Perfectly Honest

This week three different door-to-door salespeople came to my house.
Many of you are probably thinking, "why do you bother to answer?"

I take the time to answer for two reasons:
1. I think it's a bit of sales karma.
If I answer a sales call someone else will answer mine.
2. Since I'm a salesman I'm going to put them through their paces and see how they perform under pressure.

All three said at several times during their pitch:
"to be perfectly honest"
"in all honesty"
"to be completely honest."

Every time in their presentation they said one of those phrases I called them on it.
They would get a sheepish grin and then tell me about some feature or option or price that they didn't tell me about initially.
I would ask them why they didn't tell me about that feature or price to start with.
Usually that was followed by another "perfectly honest" and I would catch them again with something else they didn't tell me. 
In all cases the salespeople lost all credibility with me because they kept uttering "to be honest" and being caught not being honest.
This confirmed again what I've always said, if someone says any combination of "to be completely honest," during a sales pitch they aren't really being honest.

In sales if you ask good probing questions to find out why your client is interested in buying what you are selling, and you provide all the details to your client upfront about your solution, your credibility is never called into question and you will make more sales without ever having to say "to be perfectly honest."
Honestly.
Ev
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"