To Be Perfectly . . . . . STUPID!

So I'm chatting with a salesperson for twenty-two minutes. I'm the customer. He's the salesperson.

Then, he says this:

"To be perfectly honest with you, I think you should [insert salesperson's nine-word recommendation here]."

The two of us talked for 22 minutes, yet he was being perfectly honest for only 9 words? The other 2000 words (or so) that he spoke to me were not "perfectly honest?"

What a silly thing to say to a customer! He could have just as well preceded all his other words with, "To be perfectly DISHONEST with you..."

Sometimes stupid phrases seep into our personal language, and "to be perfectly honest with you" is one of those. Banish it from your verbal quiver! It's use simply calls into question the honesty of everything else you've muttered to your customer.

Honestly!

Please share your comments by clicking on "comments" below.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting company. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter.

Comments

[Sales Management 2.0]

Great post Skip, you hit on a pet peeve of mine... I wrote a post called 10 Things a Sales Person Should Never Say and Why about a year ago, and while "To be perfectly honest with you" did not make my list... A close derivative of it did. Trust me. I hate it when sales people tell me to trust them. I always feel like maybe there should be some reason why I shouldn't.

[nesh thompson]

I get what you are saying Skip. There are many mannerisms and sayings that are socially programmed into our own specialised dialects that we find difficult to get out of our system. This one is annoyingly frequent, and I'll admit that I have used it on occassion though I know, and perhaps the person I am talking to, that I haven't been dishonest preceding the usage of that particular phrase.

[Ricardo Bueno]

Skip,

I think it's one of those programmed phrases that comes out of frustration of the fact that you haven't closed the sale yet.