Live Your Best Life

Keeping it clean - Be honest

Most have good intentions; they do not set out to cheat or lie in order to gain an economic advantage. As long as they stay within the line of the legal limit, most feel they are being honest. It is okay to exaggerate or mislead because it wasn't actually a lie.  Just a simple white lie; an exaggerated truth.

Whatever happened to honesty in business?  A question asked by Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal in their book, Naked Conversations.

Indeed. What happened?

Countless examples exist, of companies who have hidden the truth behind their stories and promotions.  In his book, All Marketers are Liars, Seth Godin cites an incident involving Nestle and their baby formula being responsible for the deaths of many babies.  Marketing is now so powerful that caveat emptor is no longer a valid defense, he writes.

So how do we correct this erroneous behavior?

The clear cut and clean way about it is to just be honest.  If you're telling your customers a story that is done right and isn't hiding anything, you have nothing to worry about.  It takes far less effort to tell the truth the first time around than to decieve them because eventually the truth will come out. 

Especially in current times, with the rise of blogging. Bloggers keep companies of all sizes and each other honest and can do so with the push of a button, the publish or save button.

The blood, sweat and tears needed to regain the respect(and customers) you lost by being dishonest are the cost, is it worth it?

Consumers don't trust marketers of all kinds and the list of reasons for that distrust grows daily. How about you?  What is your reaction when a telemarketer comes calling? Great what is this guy/gal going to try to sell me now?  What lies will I hear this time.. ?

Network Marketers can also be party to the dishonesty.  I can remember the conversations I had with my upline about XELR8 (twas only 5 going on 6 months ago) and never did it come up that there are very real costs to starting your own network marketing business.  This wasn't a shock to me but my point is that the prospects deserve to know.  Sure they do.  So what have you got to loss by telling them the FULL story?

Kim Klaver recently posted on the hidden costs commonly left out when talking to prospects.

We all want to hear the real story and be presented with something that is going to help make our lives easier, so why should you do any less for your customers?

Doing so is a harder road to walk but so much more rewarding.

Come walk it with me?

Point Clarification - Kim Klaver

In her article, We Haven't Used Those People Up Yet..., Kim describes the a situation that all of us as network marketers have all experienced or will in due time.

Lulu, 5 years in the business but not yet very successful, talked to a Ms. Undecided last week about her product, which has helped her. Lulu told Ms. U her personal product story, and the Ms. U. said she'd like to see the product. They made a date for next week...

The next day, Ms U called Lulu and said, "Say I don't want to sell this, or have home parties, ok?" (She'd obviously told someone else about this.)

Lulu:  OK. No problem.

Lulu excitedly told her upline about the upcoming appointment, and asked for any tips. The sponsor told her to 1) bring all the scientific data for the product, so she could explain it all and 2)be sure to tell her about the business.

She came to me for advice about what she should tell her potential customer now.   

What would you tell her?

I responded to the article in the comments and came across sounding like I meant something other then what was meant to be said. After writing an email to her she advised me to post a comment to the article explaining what I actually meant, and not leave a wrong impression set.

I did so, and then came to find that she wrote this article: I Know Why They Don't Respect Us

In it she refers to statements that I made in my comments. Thank you. Kim. for helping me to clarify my point.