Or: How treating a sales call like a mating dance costs you discounts, scarves, and a better future
1. The Refusal Before the Offer
You are on the phone. A sales agent – calm, scripted, utterly interchangeable – presents an offer: a summer subscription plus a luxury gift, total value far exceeding the asking price. It is a genuine discount, a loss‑leader designed to hook new customers.
Before you have heard the full offer, your mouth forms the word no.
Not because the math is bad. Not because you have a better alternative. But because saying yes to a stranger on the phone feels dangerous. It feels desperate. It feels like losing a game you didn’t know you were playing.
You hang up, satisfied. You have resisted. You have not been fooled. You have saved a few euros.
What you have actually saved is nothing. What you have lost is a genuine gift.
This is flakiness – the reflexive rejection of an opportunity before it has been evaluated.
2. The Reflex, Not the Reason
Flakiness is not shyness. It is not genuine indecision. It is a social vaccine against the imagined shame of appearing interested.
The flaky customer does not weigh the value of the gift. They weigh the risk of saying yes to a stranger. They do not compare prices across seasons. They compare the momentary discomfort of commitment to the relief of hanging up.
Most tragically, they conflate a business solicitation with a mating dance. They see themselves as the prize, the product, the object of desire. The sales agent, in their mind, is a suitor trying to win their favor. The actual offer – the discount, the gift – becomes irrelevant. What matters is the performance of being pursued.
“You want me to buy? Then you must impress me.”
“I will not appear eager. I will not say yes too quickly. That would lower my value.”
But the agent is not a suitor. There is no courtship, no status negotiation, no romance. There is only a transaction: a limited‑time offer, a factual value proposition. The customer who misreads the game board walks away feeling superior. The agent walks away marking a dead lead. And the offer – the genuine gift – goes to someone else.
3. The Demographic Gradient
Not all customers are equally flaky. Experience over thousands of calls reveals a clear pattern:
- Young women (flakiest): Highest social performance pressure. Dating apps, peer approval, and fear of appearing “desperate” generalize to sales calls. They invent elaborate excuses (dog giving birth, lecture in progress) and expect the agent to chase.
- Young men: Slightly less flaky. They perform busyness and future orientation (“I’ll think about it”) to mask indecision or lack of funds.
- Rich boomers: Defensive, suspicious, often rude. They’ve been scammed for decades; their flakiness is a hard shell, not a performance.
- Millennials: Over‑scheduled, under‑resourced, but at least they understand e‑commerce. Their flakiness is genuine distraction, not malice.
- Gen X and early pensioners (the sweet spot): Fewer status games. They value arithmetic over performance. If they say “call back in September,” they often mean it.
The flaky cohorts systematically miss opportunities – discounts, subscriptions, investment openings, career advances. Over a decade, those missed opportunities compound into lower savings, weaker networks, and fewer assets.
In the post‑#MeToo era, consent has become a clarifying discipline. No means no. Maybe means no. Silence means no. Anything that isn’t an enthusiastic, informed, revocable yes means no.
The sales agent’s script now mirrors this ethical standard. The customer must say yes not once, but three times: first confirming what they want, then affirming they are absolutely sure of the terms, and finally pressing a button in a follow‑up text. Even then, they have 14 days to cancel.
There is no ambiguity. No “I didn’t understand.” No “maybe next week.”
Flakiness is not a personality quirk. It is an economic strategy – a very bad one.