“Do you have any idea why we are having this meeting?” I asked one of my co-workers…

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe we are all getting canned today.”

“That didn’t help,” I thought to myself, and no one else in the office seemed to know.

Frank, our boss and the regional sales manager, was a no-nonsense kind of guy. He hated meetings as much as the salespeople did, and that’s why our antennas went up when the four of us received his email last night. It came with no explanation, only to report to the conference room the next day at 4 pm. It was a Friday, and who wants to be in a meeting on a Friday afternoon of a beautiful spring day. Besides, we had all made our quotas for the past quarter and we were having a pretty good year.

“Why didn’t he invite the slouches who were short of their quotas?, “I wondered.

The afternoon came pretty quickly. One thing we were sure of going into the meeting: it wouldn’t last long. Frank was straightforward and didn’t mince words. As I would often say to the other salespeople in the office: “Frank has two styles – blunt and frank.”

But despite his style, he was very entertaining. Rarely did you leave one of his meetings without something to laugh about, and keep laughing about.

Frank sits down at one end of the conference room. It was pretty warm in the room so one of the salespeople asks if he could open the window. Frank obliges, and I lean over and whisper to another salesperson, “It’s all part of the plan. He wants to see us sweat in more ways than one. “

Frank clears his throat, adjusts his chair, and looks at the four of us, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while,” he says, “but I was waiting for the right time.” “Starting Monday,” he says very seriously. “We are going to try a whole new sales approach. It’s revolutionary, different, and never tried before in this industry, or in any other industry that I am aware of,” he goes on to say.

We look at each other. “What the heck is he talking about?” we all wonder.

“In fact,” he says.  “I’m not even sure it will work .”

Now, we are really confused. “What is he talking about and why is he telling us this.”

“Do you want to know what this revolutionary new sales approach is,” Frank says, now half-smiling. “ Are you sure?….. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Frank. We’re sure,” we all shouted.

’”Well,” he screams back.  “Starting Monday we are all going to tell our customers the fuc…. truth.”

We all broke out in loud laughter. This was vintage Frank.  Humor was Frank’s way of keeping us loose, yet motivated. And it worked.

His style was not to berate or talk-down to you, unlike a former manager who would often proudly but sickly proclaim: “ I don’t get heart attacks; I give them.” That wasn’t Frank’s approach at all, but he was very effective. He would guilt you into doing well for him.

That’s why we immediately knew the hidden meaning behind Frank’s comment about trying something new today by telling the truth. Frank often said that formal sales training was very important – listening vs selling, understanding the customer’s business problem; identifying the real decision-makers in the company, etc., etc.

“But, at the end of the day,” he would say, “the customer has to trust you.” And he would go on to say, “and customers can smell bullshit from a mile off, so don’t insult their intelligence.”

Which brings us to the moral of this story. Salespeople are accused of lying all the time, as per the age-old joke: “How can you tell when a salesperson is lying?” The answer: “because their lips are moving.”

And, I have my own version of this riddle, and it’s real straightforward. “So why do salespeople lie?” The answer: “because customers taught us how to.”

Now, please, you important customers, don’t take this the wrong way. The fact of the matter is that we all tell little white lies, and we all lie a little bit. Salespeople don’t have a patent on it. It’s human. We do it to each other every day without even thinking about it.

So, let’s talk about some of those white lies, and we will get back to what customers do to salespeople.

“How was your day, dear?”, she asks her husband, inquisitively.

“It was good, honey,” he says, trying to sound convincing, while he is wondering how he will ever get along with his boss, and whether or not he will be part of the next downsizing.

“Besides,” he thinks to himself. “If I tell her the way it really is, she will be upset, ask me 10 more questions, and I will miss the beginning of the football game on TV.”

“No, I never did anything like that at your age,” a mother says to her teenage daughter, as she recalls making similar mistakes in her youth.

“How’s it going,” we so often say as we greet one another.

“Fine,” we almost always respond, as he recalled a sarcastic story he once heard: “Yeah, if I told you the way it was really going, you wouldn’t listen anyway.”

I think you get where this is going. And, I grant you that some lies are much bigger and much worse than others. We are concentrating on the little ones right here.

We lie for a lot of reasons: because we want to protect the other person; because we are protecting the interests of our company; because the child is too young to understand; because we don’t want to hurt the other person; because we think the lie is so small it doesn’t matter; or maybe we think the real truth in the particular situation doesn’t need to be known. We rationalize it in many ways, and we do it every day.

“Yes. I am the decision-maker,” the customer says confidently to the salesperson.

“And, then he woke up,” thinks the salesperson, as so eloquently put by a co-worker from his first sales job.

“We plan to make a purchasing decision within 60 days,” the customer says.

“Sure, the salesperson is thinking, “but I will make sure I don’t cash my commission check yet”.

“We will make this decision based solely on what product delivers the best value for the best price,” another customer claims.

“Sure,” thinks the salesperson, as he remembers what his first sales manager said to him: “Buying is an emotional decision based on a few facts. So you better get the emotion on your side early in the sales cycle. It’s rarely about the best product for the best price.”

“Once I give my recommendation to my boss, he will just rubber-stamp my decision,” says another customer.

“Yes,” the salesperson is thinking.  “As long as you make the same decision your boss has already decided on.”

“Yes, we have a budget already approved for this project. And, as soon as we find the best solution, we will move on it,” states another confident customer.

“Convenient amnesia?” wonders the salesperson. This company always takes forever to make a decision.”

“We have to make a decision by July 1st,” the customer tells the salesperson “Or, we will lose our budget and won’t be able to complete our project on time.”

Initially, the salesperson is excited, because this project has a timeline and a drop- dead date for the completion of the evaluation.

“But wait a minute,” the salesperson thinks. “This company has never met their deadlines, like so many other companies I deal with.”

July 1st comes and goes; the customer doesn’t buy and says, “oh, we delayed our project until next year. We will reevaluate it then.”

Customers, we know we are no angels. We rationalize, omit, exaggerate, and tell you our version of the truth. It’s all in a days work, and we are just trying to do our jobs, as you are.

So, let’s share more stories, enjoy them, and not take ourselves too seriously. CoffeeandClosing will tell the story of Sales as it has never been told before.