Biggest liars.... The Salesperson or the customer?

But what about all the ones in the past...the VAST majority that worked on commission? “More and more” could still be like 5% ...it’s clear you think salesmen (I take it car?) are all wholesome, honest folks. How long have you been in the biz?

 

TL;DR in my experiences: Customers.

My experience is in small but high dollar business building small-scale chemical plants. I see it from both sides. We do our own sales and engineering and fabrication, and we also purchase from a lot of vendors that provide us components.

First of all, let me say that technical, industrial salespeople are absolutely my favorite people to work with. You can't pull a fast one with the specific, expensive stuff that's being sold. You have to know your stuff, you have to be competitive on price and delivery, and you've got to answer weird questions and solve a lot of problems with these complicated orders, and these people are just professionals. I can detect the bullshit sales pitch, and it doesn't exist here, because no one spends a couple thousand dollars on a single temperature transmitter (multiply that by a couple dozen usually for a plant) because you smiled and talked nice and brought sandwiches. I learn so much from those guys, and I despise when my engineers waste their time getting too many requotes because they were sloppy in their specifications.

Now, our customers are dreadful. Almost all of them. The number one complaint is how much they'll string you out on paying. "Oh, we want to get started right away. In fact, can you shave two weeks off the delivery time?" We work something out, and nothing. They do nothing on it for months. Maybe years. But as soon as the contract is eventually signed, they think that it's go time and we'd better start busting our ass like nothing's changed. We'll do our due diligence to get a progress/milestone payment, and they'll waffle on getting the money to us to move forward. Or there's something they don't like. Or they can't figure out a letter of credit. Or God knows what. We'll quote a delivery time based on the receipt of first payment, and set a date and then they'll say they only write checks on a certain day of the week and delay that a week. (This happened recently.) But if we say we're not starting, they don't like that.

Another big complaint is changes during the project. We've had some radical redesigns we've had to do because they change their mind or they give us new design data after we've done a ton of stuff. You'd think we'd play hardball and demand a change order and cease work until things are cleared and new funds are added, but it's never that simple. And when you have a dozen people in the office and twice as many in the shop, you can spend a lot of money while those people are waiting around to make changes.

Also, these people never have a damn clue what they're buying which makes it incredibly hard to get info from them for design purposes, and it makes productive, necessary discussions during the project very difficult. It's all about these artificial dates to these no-nothing project manager types. Literally a few months ago we were a little behind on some engineering work, and the PM over the whole consortium told us it was more important to submit an incorrect design by a certain date than a correct design a few days later. Disgusting. I despise the lack of knowledge customers bring about what they're buying.

Contracts mean very little to these people; they think they own you because they've given you money. That's not true. It's an agreement between equals. But it's more complicated than that, of course. We once stood our ground in an absolute cluster**** of a job to a bigger company that thought they had control over us (contracts were meaningless at this point.) We learned later that no one had ever told them no and stood up to them before, and they didn't know how to handle it.

My company is a mess in a lot of ways, but we try to act in good faith. We give customers way more information and leeway than we should. Customers assume you have this unending supply of money lying around, so that you can absorb not getting paid for a few more weeks or months and that you've got other jobs to keep you going. Obviously, right? Well, when they all do this at once, then your well of revenue actually dries up, and you end up in a situation like I'm in now where we're deep in debt, nobody's projects are finished, and we're just trying to get some new business to scrape by. Business we're repeatedly told is coming next week, and yet it doesn't. It's always a week away.

Tired of not getting paid. Tired of being told we're going to get a job or get paid. Tired of being strung along. We're not perfect, but it's hard to get better when you're just trying to survive another week.

 

I think it's disrespectful what I've seen them do to others as well as myself.

 

i think different countries habe different versions of salespersons. developing countries have lots of dishonest salespersons, though generally the population is filled with them. understandable considering their harsher life struggles trying to put food on the table.

 

No?

 

I have quit more than one sales job bc I wasn’t comfortable with the amount of lying I was told to do after gaining the trust of a customer. Retail sales rep was the worst job I ever had. Kept me up at night all the lying I had to do to keep my numbers up

 

Yep.

 

mattress mac is that you? Do you have any credit apps for 29.99% available?

Overselling, lazy selling are just as disingenuous as lying. Buyers are liars and part of that is called "negotiation" I heard it works!

Is the consumer supposed to lay down against the ever ending gimmicks? Whether its my cable providers pushing channels and expiring packages or its buy 3 get one free at bath and body works.. putting it on the sales rep to hit this quota creates a aura of packages and bundles that sales reps are forced to lie over. In ops wotld they are the unwitting arm of a bigger sales philosophy. A sales philosophy rooted in oversell and higher volume. At DETRIMENT to the other party. Do I really need 4? No but if i can get you to take 3 more than what you need I win as a sales rep! Unit per transaction my main!

The real question is how do you sleep at night op?

 

@Tomstro

I was in sales for eight years. I was very good at it and was usually the sales leader wherever I was. I tried to be honest and I was also a very non-pressure salesperson. People would tell me no all the time and give me a reason, like 'I can't afford it'. But thee people I saw lie were the people who didn't want to say no. And I saw that more with my fellow salespeople who were high-pressure salespeople. The customers who lied just wanted to escape because they were trapped by logic. It's a straight up fight or flight defense mechanism. And people are terrible communicators and buckle under any sort of pressure. They can't form a salient reason to give you to say no, even though there always is one, but they can't think of it at the time. They just want to run away. So think of it as a backhanded complement.

I think your issue is that you're too good at what you do for people to say no, but you don't understand that. I remember times when I was so in the zone it was like I was magic; no one could tell me no. Good salespeople are almost like hypnotists in that they watch the very tiniest of body language and facial ticks and adjust accordingly. It was like a battle or a grand game. And you don't win them all.

Here's some life advice I had to learn after I studied body language books and it was like the scales were removed from my eyes and I had trouble coping. The way people act towards you is about them and not you....and it's NOT personal. They don't know you. Don't worry about other people. Worry about you and your loved ones. Take care of yourself, take care of your sphere of influence. That will center you and eventually you will be able to deal with people outside of your direct influence and these things like 'lying' won't matter.

 

"Sales" - way too broad of an industry. You could be talking about the people selling fairy dust for MLM's. Or an Account Manager for an IT or marketing company overselling what the team that will execute the services can deliver. Or a 3rd party recruiter selling someone on a company they really don't know anything about. A remodeler or home service salesman from a disaster chasing company that will disappear in 3 months. Financial services. Pharmaceuticals.

Ultimately (and generally speaking, since we have to speak generally since sales is vast) you're talking about a typically high turnover job too.