When was the last time that you were lied to? I can only hope it wasn’t the last time you talked to a sales rep.
I was with a friend today and he was shopping for a new computer. I have had some great service and have found a store that I like so I recommended we go there. He told me that he had never done any business at the store I liked and he was going to a store that he has seen a lot of ads for on TV.
As we walked into the store I noticed that the sales people were lined up like used car sales man at a buy here pay here lot. I felt as if I was walking into the preverbal lion’s den. I am going to guess that these people took turns because as the front door slid closed behind us this person (notice I didn’t say sales rep or sales person) slithered out from behind everyone else and introduced himself as “OUR SALESMAN”. So badly I wanted to ask what lottery I had lost to get him but held my tongue.
Our salesman told us his name was JOHNNY and without asking or caring what our names were asked what we wanted to buy. My friend told him a computer. Here is where JOHNNY showed a small sign of possibly being better than I thought he was going to be, he asked if we had any special type or manufacturer in mind. My friend told him he wanted a desktop and started to tell JOHNNY what he wanted in it. It was here that I realized all my suspicions about JOHNNY were going to be spot on. Before he could tell JOHNNY the first item on his list of “Must Have’s” JOHNNY was off and running. He started walking and talking at the same time. Neither my friend nor I heard anything JOHNNY was saying and we weren’t even sure if we were supposed to be following him.
When we figured out that we were supposed to be behind good old JOHNNY we started walking and caught up to him in the computer section of the store. JOHNNY started showing my friend a desktop computer. Now remember, my friend never was given the chance to tell JOHNNY what he wanted so JOHNNY was shooting in the dark.
I was getting a little tired of this guy so I told him, “If you stop talking and listen for a minute I promise he will tell you what he wants in his computer and make your job easier”. JOHNNY didn’t like me at this point but said in a disgusted voice, “OK what do you want” The first thing my friend said was he needed 2 hard drives and each needed to be 1TB or greater. This is where JOHNNY started his lies, he stopped my friend and said, “No one makes a desktop with that mush hard drive space”.
I was floored and my friend was now getting madder than I was. He knew we had just been lied to and it didn’t take a genius to know it was most likely because JOHNNY didn’t have any desktops with 2 X 1TB hard drives.
JOHNNY went on to tell us that 3 other items we were looking for were not going to be available anywhere because NO ONE MADE THEM LIKE THAT!
Enough with the story, I think you get the picture, so let’s move on to the lessons learned.
The first lesson should be DON’T LIE TO A CUSTOMER. If your customer is like my friend and I we will know you are not telling the truth as soon as the lie leaves your lips. You are much better of telling the truth and working with the customer to find what they need rather than what you have.
The second lesson is SHUT UP AND LISTEN. If JOHNNY had listened from the start he could have showed us the closest computer he had and tried to sell it to us even if it wasn’t exactly what my friend was looking for. Remember why we were there to start with, my friend saw the ads and he WANTED to go there to buy a computer.
And the third lesson should be, DON’T LIE TO A CUSTOMER, oh that was number 1 wasn’t it, well it is worth repeating.
The fact is there are many people out there already that don’t trust sales reps. If as a professional sales rep we keep doing the things that have given us this reputation we will never regain the public’s trust.
As reps we eat what we kill (sales talk for we earn only by selling something) and it is sometimes hard not to bend the truth and tell that little white lie to make a sale. However I can assure you, for every dollar you make by telling the little white lie (or the big dark lie) you will lose ten times more by telling lies.
Lorin
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