Great Sales Sin – Brutal “Honesty”

A few weeks ago, my wife bought home a box of those meals from one of those weight loss systems. After sampling a few of them, I have to be honest, they are quite good. Small and delicious they only took 1.5 min in the microwave, and with the nutritional balance built in, these things were awesome.

However, I started to notice that our household was becoming quite flatulent. I’m not talking the polite, slightly-humorous “poot” either, but more of the room-clearing, paint-melting, neighbors calling the police out of fear of a decomposing corpse next door, kind of experience.

(Stick with me, there is a point in all this)

A few years ago, I lost the Dell Corporation. Specifically, my team and I were eliminated from consideration in the final round for one of their enterprise projects. The turning point came when they asked if our system supported XML Schema. My new Sales Engineer responded that we did not and that our DTD model was far superior. As I read the faces of the evaluation team, I knew it was time to start checking the schedules to see if their was an earlier flight home.

On the ride back to the airport, I asked my SE to explain, in human terms, the difference between schema and DTDs. I then asked if could we enhance the way they were using them with a modification to our existing solution. After some thought, he responded “oh sure”.

My response was “Why didnt you say that in the meeting”?

“Because I didn’t want to lie” was his reply.

I explained that customizing a product or adding professional services to build a custom applet is not “telling a lie”. In fact, its a big freaking world away.

Recently, I have run into an internal situation where when I ask for product information, such as brief description that you would use on an invoice, from non-sales areas, I routinely receive a listing that includes things that the systems doesn’t do.

For example “The Single Sign On Interface will Allow Clients to Launch Application from Third Party Web Site. This module Does Not Manage the Timing Out of the Third Party Application”.

When I asked why we were mentioning functionality that our product didn’t possess, in a space where only the scantest of information would fit, the reply was “We didn’t want to lie”.

So back to my gas.

You have seen the TV commercials for the aforementioned weight-loss system. Based on my experience, I believe the majority of what the celebrity endorsers are saying. The meals taste good, you will lose weight, and it really is convenient.

Just because they do not mention the “side effects” of eating meals loaded with fiber, does that make their message less than honest? I think not. I mean sure, if you cant figure out how those “lost pounds” are supposed to leave your body, let me clue you in, its not through evaporation.

We gave up eating our meals after the dog ran away. If you see her, let her know that we have gone back to fried foods and ice cream and that its safe to return.

Thank you.