Jaronelle

The day Jaronelle was born, every telephone in the hospital rang at the same moment. There was nobody on the other end of any of them. The switchboard operator pulled the whole board out of the wall and they carried on ringing for another full minute anyway.

She grew up in a house where the front door was never locked and there was always one more person at the table than there were chairs. People told her things. Strangers in queues told her things. By nine she knew every neighbour's business, not because she ever asked, but because something about her made people want to explain themselves.

Her first job was on a shop floor and she was catastrophically bad at it for about three weeks, because she was trying to sell. Then one afternoon a man came in set on the most expensive thing in the store, and Jaronelle told him not to buy it. It wasn't what he needed. He left with something cheaper, and came back the next week with his brother. Then his brother's wife. Then half his street.

That was the day she worked out what her actual power was. She doesn't convince anybody of anything. She tells people the truth and lets the truth do the work, and it turns out that the truth, said warmly and at the right moment, is the most persuasive force on earth.

Now she is the first person most X3WEB clients speak to. She'll listen to a business owner for ten minutes and then describe their problem back to them more clearly than they could describe it themselves. Most of them go quiet for a second and say the same thing: how did you know that?

People tell her she could sell anything. She could. She simply refuses to sell anyone something they don't need, which is exactly why she never has to.