Be cautious about making assumptions. Be even more careful of voicing them. As I was working on a newsletter at my house, a door-to-door  salesperson (a woman) stopped by to drop off a flyer for a home delivery milk service, and mentioned a special 20% discount that wasn’t on the flyer.

I told her we’d take a look at it. She said, “Are you going to remember this, since guys normally don’t remember when they tell their wives.” Big mistake. I informed her that I actually do much of the grocery shopping and cooking when I’m home.

No chance I’ll be getting milk from them.

Reminds me of taking an incoming call from a guy that sounded like he was drunk, wasn’t very intelligent, and had speech issues. Not a very positive impression in my mind, to say the least. I immediately discounted him as someone who probably wanted some free information and wasn’t going to be worth my time.

Wrong! As it turns out, the guy was the owner of a fairly good-sized company. I did a nice piece of business with them. Had I gone with my early assumption and disqualified him quickly–instead of asking plenty of questions like I always do–I would have missed out terribly.