Why lie?

We've all seen this...a sales rep somewhere has lied to somebody to close a sale. It's been going on since the beginning of sales, and unfortunately there's some bad apples that will continue to do so.

I'm here to shed some light on this. A TRUE salesperson will not lie to close a sale. If anything, they will be 2000% truthful, even if it means not closing a sale. There's one huge underlying reason for this: it's called a "chargeback."

For the uninformed, let me explain: in most commissioned sales, when a salesperson sells a particular product or service, the company they work for makes money, and in turn they pay the salesperson a commission on that product or service. If the customer returns that product or cancels that service, the company then loses money, and in turn, that commission that was initially paid to the salesperson is taken back. 

At it's purest, since a customer that's been lied to is usually an irate customer due to the lie, in most cases that customer will return the product or cancel the service, resulting in lost commissions for the lying salesperson. That's just the beginning: there's time wasted and lost from spending time with the salesperson to make the initial purchase (and probably previous visits ad discussions prior to the purchase), dealing with the salesperson to correct/explain the lie, dealing with management (local management, district management, corporate management) to correct/explain the lie, dealing with customer service to understand/correct/explain the lie (or make it worse), etc.

So, as you see, there's absolutely no incentive for the TRUE salesperson to lie to make a sale. If nothing else, it's simply the right thing to do.