What Does “Honesty” Mean in Sales?

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What does “honesty” means in sales?

We don’t need to go over the book definition of honesty, do we?

Well, we aren’t, but feel free to look it up for yourself if you’re truly curious! 

For this article, honesty is going to have a slightly different definition than what you’ll find in the dictionary. Well, it will be similar, but it will be more like an extension of the official definition. 

In sales, “honesty” means, in addition to the true definition, the ability and willingness to acknowledge and admit the limits of one’s knowledge, skill, and product capability.

Limits of Your Knowledge

This may be the hardest pill to swallow for most people, especially salespeople. In sales, we are taught to “be the expert”, right? Now, there is validity to “being the expert”, but I think of it from a different perspective. 

Sometimes, being the expert doesn’t mean being all-knowing of a subject and just knowing all the answers. Rather, as long as you can dependably find the correct answers for your customer, that’s all that really matters. 

At the end of the day, your customer doesn’t care if it’s YOU who knows all the answers off the top of your head! They just care about getting their questions answered, and that’s all you have to do. If you want to be the expert, then start surrounding yourself with experts!

Now, acknowledging the limits of your own knowledge is just the first part of this. You also have to verbalize it to the customer. 

You see, the customer doesn’t necessarily care if you admit you don’t know something. 

This is where all the salespeople normally start attacking me and saying that product knowledge is all they need to sell, and they know everything there is to know about their product and blah, blah, blah. 

Here’s my counter argument. 

I have actually won orders based simply on the fact that I admitted I didn’t know the answer to a technical question they asked about the product. 

Why?

Because I was able to get technical support on the phone right away and get the customer a satisfactory answer. That was all that mattered to them!

Also, they told me that most salespeople would have just tried to make something up to not look dumb, but I had no problem admitting I didn’t know. They respected that!

Don’t give an answer if you’re not absolutely sure of it. Or, if you’re not sure, be sure to verbalize that to the customer.

Limits of Your Skill

Being honest in sales doesn’t just mean being honest with the customer. Sometimes, it’s about being honest with yourself! 

Sales can be challenging at the best of times, and downright infuriating at the worst of times. It’s not until the bad days come that we try to take a look at things we can improve or a pitch we can tweak. 

The fact is, you should never stop growing and learning as a salesperson, and that means seeking guidance from people who are offering it.

Think of it this way! 

Regardless of how awesome a sales tip is, and how well it actually works, it will eventually stop working once it catches on and becomes just another standard sales tactic. 

Once a tactic starts working, and other salespeople start adopting it, the charm fades and customers can see right through it. That right there should be reason enough to constantly seek guidance and new techniques when it comes to approaching customers. 

The fact is, nobody is perfect, and nobody’s sales process is bullet proof. But the people who are the most successful were the ones who were honest with themselves and sought the help they needed to improve, and grow as a professional. 

Limits of Your Product 

Understanding, acknowledging, and verbalizing the limits of your product is one of the most critical pieces of being honest, in regard to the customer’s experience. 

In short, you never want to sell a product under false pretences simply in pursuit of the order. Or, for any reason! 

Now, I’m not necessarily suggesting any type of malicious intent here. 

You can still sell a product under false pretences due to pure ignorance. Either way, it’s really not a good look to have as a salesperson!

However, this is where the importance of product knowledge comes into play! You see, in order to understand and acknowledge the limits of your product, you have to know they exist. You can’t possibly know they exist if you don’t have strong product knowledge. 

Or, what happens quite often is a customer will want a product of yours that has a very wide range of potential applications! It’s a CRM package that a lot of your customers love and it has all sorts of great features and customizability! 

But, you know your CRM really isn’t too strong with running reports. It’s a common complaint from customers, and you’ve seen yourself that the reports are just garbage. 

If you want to be honest with the customer. If they were to ask you a question about running reports, you should say something like, “our CRM does have the ability to run reports, but I have to be honest, if your organization relies on running reports for marketing or anything, it’s not going to be the smoothest solution for you.” 

The customer will absolutely appreciate that honesty and willingness to warn them of a potential issue. In fact, you may find that they handle their marketing differently, and running reports isn’t that important to them. They just asked because they were simply curious.

Or, you may find that they absolutely need reports and that will be a deal breaker. 

Well, you can always try to suggest some sort of plug-in you know of, but the point is, you need to be honest with the customer about the limitations of your product. 

Your customer will remember you for that, and you will be seen as a trustworthy salesperson with whom they like to conduct business. 

CONCLUSION

In sales, being “honest” means acknowledging and admitting the limitations of your knowledge, skill, and product capabilities. It also means being honest about EVERYTHING else, but those three things specifically are the most important for sales. 

Sales is mostly about how well you treat other people. If you treat customers the way you would want to be treated by another salesperson, then you’re going to develop a lot of really great business relationships! 

This is just the first of several articles that will focus on specific behavioral aspects of sales that will help you sell with empathy, and develop a strong bond with your customers. 

Check back soon for more articles!