enthusiastic

Dear friends
What do you get from these sentences? What is the meaning of "enthusiastic" here?

For every sale you miss because you're too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you're not enthusiastic enough

enthusiastic here means, roughly, excited. Some people don't like salespeople who appear too emotional or excited about their product -- but even more people don't want to buy a product from a salesperson who seems bored and unexcited about the sale.

Please use a dictionary

liliput said:

Please use a dictionary

I have used the dictionary. But I don't know what these sentences want to imply?

hossein31 said:

Dear friends
What do you get from these sentences? What is the meaning of "enthusiastic" here?

For every sale you miss because you're too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you're not enthusiastic enough

I think what you're asking for is nuance here, hossein, not so much literal translation.

Imagine you need a new bed, so you go to the furniture store. You don't know what you want, and you need to ask questions. A salesman comes up to you and he's just too much: too loud, too nice, spouting just how wonderful all the beds are in that store.

He's too enthusiastic in his sales pitch, and that comes across as false and irritating. If he keeps it up, your head starts to pound and you need a pill and a nap, but you definitely know it won't be on one of this guy's beds. He's lost the sale because his over-enthusiasm has so turned you off, you leave.

So you go to another store and go in, armed with those same questions. You can't find anyone to wait on you, so you go looking for a salesperson. You find one, but he's so unhelpful, uninterested in assisting you, that his lack of enthusiam is just as bad as that other guy's abundance of it, and you leave that store without a bed, too.

The point of your sentences is to say that in order to reach success, you need to find the perfect balance in your behavior. Too little is as bad as too much.

That's why I think your sentences are wrong in principle, because someone who's too much is as bad as someone who isn't enough.

But for the sake of your question, it means that it's better to be too much than not enough.

I don't agree, but that answers your question.👁 Big Grin :D


AngelEyes

I found the sentence confusing when I first read it because I thought an enthusiastic shopper wouldn't miss a sale, but I think 'enthusiastic' refers to the seller here and not to the buyer. Only after reading Dobes' comment did I figure it out.

Dear friends, Thanks a lot for your answer. Understanding each sentence is almost easy. My problem is connecting these two sentences. Why does "every sale which you miss because of being too enthusiastice" will lead to "missing hundred sales because of lacke of enough enthusiasm"? How are these two things connect logically?

hossein31 said:

For every sale you miss because you're too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you're not enthusiastic enough

This isn't a logical sentence. That's why you're having trouble with it. Also, we could help you more if you gave us the sentence before it and also the one immediately following it, too. (If there are more.)

As it's written, it's saying not being enthusiastic enough will cause you to miss a hundred sales for every one sale you'd miss by being too enthusiastic.

So if you have to choose between to modes of behavior and atttude, choose to be overly-enthusiastic, rather than less than enthusiastic.

You'll make more sales with a smile than a frown.

I still say the logic behind these words doesn't hold up in action. Both are irritating and a big sales turn-off.

But that's not the point, I guess. 👁 Roll Eyes :rolleyes:



AngelEyes

Hi,

The sentence appears to be advice to salespeople (those who sell things).

It is discussing the merits of being enthusiastic. I doubt the meaning is as Angel Eyes suggests of being overly attentive and generally annoying, rather the suggestion is to like doing sales, if selling by phone, make a lot of calls, if selling in a store then try to be helpful. The sales person should take the initiative and not just hide in a corner waiting for desperate customers to seek them out.

The advice says that it is 100 times better (in terms of sales) to be enthusiastic than to not be enthusiastic.

I think the message is that if you are in sales, having too much enthusiasm is better than not having enough. The over-enthusiastic salesman might lose an occaisional customer who doesn't like aggressive sales techniques, but the under-enthusiastic salesman loses 100 times as many customers by his lack of enthusiasm.

jennball said:

I think the message is that if you are in sales, having too much enthusiasm is better than not having enough. The over-enthusiastic salesman might lose an occaisional customer who doesn't like aggressive sales techniques, but the under-enthusiastic salesman loses 100 times as many customers by his lack of enthusiasm.

I wish I had said that. 👁 Smile :)

Can I respectfully disagree?

I would never tell my sales staff to be overly enthusiastic any more than I would tell them to tone it down.

The operative word here is "overly." That's why it's not logical to suggest that either is good and that one is better than the other.

It may sound good on the surface, but if any sales person were overly enthusiastic with me, I'd leave in a heartbeat. Again, I stress "overly." The sentences say "overly." That changes the whole dynamic of the post.

I don't think it IS better to be overly enthusiastic than it is to be under-enthusiastic. I think that's what those sentences are trying to convince the reader into believing. I think I said that in my above post. But what it says is totally different from actually making it a good, logical sentence.

A "hard sell' turns a consumer off just as fast as the sales person who doesn't care.

AWordLover, you added phone sales. At first I was going to agree with you, but I still go back to the word, "overly." Have you ever bought anything from an overly enthusiastic stranger who made a sales pitch to you over the phone? I haven't. If he were being overly nice, his fake persona glares through the lines, and I'm gone.

jennball, I believe, was saying she interpreted it as meaning that it's better to be overly enthusiastic a salesperson, mentally - that it, having a positive outlook. I can agree with that, but I have to search in those words to find that particular interpretation. But yes, if that's the intent, I can agree with all of you.

That's why I'd like more context. Is it the personal outlook of the salesperson, or is the the one-on-one contact he has with his consumer? The problem, though, is if he has that enthusiastic mindset - that OVERLY enthusiastic mindset, I think it's going to come out in very irritating behavior.


AngelEyes

Unfortunately there is no more sentence before and after it. It is a quote by Zig Ziglar. My question is why "for" the first sentence, the second sentence happens?

Hi, hossein,

'For' is simply expressing the first part of a ratio - ie 'for every one of these, you get a hundred of these'. The sales lost through lack of enthusiasm outnumber those lost through excess of enthusiasm by a hundred to one.

I agree absolutely with AWordLover and jennball as to the meaning of the sentence. The implicit context is a salesman saying 'I'm worried about coming over as too enthusiastic, I'm afraid it might deter customers'.

The sentence is saying: 'Never be afraid of showing enthusiasm. Yes, you might possibly lose a customer that way if you overdo it, but you'll lose a lot more if you don't show enough!' He is saying that 'over enthusiasm' is at least 'a mistake in the right direction'.

Louisa