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January 27, 2011 at 07:00 PM
Most salespeople have a complicated relationship with the truth. It’s not hard to understand why, but most of us shy away from truth-telling. Too bad for us. It’s not only misguided–it actually doesn’t work. And don’t worry, we’ll get to the sex part later.
Take James–a smart, personable man in his 40s. He approached me after a talk I gave and said, “I like all your stuff about how truth-telling increases trust and how that helps sales. But I just can’t do that. I changed industries just over a year ago, and I’m competing against guys who have several decades in the business. If that gets out there, I’m dead meat. I just can’t afford to be that truthful.”
I’m sympathetic to James. First of all, he’s far from wrong; many buyers place a premium on experience, and he’ll lose at least some of those customers. Second, it’s very real. Salespeople operate in the ultimate meritocracy–you can run, but you can’t hide from performance.
And, yet, James is a liar.
Don’t get me wrong: He feels bad about it. He’s not proud of it. He wishes there was another way, and he’ll wiggle quite a bit to avoid having to tell an overt lie.
But, see, that wiggling is the lie itself. You’re kidding yourself if you think letting others mislead themselves is materially different from lying.
Lying destroys customer centricity
Think about why James would lie. Think about why you lie. Almost always it’s to get something you don’t have or keep something you have. Both of which, let’s face it, are entirely about you. It’s usually fear that leads us to lie–fear that we won’t get what we want if we don’t step in and give the scales a little help.
Companies and their salespeople love to say they are “customer centric.” But you cannot claim to be customer centric and at the same time tell lies to enhance your own interests. And that’s not a question of logic; it’s a question of human behavior–people profoundly distrust those who mislead them.
Why truth is more practical than lying
There’s one version of the truth and an infinite number of nontrue versions of the same facts. Life is a lot simpler if you only have to remember one version of truth. No more keeping track of various stories, managing selective access to information, and keeping track of white lie cover stories. It all gets very simple when you make friends with the truth.
