Liars Leading with Lies

Twice in as many weeks, I’ve had a salesperson reach out to me and begin the sales conversation with a lie.

In the first case, the salesperson suggested that they were already doing business with one of my companies and recognized we needed an account manager. I didn’t believe we had a contract with this company, and I asked the salesperson who signed our contract. He replied that someone in our Human Resources department or the CFO signed the contract. Unfortunately, the company he was referring to doesn’t have a Human Resources department or a Chief Financial Officer, proof that he was indeed lying. It was all downhill from there.

Fast forward one week and I get a call from a Google Certified Search consulting organization based out of London, England. They called to let me know they only represent one speaker per state in the US, and to share with me that the speaker in Ohio had just decided to move to Canada. This opened a space for me to work with them exclusively.

They also suggested the speaker was obtaining four to five engagements per month because of their work. When I asked them the name of the speaker, they refused to share the name. There was no name because there was no speaker. Were there a speaker, they would have leveraged her name to gain credibility. The search consultant hung up on me.

No Lies and No Liars

For most people and be to be sales, there is little willingness or desire to begin a relationship with the prospect by lying. There are very few who would be willing to trade the their integrity and the relationship for the opportunity to explore change. In fact, most B2B sales people would prefer to protect their integrity and try again rather than do anything that would damage the possibility of a future relationship.

Opportunities are too rare. Relationships are too valuable. Your long-term success in sales is dependent upon you being someone worth doing business with, and starting with a lie is an indication that you are self-oriented, smarmy, manipulative, deceitful, dishonest, and lack integrity. Not someone anyone wants as their partner in anything.

It’s better to lose by being truthful than to win by lying.

If you are salesperson and are being told to lie to your prospective clients as a way to create and win opportunities, you should immediately resign from that position and go to work for a company with better leaders. If you lie to your prospects because you think it makes selling easier, you should immediately find your way out of the profession.