The Fear of Honesty

Every now and then I get that tap on the shoulder, someone wants to chat with me in a dark corner and ask if I am about to offend people with what I say, think, believe and do.

You see, it is incomprehensible to some that a person will speak honestly and firmly about a sensitive subject that all traditional marketing and PR training has told you to avoid. In every organization there exists a list of items that are not for discussion, not for disclosure, that should never be admitted or commented on. Customer facing staffers are trained to avoid discussion of those items, to manage the conversation, to steer it in a way and whenever something potentially sensitive comes up to just nod and “thank you for your feedback, I will escalate it to the person in charge which just so happens to live in the castle with the Lochness monster.”

This is the norm of the services industry, professional as well as vocational. Your cell phone company will give you the same runaround that your office cleaning crew supervisor will.

Somewhere along the way people just chose to make “courteous” a synonym for patronizing and deceitful. For the dictionary experts out there – it’s not.

So why do folks in this business find it so important to base their approach on the exact same path of least resistance? Because all their gurus are doing it, and all their suppliers are doing it too.

“Oh, you just started your business and don’t have any customers and you’re at this conference instead of back at home working? Oh, right, because you wanted to get some fresh air and exchange ideas instead of trying to build business.

Well, that is fantastic. That’s a GREAT idea. You know what else is a great idea? This $20,000 management tool. Listen, as you grow you need a solid management foundation and this will save you money!”

Substitute any product, service, solution up there, it’s always the same. Four step process to closing business with IT professionals:

1. Listen to the war story at full attention.
2. Congratulate them on their opinion, even reinforce.
3. Ask about their problems.
4. Explain how your product will solve all their problems, close.

The faster you can get them into the debt up to their eyeballs you can’t really be held accountable for your solution sucking and not living up to the promise because they owe you money.

This, believe it or not is the standard operating procedure that is actually very well received and respected!

So suffice to say I get a little miffed when someone wants to discuss my approach of not lying straight into peoples faces and instead telling them what they don’t want to hear.

It’s not my fault that you’re an SPF, it’s your problem that you aren’t building a business.

I have absolutely no problem saying that. I base it on working with thousands of IT solution providers and hearing every sob story and every wild IT solution dream scheme ever imagined. I work with some damn successful people too, and I try to offer some of that wisdom on this blog. It may not be a pleasant reading material for 99 out of 100 people, but that 1 guy may still have a shot.

I’m all about that 1%. Let’s be honest, business is tough. Management is tough. Marketing is tough, even when you have a ton of money. Business is not easy. You have to surround yourself with the people that will keep you on your toes and keep on adjusting you as you go along.

And now we come to the actual jist of this blog post: when you can talk openly you will from time to time get smacked back in your mouth and people will have no fear to reach out and talk to you. You get to learn, you get to grow, you get to see things coming from a mile away instead of waking up from your dream one day in the middle of the sea of reality. Is being brutally honest bad for business because it will discourage people from working with the crazy man or woman? No. Because you may turn off some, but you will open up discussions with thousands more and actually stand out in a sea of drones that do the exact same thing you do. Call it leadership, call it insanity, but give it a shot. If you keep on going to networking events and never make a buck from anything or anyone you meet there it’s a good indication that the best practices drivel you read isn’t paying off for you.

Maybe I’m all wrong on all of this, but least you’ll be able to sleep at night.