Lies. What is it about people that they think they need to lie? Why do so many companies feel that the best sales pitch involves lying?
A salesman comes to the door. The first words out of his mouth is “Hi. I’m not here to sell you anything. In fact, I’m here to give you a free alarm system.” In these cases, the conversation usually follows like this...
Me: Really? Ok. Give it to me.
Salesman: Oh, well, I don’t have it with me, and you have to buy monitoring.
Me: I thought you weren’t here to sell me anything.
It’s one of these things where “we tell you you’re getting something free to force you into the sale” routines.
I’ve also been getting a lot of phone calls at the studio that are obviously sales. I don’t answer them, but the message they leave on the answering machine is priceless. “Hi. I’m calling to talk with you about the loan you have with us, because we can give you a better rate.” Seeing as the business has no loans, I have on occasion picked up the phone to ask which loan they are referring to. What I find each time is that this message is prerecorded and no one is actually there.
As a person who reveres honesty above most other things, I get upset at the constant sales pitch that starts with a lie. In fact, I will never do business with anyone that starts by lying to me. Why do companies feel they need to take this approach to make a sale?
One of the things I do constantly is to review the content that we put out. I am constantly making changes to make things look and read better (part of my computer programmer roots that keeps working a program as it can always run a couple milliseconds faster). I want to make sure that what we have is not misleading. I especially want to make sure that it is all truthful.
On top of that, I pay attention to how I talk with people when discussing possible treatments, or what we can do to help someone. I make it a point to never say things like, “Oh, I can fix that.” Usually, I’ll say “I think I might be able to help.” One of the things I learned from John Barnes (who created Myofascial Release) is to never promise anything as you don’t know what the true outcome will be.