Articles
Honesty Works Best -
But It's Not About Morality

by Jacques Werth, Founder of High Probability Selling.  © 2005

Last week, I received three calls from people, all appreciative that I support the values of ‘our religion.’  One was a Born-Again Baptist, another was Mormon, and the third was Jewish.  My response to each of them was the same: I don't follow their religion.

It's true that being scrupulously honest, direct, and authentic in business dealings is an essential component of High Probability Selling.  It's also true that this has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with utlizing a selling process that produces dramatic, positive results.

When I set out to determine how the top 1% of salespeople actually sell, I didn't start out looking for a totally honest selling system.  My sole intention in studying Top Performers was to ascertain what sets them apart.  The most surprising thing that I learned is that most top salespeople are scrupulously honest - it's how they ‘do business.’  The statistics were too skewed to be coincidental.

Most people, regardless of their profession, don't understand the technology of honesty.  Most salespeople, however, do understand the technology of manipulation; it's how they learned to sell.  Convincing, persuading, and all other forms of manipulation - what most salespeople are taught - create resistance, a natural barrier to closing a sale.

Top salespeople, on the other hand, have mastered the technology of honesty.  It's what works best.  Honesty is not an abstract ideal - it's an imperative for successful selling and business transactions.  That's why we teach it in High Probability Selling.

The High Probability Selling (HPS) process is based on extensive research.  We observed 312 of the top salespeople, in 23 different industries, in order to develop the process.  We kept copious notes.  Two hundred sixty-one of them had intuitively, independently developed parts of a new, entirely non-manipulative sales paradigm.  (The other sixty-one, and almost all of the lower 99% of salespeople were, and still are, using manipulative sales techniques.)

We don't preach or teach morality.  I didn't start out looking for a totally honest selling system.  It just turned out that most of the very best salespeople have mastered the technology of honesty because that's what works best.  And, that's why we teach it.