Pants on Fire

I’ve seen and heard my share of creative approaches to selling, however, one thing I would never recommend is to be deceptive or to outright lie to a prospective customer. That is definitely a way to end up without a sale.

One tactic of deceptive selling involves lying to get past a gatekeeper. For example, there are many salespeople who will fib and say that the person they are calling is “expecting their call” when they know that is definitely not the case. It’s easy to picture the look and reaction of a person who is being lied to when they receive an unexpected sales call. In almost every case, that message is going to voicemail and will not be returned.

I recently received a bold phone call from a salesperson who claimed he was calling me back. The caller stated that we had talked previously and that I had expressed interest in buying one of his company’s products. The truth was, I had never bought anything from this business, nor had I ever spoken to anyone there. In fairness, I thought maybe it was a mistake and a wrong number. But the salesperson phoned again the next week and repeated the same line about reviewing our conversation—this time including several details of our supposed conversation and calling me by name several times. I figured out that, in this case, I had bought a similar product from a competitor recently and they had obviously gotten my name for solicitation.

It shows the lengths that some will go to make a connection leading to a sale. It might work in some cases, but, in the end, taking a more direct, honest approach will close more sales.

Rob Wardlaw is the associate publisher of Gulfshore Business magazine. Contact him at robw@gulfshorebusiness.com.