Clients Who Lie - Part 2

By Victor Antonio, Sales Influence 

In order to catch someone lying, let's first understand how a polygraph test works and then see how we can apply the concept of lie detection to our everyday exchanges with our clients.  In truth, a polygraph machine cannot really detect if someone is lying, it can only detect a change in the emotional state of the person being questioned.  

If you've recently watched a police show on television you may have seen interrogators hook a suspect onto a polygraph.  Most notable is the band around the chest to detect a change in breathing and the pads that are taped to the hands and arms to detect perspiration.  In general, the polygraph machine is testing for changes in: the amount of sweat or perspiration, breathing or respiration patterns and blood pressure.  

Polygraph tests are not 100% reliable because not everyone who sweats excessively during an interrogation (interview) is lying; they may just be uncontrollably nervous even if they're innocent to begin with.  Similarly, not everyone whose blood pressure rises is lying.

Before interrogators begin asking the real questions, they have to establish a reference point or baseline for when a person is lying or telling the truth.  For example, the polygraph expert will ask the suspect (i.e., the client) to pick a card from a deck.  The expert will then ask the suspect to continuously say "no" to guesses, even when the interrogator guesses the right card.  The goal here is to get a baseline of when the suspect is telling the truth (interrogator guessed the wrong card) and when they lied (interrogator guessed the right card).  

The underlying objective of this preliminary test, aside from getting a baseline, is to convince the suspect psychologically that the machine can detect lies. If the person is innocent, then he has nothing to worry about.  If he's guilty, then he should be worried.  

Worried equals Anxiety equals Increased sweating, faster breathing and increased blood pressure.  

This is important!  If the suspect truly believes the machine is infallible, he is more likely to tell the truth.  If he believes he can 'beat' the machine (i.e., no fear of being caught), then he won't have symptoms of anxiety.  So the key to success using a polygraph machine is based on whether or not the suspect believes (or doesn't believe) that the machine can detect lying.

If a client believes that his chances for getting caught in a lie during your interview phase are low, they will be more likely to conceal, mislead or falsify the truth.  

In this case the client used the trifecta of lying:

• Concealed they had other motives for requesting proposals
• Mislead us into believing a winner would be chosen
• Falsified that they would be selecting a winner

Yet, it is we the salespeople who are repeatedly of ridiculed and accused of taking advantage of our clients.  Ha!  As you can see, the knife cuts both ways.

Now, when interviewing a client during the 'investigative phase' of selling, I usually ask a lot of questions.  If I feel like I'm getting the run-around (see Part 1 for concealment and mis-leading), what I will then do is ask more precise questions.  In other words, I switch from being a kind and gentle questioner to a kind and more demanding questioner.  As salespeople you have to learn to ask the tough questions.  

Too often salespeople ask 'softball' questions because they don't want to seem too pushy or overbearing.  The reality is, you can be demanding of the client without being pushy.  Tough questions signal to the client that you're not their to play 20 questions. Like in the polygraph test, you have to let the client know you their to do business and you there to find out whether or not their serious about doing business with you.  Let the client know that you're time is too valuable to be wasting chasing phantom projects.

Here are some hard-hitting, don't-waste-my-time questions that will force the client to take you seriously:

• Is there a budget for this project?
• When is the target date for getting started?
• Who else will be making the decision?
• How many other competitors are bidding?
• How does the decision-making process work?

These types of questions transmit to the client that you are there to do business and, as a byproduct of your investigative questioning, instills a healthy bit of fear in them so you can avoid being used as a 'patsy'.  If they're lying in any way about the validity of the project, you should be able to gauge by how they answer the questions.  It would be nice if we could just walk into a meeting with a client armed with a polygraph machine and expect the client to be okay with the idea of asking these questions while we monitor their vitals in order to get a baseline, but that wouldn't do!

Note: Many salespeople don't think they have the right to ask these types of tough questions.  To them I say, "Good Luck!"  I've gotten kicked in the head so many times by clients who've used me as a patsy (see my example above).  I know now that I have every right to be as demanding in my questions because it's my time and I have to decide how best to invest it.