relax, relaxation with stress and panic attacks.

Relax and sleep, mostly daily stress and pain relief. Jason's bedtime story time. Let me boil your pain away.

Sleepy boring objects. Chase, stop smoking, chronic pain, Q&A Friday. Let Me Bore You To Sleep.

Stop now biting. Blimey, that's a lot, isn't it? And hypnosis for sleeping deeply, which is the main podcast where everything is. So if you wanted, and something might be worth doing anyway, is you can download the recording, you can stream it on the website, or just download it and play it at your leisure.

And if you wanted to put together your own SoundCloud account, or put together, you know, a playlist online, dogs barking brilliant. You can do that all my stuff is available to download. And I've got a list of podcasts, which you can click on, which would just show that the latest recordings on there.

Or if you're really excited, I've got playlists, which you can then click on. We've seen we've got, Let Me Bore You To Sleep. 1 to 50 and then 1251 to 1300.

There's quite a few playlists there. You can click on there. And all those recordings are also available for you to stream.

So they're broken into 50s categories of 50. That was boring, wasn't it? So yeah, it's all available. I realised that.

I mean, I've also I've been updating podcast apps. So it's easier to find stuff as well. So if you listen on Apple podcasts, and the Amazon Music podcast app, Castbox, Deezer, Luminary, Podcast Republic, Player FM, Podcast Addict, Podcast Index, Podchaser, Podfriend, Adverse, Podverse, sorry, Podbean, Spreaker and Spotify.

So I've done all of my podcasts and they're listed. So you can click and it takes you straight there. So it's just I don't know.

I hope that helps. Also, in the index, you've got I've got a few little shortcuts. So you got LMBYTS and Let Me Bore You To Sleep just takes you straight to the domain, Let Me Bore You To Sleep podcast.

I've also got Q&A Friday, if you click on that, and then all the latest Q&A Friday recordings. And you've got a little form at the top saying ask me anything. There's also Deep Sleep Whisper Hypnosis ones as well.

Again, you can ask me anything. So no, go to you can ask me anything. There's no ask me no form on that one.

I just want to hear you. So yeah, it's a pretty good website. Actually, it's getting more and more, more and more people are downloading and streaming on the website than ever before.

Although it's been a very quiet day today. It's a bank holiday Monday here. So maybe that's why.

Maybe it's a similar thing. Or maybe it's the fact that I haven't made a recording for two days and you're only as good as your last recording perhaps. That's weird.

Maybe it's just boring listening to old stuff. But I just thought you know, some podcasters do one recording a week. And that's, that's about average.

That's about like the how kind of works out. But if I do one a week, I don't know if anyone will be listening. Would anyone listen? I don't know.

Last week was weird. One was it Thursday? It was this Monday, Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday. So not last week, but the week before.

So one day I had 603 downloads, which is, you know, it's a very low. The next day 4304. Yes, weird.

And I was hoping that people on the SoundCloud would just come over and listen on the podcast apps. There's so many places to listen to me. And I'm just trying to cut down expenses and being you know, it's not a huge amount of money I'm saving, but it's 200 and was it 250 quid a year that I'm saving and I've got it's just my finances a bit weird at the moment.

I'm gonna they're changing me over to the old different payment scheme, which means I have to go two or three weeks possibly without any money while they change over. So you know, I'm just being a little bit more frugal. Is that the word fruity frugal? Maybe I don't know.

So let me see. What am I gonna do? What's the subject? Can I ask chat GPT? Think of 20 strange, mundane, everyday subjects. So like, you might be able to come up with something because I've been talking all the way through this.

I haven't had a chance to think. See, it comes up with stuff. It doesn't really fit what I do.

The whispery fizz of a just open can of sparkling water. I mean that I'm not gonna street lamps, single socks, the fridge light. Let's tell it's own jokes here as well.

Morning mirror fog. Maybe I've run out of Monday boring objects. Maybe I've run out of boring objects.

Blimey, what's a boring subject? Or what's an exciting subject that I find fascinating? Maybe isn't that exciting? Although I do have just remembered on Instagram. I had a message on Instagram. Where is it? I see these messages when I'm like half asleep.

I forget where are they? Where are they? Where is? Oh dear. I don't know. Sorry, I'm just reading.

I was just looking at it. I can't find where it is. But I had a message.

Where are you? There you are. It's I have to go into Facebook on like on my laptop and try and find it there. Okay.

Hey, juicy. I was wondering if you could do a little something on addiction. And I wonder, this is Shana.

I'm wondering if you if you could start a boring Instagram page for people like me that aren't on Facebook? Or the second one I'll answer first. What you could do Shana is if you want to is actually just start one yourself. And run it.

And the only reason I did I start the Facebook page because no one wanted to start it. I just no one knew no one knew who I was. I've now found 217 people that kind of know who I am.

So I'm feeling famous. Very famous. But if you want, why don't you just start a page on Instagram.

And if you're on TikTok, whoever's listening to this, if you go on TikTok, just run a run a page. Posting my recordings or posting my latest stuff. If you want to be brilliant, because I'm not very right word is a kind of know my way around Facebook, and YouTube.

But some of these apps, some of the you know, the most lots I'm not even on. Yeah, I'm not really particularly apt at doing it. I'm not apt with the apps.

Oh, blimey. That was a pun. I didn't even see it coming.

And I yeah, if you'd like to do that, anyone's listening, if you've got a social network app, or something online that you run, or that maybe you'd like to, please, just let me know. Not, not for permission, just I'm interested. I can join.

Or I can watch them sidelines. But yeah, I'd probably join. But that'd be good.

Yeah. And I did do two recordings on addiction. Now, all that getting, you know, all heavy in that I did them just after my best friend passed away.

And that was kind of the cause of that. And the two recordings I did, were probably not very gentle. So, I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know if I've even left them online. I might have done, but they're kind of very well hidden. You know, I mean, they're, they're kind of, I don't even know where they are.

But I did two, two recordings. I've got them on my computer. But let's have a look.

Let's have a look. Right, I've got, yeah, I did two recordings. One's help with addiction.

And the second one, one was an introduction. And one was the second one, which is called friends. And really, number two, you have a future.

Right, okay, so I did two. I mean, I've done things for addiction, separate to that in it, I say addiction habits. I've done a did a recording for alcohol once.

I don't know. Where is it? Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. Okay, drink.

Drink. Okay. Hypnosis is 2015.

Hypnosis of binge eating and drinking. Okay, that was a request as well. So what if that's in my requested thing? Because I've got a podcast for requests, which requested record this binge eating.

Yeah, yeah, I got that. So I'm there. In fact, I've got two, binge eating and drinking.

And I've got another one requested by Claire, help with overeating and binge eating, 19th of November 2015 to 2018. So Claire used to listen to me regularly and then stopped listening. So I don't know.

I think I must have. I think she got bored with me. I think some people just get bored.

Get bored with a boring person. It's gonna happen, isn't it? I guess. Oh, itchy shoulder.

Just trying to think what can I talk about today? I was like, should I talk about bipolar? But that's, that's a boring, you can talk about, you know, boringly about that. But it's not really, it's not the most uplifting subject, is it? No. Working in the bakery.

What jobs have I never talked about? There's gotta be some jobs that I've never talked about that I've had. I talked about my security jobs, being a security officer. Have I ever done that? I must have talked about that.

I would have talked about it, but did I ever? Let's talk about that. Being a security. No, I did.

I think I talked. Yeah, I have talked about it recently, I think. What other jobs have I had? So I've gone through all the jobs I've had, pretty sure.

I've been a cleaner, I've been a, I've never been a traffic warden. I could talk about how I've never been a traffic warden. I could just go through the years where I never worked as a traffic warden.

The first year of my life, I never worked as a traffic warden. What other jobs? Sales jobs. Okay.

And I'm not really including. You know what I was thinking? I could put together a little sales book for people working in call centres. Just a little, a little guide, a little, a little something that may be really useful to people that have never worked in a call centre before.

Just a little bit of advice from someone that's, you know, I've spent a good few years doing that kind of work in four different companies. Three insurance plus another one selling mobile phone contracts. So I've been thinking about doing that as a book.

In fact, this is going to be my boring subject. I'm going to talk about this sales book I'm thinking of. In my imagination, I'm thinking of actually putting together.

But in reality, I probably won't do anything. I'll write down as I talk about it. What ideas do I have? Oh, the pen's not working.

Never mind. So I think one of the things that I would focus on, if I would give advice to someone just starting out in a call centre, I suppose it would be how to conduct yourself. Or what to be prepared for.

Or what to, lots of do's and don'ts. And I did most of the don'ts. I did a few of the do's.

I did enough of the do's to get by, but I did a lot of the don'ts. And some of the don'ts, I suppose would be, I suppose in the call centre environment, there's certain things you shouldn't do. Leaving wet socks on the radiator.

That's a definite no no. So I've done that. This is true.

I used to get soaked walking to work. So I take a spare set of socks with me and change into them. And how else am I going? Yeah, I suppose it seems silly now.

But yeah, at the time, it didn't go down very well. It didn't go down very well. Other things.

I mean, some of this is a little bit gross, but I realised that some call centres are so strict, or used to be. It's probably got worse, to be fair. It's got more strict.

I can't imagine it was going in the other way, because it definitely wasn't going in the... Yeah, it was definitely going towards being really regimented. And watching everything you do, everywhere you go, every time you're on the phone, every time you're off the phone, how long you're on a break for, things like that, you know. The first time I had a job in a call centre, I could just take a little break and no one seemed to notice or bother about it.

And I remember the last time, so yeah, sort of 15 years later, in the last sales job I had, I was having people knocking on the cubicle doors saying, you come back to work at some point? I'd look under the... Well, sometimes I'd just open the door and say, what? They'd say, it's open, just come in. And I'd come in like, I thought you'd be finished and you had your trousers up.

I said, well, you're the one wearing a gas mask.

And they're half sweet. Oh, why are you eating your dinner on the toilet? And I was like, just really getting in your... Yeah, a bit like, it's my business, don't bother me. So certain things you can't do, I would sort of put like a list of things not to do in the call centre environment.

I'm trying to think of some other things. You have to be a lot more careful now, verbally. I mean, there was a time when you may find it's hard to believe that sometimes I might not say the right thing, occasionally.

And you've got to be a little bit careful. Yeah. Don't lend money, it's another thing.

Don't lend money to someone that's just been sacked. You ain't going to see that money again. That happened to me once.

I mean, this lady got on really well with her, like I did most of the people I worked with. And she got fired because she wasn't selling. And she said, oh, can you lend me £10 so I can get a bottle of wine? Yeah, sure.

I'll give that to you later. Yeah, okay. I genuinely thought she would.

No, I didn't see her again. No, wait a minute, I did... No, God, there was one, yeah, I did see her again. She was... This was a few years later.

And she was... It was like a country road. Someone else was driving, so I don't drive. We're going down a country road.

And I saw this thing, these things in the air, like moving around. I thought, what's that? And there was a horse in the ditch upside down. Right.

Which is something you don't see very often. Wiggling its legs and stuff. And when we stopped laughing, we got out of the car, and we sort of like, that's strange, didn't realise there was someone, not underneath, but, you know, kind of trapped a little bit, just not in a bad way, just the torso.

And no, just like, you know, underneath the horse a little bit, but not injured or anything. But I heard this voice, and I've got a quite good memory for voices. And I said, Steve, is that you? And she said no.

I said, Robert? She said no. Andy? She said no. She said, Zoe? At this point, she's actually looking at me, because I could see.

Well, I'm pointing, I'm just like a few inches away from her face. But I was looking, that's why. I find the best way to look is by actually focusing your eyes on the object.

And because my eyesight isn't so good, I have to get a little bit closer. But she said, can you move back a bit? I said, okay, sorry. And what? Hi, Zoe, are you alright? She said, yeah.

I said, oh, good. I'll see you. See, I've not had my look, look.

Oh, I'm trapped. I said, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you owe me £10.

Can I get my £10 back, please? She said, no, I don't have it. She said, oh, okay, no worries. Well, don't worry.

We're going to go, and I'm just going to, I'm going to call you, get help for you. I'm going to call up and get help for you, okay? Yeah. I'll be here soon.

Don't worry. Bye. See you.

Don't know how she got on. I didn't call any help. I did.

No, I didn't. It was made up. Nothing, nothing happened.

Bicycles. Why would I talk about bicycle bells? How much am I going to talk? I'd like to spend a whole hour talking about bicycle bells. The hole in bread.

Dust moats. I don't know what a dust moat is. The exact moment a kettle reaches boil.

Water finding its voice, then settling again. It's like it's making its own jokes up. The fridge light that lives its whole life, waiting for the door to open.

Or parking lot seagulls that patrol inland tarmac, like they're safeguarding an invisible shoreline. This is not me. This is ChatGBT coming up with stuff.

That is not what I meant when I said 20 strange mundane everyday subjects. I mean socks. Okay.

I mentioned socks. Street lamp halos pooling on wet pavement as if each puddle has its own private moon. It's getting a little bit fragrant, a little bit cocky lately.

ChatGBT, I found. Getting a little bit full of itself. Stationary escalators, when broken, that transform instantly from effortless ride to challenging staircase.

That's true. That is very true, isn't it? Because they're not easy to walk up, are they? Because the escalators, when you have to walk up them, they're a little bit too high, a little bit too high. I don't know why they make them so high.

You know, I quite like the escalators that you get in airports, that just go flat. You literally just stand on them for half an hour. It's like, wow, why can't we have these everywhere? Why can't we just have them everywhere? Literally just, you wouldn't need buses, you know, for short journeys, or even, you know, I mean, if it goes fast enough, you might be outside for an hour, but you get to town, maybe in an hour, hour and a half.

Perhaps, you know, just for people that maybe have a seat, if you want to have a seat. You can say it's the same as having a bus or a train or a tram, but the escalators, you know, once you're on there, they can go fairly fast, can't they? Because you can't, provided it's got safety, you can't go anywhere, can you? It's not like you could fall off.

Unless, of course, you know, you can fall off.

But I think the main thing I would say in this book is, as in do's and don'ts, one of the main things, this is the big difference that I found, because not only did I do sales, I also listened to phone calls. And I was listening to phone calls in the very first job I had in 2001. But it was 2002 that I was listening to the calls and 2003.

And that was mainly because I wanted to find out what other sellers are doing. I wanted to find out what their secrets were and what they were saying that was getting them all the sales. So I used to listen to the top seller who was called Jody.

And he was great on the phone. You can't be, you can't not be great and be the top seller, you know. So he was the only person that was consistently better than me.

Sales wise, there was a few people that were really good as well. But I'm just he was head and shoulders really above everyone. And but I also listened to loads and loads and loads and hundreds and hundreds of calls.

Hundreds and hundreds. When I was doing that as a living, I listened to calls in the call center. And the one stand out, shout out, obvious difference between on sales, the difference between someone who let's forget so you got three brackets, right? I'm going to do a little thing.

So you got top sales, or top sellers. So forget them. You know, that's that's a different bracket.

So forgetting them. And you got the bottom, the bottom sellers, which is made up of two categories of people, or probably three, actually, is first of all, is the people that are just starting out. And there's no reason for a new person to be a good seller, because they're just learning, they're still learning about the product.

They're learning a job may never have worked in a call center before. So it takes people time. I know some people may have done it before, so they'd be good straight away.

Anyway, so you got the newbies. Then you've got the coasters. So there's them ones, which are basically they turn up, they don't care about a bonus.

They're happy with the basic salary, which in sales jobs is usually fairly low. Whoops. So some sales companies, let them people get by, they leave them alone, because they need to have the telephone calls answered.

And those coasters, the unenthusiastic people that just not interested at all in the job, but they're happy to have a job, you know, they're not. They're not a problem. They're good at what they do.

These are the coasters, they're good at what they do. They're nice, pretty nice to be around. They're pleasant.

And they make this they make the environment a nice friendly place. They're reliable, they turn up every day, don't have much sick time off and probably turn up on in January, beginning of January with all their holidays written down for the year ahead, you know, very organized. And they're the kind of I suppose the really important people in a sense of a lot of these companies that have contracts, where they have to fulfill answering a certain amount of calls, and they get another company that sends the calls to them.

So it's, you know, it's a lot going on there. So they're, they're important. But ultimately, they won't care.

The newbies will care about, you know, what I'm about to say, the coasters, got to be a little bit careful the coasters, start hassling them and then probably start to look for another job. Hassle those ones to get more sales, because they don't care about the bonus. But they're happy to have a job.

They just want to stress free, relaxing environment to work in. And, you know, as I said, without them, they're the ones that can be relied on. And they may stay for a long time.

And then you've got the ones that are just that don't want to be there. So that's the fourth one on the bottom. People that don't want to be there.

Don't want to be there. It's like a lecture. It's like a TED talk.

A J talk. So I don't want to be there for whatever reason. And if I don't want to be there, they're not going to be good sellers.

Probably I mean, it's there are those people that are just really good. And while they're looking for somewhere else, fair enough, but someone is just coming in. Yeah, I've been one of them.

I've been in that situation. I've been in the newbie situation four times. I've been in the don't want to be there situation.

And one, two, three, three times or four times, sometimes temporarily, sometimes to the point where I just had to had to get out or change department. And then you got the other ones who are you got another side, the incompetent. I don't mean this in a bad way, but they're just really bad at the job.

It's not suitable for them. Not everybody's suitable for everything, are they? I mean, not everybody can be as perfect as me. I always felt like saying, call me whenever I say.

And yes, some people just it's not it's not the right job for them. And, and you get that, you can break that into different categories as well. So people that are incompetent, I don't like the word incompetent, but not very good at the job.

I mean, I was incompetent when I first started. So there's a lot of incompetent people in the newbies. But that's because they don't know what they're doing yet.

But if after two months, they're still incompetent, or, you know, a year, they're still incompetent, then they're the ones that won't probably still be working there. They're the ones that will be got, got rid of. But then you can break that up because you've got incompetent people that are both.

I've known people that really love what they're doing. They love it, they love doing it. And then we'll sell loads of insurance.

But they do it wrongly. You know, there was this one lad, he was, he was selling selling car insurance. And it turned out it's he had like a really, really good week.

And it's sold car insurance to a van company, some haulage company, a delivery, you know. And my company didn't insure commercial vehicles. But he sold normal personal car insurance to this delivery company van, which had like 30 vans.

And he insured each of them individually. So he was, you know, he was super excited. And everyone was saying how good he'd done, because people didn't realize at the time, until the information kind of went through.

And because at them days, I think they didn't seem to check necessarily. And then if there was a claim, they realized, well, you're not covered because it's a commercial vehicle. And they didn't and then there'd be a big hoo-ha.

And I sold it did that and they got they got sacked for that. Someone actually got sacked the very first week I was working at Church Hill insurance company. I was in training and the trainer came in and one of the managers came in and told us all that I've had to sack someone.

Now bearing in mind, this is in 2001. So this is this is quite something that people were saying to each other. You know, at the time, well, what happened is this woman, the old man, whoever it was that was on the phone, said we started being rude.

And to the call center staff member started being rude. And I can't remember what he said, what did he say? Oh, I see. I see.

I'm trying to find right. So he's been and this this custom was being a bit rude. So the person of course said, I said, he'd had enough.

And he said, okay. Sorry about this, but you are the weakest link. Goodbye.

And he put the phone down. She called back. And they, the weird thing about it is the manager was laughing as he was telling us.

And we were laughing. And I was thinking, why would you, why do you really have to sack him for that? I know it's unprofessional to do that to a customer. I get that.

But maybe move them to a different department, or give them put them back into training, something rather than getting rid of them. I don't know. Anyway, that's that's that happened.

And so you've got the people that are just really kind of not very good at the job, or, you know, like selling car insurance to the wrong people. Like people with minibuses and tractors and stuff. And then you've got the people who, I think that's everything.

The people who don't want to be there, you've got incompetent people. Yeah, that's kind of most of the ones at the bottom. With the incompetent ones, training, it's more training.

Find out if they want to be there, find out if they want to do the job. And if they're enthusiastic teaching that. Newbies, they'll be fine.

There's always a percentage that won't, and it's just normal, but coasters need them. The ones that don't want to be there, then they need to leave. Because I've sat next to people that didn't want to be there.

It's hard. It's really, really hard. Really hard to because they won't sell anything.

Generally. And I've actually sat next to people moaning the whole time. It's like, come on, you got to, if you're going to do sales, you need to have a degree of positivity, a lot of positivity, in fact.

But because, you know, the older big R is there all day long, the rejections, you know, you have to get used to people saying no, and to still keep going, still keep talking to them and saying no. You know, try and turn it around. So the ones that genuinely don't want to be there, they kind of have to be let go.

It's a shame, but it's not fair on everyone else that's there. Coasters, providing they're positive, good. Newbies, again, that's just living it.

And then the incompetent people, if they don't change, then of course they have to go as well, because that could cost the company so much money and a bad reputation. Now, then it brings you down to the newbies and the coasters. And then you've got those that with the newbies, that's going to break up between people that are going to be coasters, people are going to just not want to be there, people end up being really good sellers.

And the difference between someone like a coaster or at the bottom, let's say, not selling and selling, especially something like an insurance or a call centre environment, the difference between someone being in the bottom rank and in the middle. The main difference, being in the top is a different thing. But being moving from the bottom to the middle in sales, only one major thing, only one main difference that I found after listening to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls over the years when I was doing that job.

And that is simply asking for the business. Even if it's just, so do you want it? The amount of people that are in the bottom category, I say bottom, you know, I'm talking sales wise, not human wise. The ones that are kind of, especially like the coasters, a lot of them won't even ask for the business.

I remember hearing one bloke saying, he said, so you don't want it then, do you? That was his sales tactic. You don't want it, do you? Sounds rubbish, doesn't it? He didn't say that, but it's like, you don't want it. I remember hearing one person, I think they were quite new, actually, but they gave the customer really good, most people are pretty good on the phones.

Okay, that'll be a separate thing. So phone voice. Oh, God, blimey.

That's a whole bag of cockroaches. That is the phone voice. So there was this one person, I remember hearing them.

And they were saying, they did the quote, perfectly good quotation. Got on really well with the person on the other end of the phone. The other person's got on with them.

They like, you know, it's very good rapport. And gave a price, which was way lower. It's like 200 pound lower than what they were previously being quoted for, for the year.

And the customer saying, that's brilliant. That saved me 200 pound. I've been phoning around all day long.

And the best price I got was 50 pound cheaper. You've got a 200 pound cheaper. That's amazing.

And it comes with breakdown. Wow. And you could tell they were clearly breakdancing on the phone.

You could just by the voice, you could tell that the man was spinning on his head. And the salesperson just said, Oh, okay. Well, thanks.

Bye. Just like, what? Thanks for calling. It's a sales job for like, thanks.

I want to take it. Nah, it's all right. I wouldn't take it if I were you.

You let someone else do it. It's, it's amazing. The amount of people I heard is like, wait, do you want a reference number? And you know what I did is a difference again.

So the difference is those that ask for the business and those that don't, if you ask for the business, if you don't ask for the business, you're in the bottom rack, I want to say, just by asking every single customer for the business. When you get a good price, we'll just label it that when you get a good price, that puts you into the middle, the middle bracket.

Now to move into the top bracket, you have to, there's a lot more things you need to do.

But one thing, or you could say, let's say there's a middle top between the middle and the top. So another section, and that's the people that ask for the business every time, regardless of price, regardless of how much it comes up as. And you think, why would you do that? Someone's just said that the price for insurance is 500 and you come up at 650.

They might have been lying. They might mean just be teasing you trying to get a cheaper price. They might be unhappy with the car insurance currently.

You know, it could be any kinds of things. So also, the benefit is it gets you used, this is good, this is going to be a good book, isn't it? It gets you used to asking, because that seems to be the biggest hurdle for people that work in sales when they first start, is asking for the business. And as I said, I listened to hundreds of calls.

I mean, for about a year, what's the year? One, 2006, 2004, 2005, 2006, a year and a half. That's all I did, listening to phone calls. But all day, every day, well, you know, work, working hours for a year and a half, listening to phone calls, listening to sales calls, as well as other departments, but mainly, mainly sales.

So I've listened to so many calls. And I've heard some of the weirdest things as well. Plus, my own phone calls that I've done, and also listening to other people on the tables around me, as well as in the other job, in the first sales job, actually listened to people's calls, because I was allowed to.

And I'm not quite sure they just let me because I was one of the top sellers. So ask every time. Ask for the sale every single time.

And it's not just, you know, you say, so would you like to take that? Even if it's, I used to, it's more fun. If you get a price, it's like 700. Yeah, 7000 pounds.

Let's say it's a 21 year old. And they've got, you know, they've got a car that probably cost them 500 pound, but it's one of the most expensive cars to insure for a 21 year old or 17 year old. And you give them the price.

So yeah, it's going to be four and a half thousand pounds. So you want to take that. And it's fun.

It's not fun giving someone a horrible high price. But it's fun because it makes them laugh as well. Because sometimes the price is so ridiculous.

Just because maybe the company you're working for doesn't deal with those kind of people doesn't deal with young drivers or doesn't deal with expensive, fast cars, more aimed at the middle age bracket, you know. So there's that. And then Jace to Jay talks.

So the TED talks Wow. Then you've been you got the top sellers. So you don't say do you want to take that? You go from asking.

So you go from not asking at all at the bottom in the middle, asking when it's a good price. Because it's it's hard to ask when it's a crap price when you're just starting out. It really is.

It really is. I mean, I don't blame people for not asking at that point. But you can skip the middle bit by doing that.

It's a confidence thing, I suppose. And then secondly, then you get to the the top, the middle between the top the middle and the top. So that bracket, which is asking every single time.

So go ahead with that. Or should we get that set up? Horace is here. He's on the windowsill outside.

Oh, Horace. Horace has been visiting me for 10 years now. He's gone and he's just a little visit, just like says, Hello, Jay.

Now to get up to the top sales bracket. This isn't the only thing you do. But this this is where the difference is.

You don't, not only do you, obviously, you ask for the business. Not only do you also ask for the business, regardless of whether it's a good price or not. You don't say, would you like to get that set up? You can.

But generally, you would say, do you want to do that on direct debit, or just do it on a card now? You know, you give them an option, direct debit or card. And that assumes you assume they're going to take it. Regardless of the price, you assume they're going to take it.

That's the difference between the top sellers. It's not the only deal. There's a lot more.

But that's a big difference between the different brackets. You assume that they're going to take it all the way through. And everything you say to the customer is based upon you assuming that they're going to take it.

And part of that is having that belief system that you're the best company. You have the best insurance, the best cover, and they'll be looked after. Now that only works if you believe it to be fair unless you can fool yourself.

And it worked with Churchill because they really were a good company. I genuinely believed in Churchill. And not that I didn't believe in the others, but it was much easier because I knew how good they were.

So asking or assuming they're going to take it. And you'd be amazed at how many times the price comes up high. And people say, okay, well, I'll do a direct debit.

When it's come up at like, you know, a lot more than what the price they said, because you'll have written down the price on a piece of paper, you know, just to remind you of what you're looking to aim to get under if all possible. And there's two reasons for that. Well, three reasons, I suppose.

I love my little categories, don't I? So the first reason is, perhaps they fibbed about the price to start with, and it is a good price that you've got. Okay, for whatever reason. So maybe you have beaten the price.

The second reason is they might really like you. Now they're not going to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds more on your insurance if they just because they like you, possibly they might, but generally not. But, you know, that's going to be a reason because they like you.

And they might think they'll pay a little bit over the odds, they don't care. They might have forgotten how much the other quotes was. And the other reason could be simply that they're fed up phoning around, they don't want to go through it anymore.

And that used to be one of my tactics, I'd make the phone call. I didn't do this on purpose, by the way. But I would have the longest phone calls of anyone.

Sometimes my phone calls would last 40 minutes an hour. I'd one lasted an hour and a half. I literally got in trouble, I got taken into the office.

They didn't know at the time, they weren't taking much notice. They said, you were on the phone for an hour and a half. Was that a sales call? Or was it you just phoning your family? I mean, what were you doing? And I said, I pulled out my form said, so who got the top sales conversion in that week for that month? And it was me.

Who got the most call to sales? Me. Who got the most quote to sales? Me. So I might not, I might not get the most sales.

Although I did get the most sales sometimes, but I was still right at the top. But no one beat me on quote to sales, or call to sales. Consistently, I mean, it might be the odd week or so.

So yeah, I might have only taken, I might have got. So for every four calls, I'll get a sale. For every four quotes, I'll get a sale.

Other people that were doing really well sales, they'll get a conversion and maybe 13%. In my second sales job, I was actually, this is turning into bragging, isn't it? I don't mind. The third, the second job, I mentioned this before, the managers were in a meeting with the head manager of the whole company, who'd come from a different branch.

And they came in, and they said, the overall manager of the one I was working in, he said, we've just been talking about you over lunch. They'd had a big old long lunch. I said, really? Is it about the socks? And they said, yes, that's something we'll talk about with HR.

But no, this is something separate. And we just decided that you are the perfect employee for sales. I said, really? Because that surprised me.

I'm thinking, they knew about all the stationery I was stealing. They probably think differently. And they said, oh, I said, why? And he said, well, it's based on, it's not just on sales, we've got people that sell more than you.

I said, okay, you're not really making me feel good right now. He said, no, it's not about that. But it's about conversion.

It's about customer satisfaction. How many times do you have things come back, complaints, or you've sold, you know, car insurance to someone with a plane, you know, none of that stuff. I said, okay, well, it was that once.

And we laughed. And he said, oh, you've got best conversion, got really good conversion, really good quality calls. You sell well.

And you also do everything correctly. Like, compliance wise, everything, every questions asked correctly, in the correct way. No misleading, even accidentally nothing.

He said, if we could get everyone to be like you, we would be a much better company. Of course, we'd have to air the place out a bit more and maybe cover the radiators over with something to stop. I said, College, we have to keep talking about the socks.

And that was mentioned about an hour ago. I mean, it's, I suppose, slightly amusing to mention something that I mentioned an hour ago, and I managed to ease it back into the conversation. And there's, there's a certain amount of skill involved in that, even though it was accidental.

And he said, yeah, hmm, don't you mention it in your podcast? I said, I haven't started to wait a minute. I had have my, I was remembering I had started doing podcasts at that point. He said, yeah, you had, haven't you? I said, yeah, but I've not done I'm not doing the Let Me Bore You To Sleep one yet.

I'm just, in fact, they're not really called podcasts at this point. They're just recordings. I do put them on podcasts, and on YouTube, and on MySpace.

Friendster, I don't know wherever I was around at the time. And yeah, that was weird. So what else? So they're the things you should see this piece of paper is brilliant.

So they're the son of most simple things ever. Talking to the customer though. Right.

The amount of people that would start and then be like, they put a telephone voice on. Hello, how are you today? Are you okay today? Can I help you today? And like, no, stop that. Stop it now.

You just need to be natural, just talk naturally, but clearly has to be clear. But also, you know, takes a while took me a while to start to, to be able to understand all the different accents, because I was getting phone calls from literally all over the world, or people from all over the world. And there's some really strong accents out there around this country.

So I was able to manage it quite well. I was able to kind of have to open your ears up a little bit, and just focus, really, I suppose just focus on what they're saying. And then there needs to be, you say, well, being positive.

Yeah. But also needs to be a, an expectation that everyone's calling to get insurance from you. Just expect it.

Expect everyone to take the insurance. Not not in a way that you'd be disappointed if they don't, or when they don't, because not everyone's going to take it. But just expect it.

And include that you add expectation into the phone call all the way through. So when we get this set up for you, and you know, you're also talking about breakdown cover, maybe, or windshield cover, windscreen, you know, it's amazing with the insurance, they don't don't even have to replace the windscreen anymore, just put a little carry bag over it. It's brilliant.

That wasn't really a, an exact scientific fact, but you just include stuff. And there's certain things some, some salespeople are really good at. I was never any good at this.

But they would really get updated with sports. So if they got someone on the phone, and that was from Liverpool, they'd start talking about football. Maybe ask you know, who you were, do you like Everton or Liverpool or, or was a good game this weekend, wasn't it? Oh, yeah, stuff like that.

Yeah, I could never do that. Because I think I just Yeah, I just wasn't my thing. I mean, I could talk what I do is talk about the weather.

And maybe talk about how I run out toilet roll over the weekend. And you know, just just, you know, human stuff that didn't go down so well. So I didn't do that very often.

And I made sure that I had enough toilet paper. I mean, I still remember my friend phoning me up from his office, phoning me up saying, Can you call the office, please? They're not answering the phone. And my phone's about to die because the battery's gone.

I said, Yeah, so I said, Where are you? He said, I'm in the office. I said, Yeah, where's I'm in a toilet. So why don't you just go into the office? He said, I can't because I've run out of toilet roll.

But I can't they're not answering the phone and my phone's about to die. And I won't be able to get any toilet roll. So can you please phone the office now and ask them to bring toilet roll in.

He was the boss of the of the firm. So I phoned up. It was so funny.

It was just this really what scenario. Everyone was just laughing. Because it was just such a funny, funny moment.

Just Yeah, wow. I remember once I was in one of the, Vinnie's hassling me. What are you hassling me for Vinnie? I was in a toilet once and the cleaner was having a bit of a breakdown.

And he was, he must have known I was in there. Because there was I think three or four cubicles in this toilet because it was a call centre. And so I was sitting there.

You know, eating these sandwiches. And all I hear is blokes swearing. Oh, these messy.

Really shouting loudly. And proper going on for about 10 minutes. So I flushed the toilet eventually and walk out and he's just looking at me.

I'm pretty sure pretty certainly said, sorry about that. Vinnie is right now hassling me to take him out. Which means I'm gonna have to go.

Blimey. I thought I was going to tell you more about this book. I'm thinking this might be a good idea.

You know, because something I know about something that can be used can be adapted for wherever you are. There's a few little sales techniques as well. I could add a few little things that I've noticed you can do that I did.

You can do that I did that you can do in it. Oh, I don't think I've ever been this excited before. Vinnie is hassling me.

Why are you hassling me Vinnie? Is it Archie? He knows Archie's outside probably. Right, well, I'm going. So thank you for listening.

It's been a bit of a strange. Let Me Bore You To Sleep Monday boring objects. Bit different from usual.

But hey, difference is good. I think sometimes. So thank you for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself because you do deserve to be happy. And be gentle with yourself. You deserve to feel safe.

Lots of love. Bye.