The Ethos Weekly, Vol. 11
The Ego Trap: Why Sales Lies… and Leaders Let Them
We talk a big game in sales about trust. About transparency. About alignment.
But let’s not sugar coat it… sales lies. Numbers get padded. Forecasts get all the merrier. Demos get booked with people who’ll never buy.
Why?
Not all salespeople are bad, and the lie isn’t always malicious. It’s incentivized.
Follow the Money
You want to understand sales behavior?
Follow the comp plan.
When the difference between “on target” and “PIP” is one desperate deal away, it’s not hard to see why truth gets bent. When the difference between a king’s ransom and clipping coupons is making an unrealistic quota; can we blame the poor souls who narrowly missed last quarter’s bonus?
It’s not because all your reps are unethical.
It’s because the system makes short-term success easier to chase than long-term sustainability.
And in many orgs, that’s exactly what gets rewarded.
Lying is a Symptom. Not the Disease.
The real concern?
We’ve built revenue engines that are allergic to honesty. Perhaps not intentionally, but structurally they exist.
– We ask for clean pipeline data but celebrate bloated coverage.
“Everyone needs to have 5x their quota in pipeline.” This ignores real close ratio data you have in your database.
– We say “quality over quantity,” then promote the rep with the most activity.
“What a hard worker Brad has been! 75 tasks per day tells us he’s doing all the right things.” Newsflash. Brad’s a master delegator… and not the good kind. He’s lazy, and 50 of those tasks are fake news. Never happened. Just more bad data being pumped into your database each day, thanks to your newest promotion.
– We preach trust externally, but neglect to nurture it internally. Some may call it hypocrisy, but I say it’s a simple misalignment.
As I mentioned, it isn’t always intentional – it’s structural. The best leaders know it, and more importantly, they do something about it.
What the Best Leaders Understand
Great sales leadership is about creating a system where truth and performance are not in conflict. Heck, they don’t even have friction with one another.
Because when reps feel like telling the truth will cost them commission, status, or even their job.. guess what they stop doing?
Spoiler Alert: Telling the truth.
And when that happens, everything downstream gets distorted, if not disrupted.
– Forecasts are filled with fluff while pipelines leak via a massive monthly overhaul.
– Product feedback slows or uses language which reflects a lack of perceived impact.
– Customer expectations simply never meet up with the dream they were sold.
– Hiring decisions are based on the wrong metrics (like who created the most fake tasks).
It’s all built on a version of reality that isn’t… real. This is about models more than morals.
If you’re a sales leader, ask yourself:
1. What exactly are we incentivizing?
2. What behaviors get quietly punished?
3. What stories get rewarded?
A winning culture isn’t built by values listed on a wall, nor by banging the beloved sales floor gong when a new deal is won. It boils down to the behavior we’re incentivizing. And too often, that’s not truth nor solutions; it’s theatrics. It’s Activity over Progress for the sake of optics so we can buy some time and… not tell the truth more regularly?
Anyone else seeing the trap yet?
How to Break the Ego Trap
So what’s a leader to do when you’re caught between a rock and… a forecast review?
Here’s what real alignment looks like:
- Comp plans that reward accuracy as much as activity.
- This is being accomplished through simple feedback loops that ensure expectations were properly set.
- Forecast reviews that explore risk, not just upside.
- [GASP!] You mean your forecast isn’t perfect?! Nobody’s is. How do we collectively improve?
- Enablement that teaches qualification – not just objection handling.
- Role plays gone stale after 18 years in the playbook? Sales has evolved – be sure you do too.
- A culture where “no, this isn’t a fit” is a respected answer.
- Proper expectations and alignment matter more than just about anything else in your sales process. What are you rewarding your reps for?
You see, we’re not going to fix sales by creating more metrics to meet, nor by raising quotas again. And I know what you’re thinking… but no, hiring more reps won’t yield the results either.
You fix them by creating a system where the truth is safe to say – and worth telling!
Lies are a lagging indicator, not a leading trait. If they’re showing up in your sales motion, the real issue is upstream.. perhaps further than you’d considered.
Fix the incentives. Protect the truth.
Then watch what happens when your team doesn’t have to choose between hitting quota and treating customers right.
Find this useful? Share it with someone who leads with intention.
I provide sales training and enablement services for those who need to close more consistently, and with character. If this resonates, let’s chat about how to shape your team into an elite squad.
Next Up: Smiling Through Silence: The (Underrated) Power of Pausing