Prologue

I have a Google Alert set to ping me every time the phrase “Honest Selling” appears on the web. That way I can keep track of everything related to my effort to bring honesty back to the sales profession.

In May of ‘09 I received an alert that led me to http://www.honestysells.com — it took me to a page discussing a free teleseminar. I participated in that seminar and had a very bad experience with it and one of the authors, which I documented in this post (http://www.honestselling.com/blog/2009/6/8/salesdrip-report-do-not-believe-what-you-read.html) from June.

So when I purchased the book and began to read, I was admittedly not unbiased. But I told “Devil Gill” to take a nap and started the book with Angel Gill fully in charge — hoping to find someone else who “got it” when it came to what Honest Selling really is.

Dashed Hopes

Quote: “Only 10 percent of salespeople in any organization are top performers, defined as those who regularly close at least half of their qualified prospects.”

There Angel Gill sat. A freshly printed book advocating honesty when selling in his hands. The hope of having found advocates for honesty in sales fueling his heartbeat. The dream that he might have a tiny bit of help with his lifetime mission of eliminating the self-centered thinking that creates dishonesty in the profession he loves so much.

And in the third paragraph of the introduction chapter I learn that the authors measure success in the most self-centered way possible.

Seriously, I felt like I got kicked in the gut. When I read that line, my shoulders fell, the blood drained from my cheeks and I actually sighed out loud … so loud, in fact, my wife heard me from the other room and walked in to ask me what was wrong.

Enter Devil Gill.

Honest Selling has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with closing percentages. In fact, by using closing percentages as your measure of whether someone is successful, you create the very situation that produces manipulation and dishonesty.

Let me make this perfectly clear, because it is the foundation of all things honest in sales. For a salesperson to practice true Honest Selling, his or her agenda must align with the prospect’s agenda. They must share the same goal. They must be working toward the same conclusion. Otherwise, conflicts of agenda arise — like objections that must be overcome — and the temptation for dishonesty rages.

Let me ask you this. Out of all the prospects with whom you have ever met, how many of them do you think entered into the conversation thinking “I’ve got to help this salesperson increase his closing rate?”

How about zero?

Prospects don’t give a damn about your closing rate. And if you’re measuring your success based on your closing rate, then when you meet with a prospect you are immediately at odds, because your agendas don’t align.

Prospects care about making the smartest choices for themselves.

Period.

Until you enter a sales appointment with the true agenda of doing what’s best for the prospect — even if it means sending him or her to your most hated competitor — you will never be a true practitioner of Honest Selling.

That’s a massive STRIKE ONE for this book. After all, everything that follows is written to help you increase your closing rates — not to help you learn how to sell honestly.

STRIKE TWO came on the first page of chapter three, where the authors chose to redefine honest communication to fit their own agenda. (This is called rationalization — and it’s what dishonest salespeople do every day to justify their behavior.)

After quoting Webster’s definition of honesty, the authors chose to change it as follows: “We define honest communication as saying what needs to be said—including all pertinent facts.”

So first they advocate salespeople measure their success by self-centered closing percentages, then they open the door so salespeople can self-define honest communication — choosing for themselves what “needs” to be said and choosing for themselves what “all” the “pertinent” facts may be.

If you’re going to sell honestly, YOU DON’T GET TO DEFINE what honesty is.

STRIKE THREE then occurs later in the same chapter as the authors discuss “Why Salespeople Lie to Clients.”

Quote: “As you read this book, you may think of a situation in which you were honest and you lost the business or didn’t get the sale. Unfortunately, when things like that happen, we tend to get spooked. Instead, remember that nothing works 100 percent of the time.”

Salespeople don’t lie because honesty sometimes fails. They lie because they are trying to close a sale and they sense that close slipping away.

This is further proof that these authors simply do not get what Honest Selling is, and that their closing-percentage measurement system is fertilizer for failure and dishonesty.

Measure your success by whether you helped the prospect make the best choice for himself or herself and you WILL have a 100 percent success rate. (Note: You’ll also close more sales, but that’s not the “why” behind this attitude — it just happens to be a wonderful benefit of adopting the Honest Selling philosophy of suspension of self interest.)

STRIKE FOUR happened when I turned to Chapter 13 “Overcoming Objections and Questions.”

OBJECTIONS don’t occur in an Honest Selling sales appointment. Let me make that point another way — if you’re helping the prospect make the smartest choice for himself or herself, to what, exactly, will he or she have to object?

ANY sales book that includes a chapter on overcoming objections, by default, must contain tactics that produce the very objections the system is designed to overcome.

STRIKE FIVE is the most disheartening statement I read in the book. It comes at the end of page 147 and, sadly, is repeated for effect on page 149.

Quote: “Your job is to help your prospect discover that engaging with you is the right decision.”

… Give me a minute to let my blood stop boiling.

Honest Selling IS NOT about helping your prospect to decide to purchase what you’re selling. Honest Selling is about helping your prospect find the best thing to purchase based on his or her own needs, wants and goals.

This book does not foster honesty in sales. It perpetuates the myth that sales is about closing. It perpetuates the false assumption that prospects are liars. It perpetuates the misguided belief that prospects are too stupid to figure out what is best for them without being guided by you — the salesperson. It perpetuates the self-centered thinking that a salesperson’s job is to guide prospects to buying what he or she sells. It perpetuates manipulative tactics — even their wording examples for overcoming objections show their complete lack of understanding of what Honest Selling really is.

Bad: This book continues the self-centered thinking that is responsible for everything wrong in sales.

Worse: It does so under the guise of honesty.

If you believe in Honest Selling then do not waste your time with “Honesty Sells.”

Gill E. Wagner, Founder of Honest Selling