Two people meet at a chamber after hours. "B" says, "Hi, I'm B from PQR, a large health insurance company." "A" says, "Hi, I'm A from XYZ and I help companies with ________." "B" says, "Cool, how many people in your company." "A" says, 4.

After this exchange, I ask both if I could ask them each a question. They both agreed. So, I asked A why he thought B asked him how many people in his company. A told me, quite confidently, that B was trying to determine whether he was large enough to handle PQR's work. Then I asked B why he had asked A how many people worked at XYZ. He promptly replied that he needed five qualified employees before he could sell insurance to a company's employees.

Sometimes we here one thing, but the speaker means something else. As in the case of the following homonyms.

Blue..........Blew      Hear.........Here      Too...To...Two      ade.........aid      banned...band      whole.......hole

And as in the exchange above.

If you or someone you know has a chronic problem with hearing something other than what's intended, send me some examples along with your (or their) phone number. We'll see if we can find out why you do it and see if we can stop it from happening.

Incidentally, if you haven't read Baseline Selling yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?