The Reality of Business

The Cost of Deception: How Strategic Lies Undermine Business Integrity

• Bob Morrell and Jeremy Blake • Season 6 • Episode 3

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What happens when businesses prioritise short-term gains over long-term integrity?

In the second episode of a special mini-series inspired by their upcoming book, Whose Side Are You On? Disloyal Bonding and Strategic Lies, Bob and Jeremy explore the hidden dangers of strategic lies in the corporate world.

When businesses prioritise short-term gains – whether to boost senior executives’ desire for bonuses or prepare for a sale – they often sacrifice long-term customer trust and company reputation.

Listen as they share real-world examples of how offering special deals to win back old customers can alienate loyal ones, ultimately eroding the value of your services. Plus, hear about a cheese producer who thrives by standing firm against deceptive practices, proving that integrity can be a game-changer in business.

Bob & Jeremy also explore the world of advertising, where quantity often trumps quality. They share a personal story of being pushed to sell large volumes of ineffective ads and how this relates to the broader theme of corporate dishonesty.

Whether you’re a small business owner or part of a larger organisation, this episode is a must-listen if you want to understand the fine line between smart strategy and ethical integrity – and learn how to protect your business for the long run.

Whose Side Are You On? Disloyal Bonding and Strategic Lies is released on 1st October 2024. Pre-order your copy now on Amazon.co.uk!

For more info, free resources, useful content & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to part two of our four-part series on our book Whose Side Are you On? Dislaw Bonding and Strategic Lies. In today's episode, we're going to focus in on the last part of that title strategic lies. Ie brands that come up with policies and strategies that are not entirely true and yet are used to increase and develop their performance, and what these things might be doing to their people, to their customers, and what damage these things might actually do. So, jeremy, tell us what we mean by strategic lies. Give us an example. Tell us what we mean by strategic lies.

Speaker 2:

Give us an example. So, listener, imagine you're a superb salesperson with boundless integrity and you do the job right. You believe in your company and your product and you're selling an interesting music subscription service and you receive an email from someone higher up saying hi, looking at performance, we will miss this quarter unless you all do something. I've made the decision. You are to follow exactly what I tell you to do. I want you to contact all customers who have canceled their service, their subscription service, because we were trying to hold rate and to offer them a further incentive, as detailed below. You, as the salesperson, look down. You click the link. It's ridiculous. This is less than what existing customers pay per month. We're doing this just to bring in a load of numbers and get over the line. Only weeks ago, you were holding rate. You're now being asked to be completely disloyal to the integrity of the service, the subscription and everything you stand for. That is a classic, strategically planned load of disloyal bonding.

Speaker 1:

So just to be clear on that, the original conversation would have gone something like hello, I'm not happy with the amount I'm paying for my subscription, I want to cancel it. The person they spoke to would have said, well, I can give you a 10% discount to stay with us. And the customer said, nope, that's not enough, can cancel. And the person they spoke to has nowhere to go, nowhere else to go. They've offered the full 10%, so they cancel the subscription. Two weeks later, the phone goes you're not going to believe this. We can offer you a further 10% to come back to us. So that's a strategy, because you could have offered that in the first call and kept the customer and they would have been happy or maybe gone to 15%. But actually you've called them back and tried to get them back with you through a further discount, which is ludicrous if you think about it.

Speaker 2:

Well, even if the customer hadn't wanted to stay, you believed your music subscription service was worth the rate. And some customers may disappear, go to an inferior competitor and return and realize it's worth it. That's the point Everything has its value and it's worked out price. And if we all chopped and changed, it'd be ludicrous. And this is often being directed by people who do not own these companies. They're simply trying to maximize their own bonuses and salaries for the duration of the time they're employed there.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you look at large organizations, the larger brands that we know, retailers and large service organizations, what you have is many, many departments with policies and systems that have been built up over years and years.

Speaker 1:

So when the customer writes in with a complaint that triggers a response of this type and out, it goes to you and a letter comes to you saying oh, we're so sorry you're complaining about this thing. Let me offer you an additional discount and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. That's a lie, okay, because if it was something they were genuinely apologizing for, they would change the action that caused it because they wouldn't want it to keep on happening, but because it's a printed out, pre-printed, templated response. It's something they're used to and they're happy to wear the discount on it and therefore it is a strategy of telling lies to customers just to keep them and it's a retention strategy. And that is a lie and it's coming right from the very top, and the reason for it is that very senior people are bonused for customer numbers. The city loved that kind of thing and that has given them the incentive to say lie to people just to keep them.

Speaker 2:

It could be. A company that is planning to sell has been acting with a tremendous integrity and they just need another 20,000 customers on the books to be able to increase the value of the business. So they throw all integrity out the window. They sell the business to another music subscription service. They become consumed, the owners and directors all take a cut in the salary and you as an individual are asked to be completely disloyal to the brand. And then suddenly you're toupied into some new organization and you don't know where you stand.

Speaker 1:

Now some of you will be saying well, don't all organizations do this at some point? Isn't this the point of commercialism? Well, no, there are many organizations who don't discount their products and services at all. They stand by their prices, they believe they're worth every penny and they sell on that advantage and benefit that you get. And if you want it, then you'll pay the money for it. And what we have is lots of other people who are discounting it, just to keep the numbers up.

Speaker 2:

I think, importantly, if you're listening to this and you're a one person band or you're an SME, take heart in vast amount of SMEs that have tremendous integrity. I mean, if you want an example off the fly, you just have to take an interesting cheese producer, stinking Bishop, who could make fortunes more if he expanded his business. But he chooses the price of his cheese. He doesn't overproduce, doesn't oversell. If you won't pay the rate for the cheese, you don't get it. It's a predictable income and there's integrity. Cut in. There isn't any discounting, dealing with different buyers of supermarkets no, it's fixed, it's full of integrity. So apply this to your own behaviors as well, because otherwise you'll become a sort of flip and flop type person who loses the integrity and switches around in your strategy.

Speaker 1:

Now the other point is that if this is a strategic lie, if this policy that you are getting your people to enact is essentially a dishonest practice, you may have managers praising people for being more dishonest and censoring and disciplining people who are actually demonstrating integrity and honesty. And think about that. What's that doing for the reputation of your organization? Now, as a senior person, you may not care, because your tenure is only going to be two or three years. You're going to make your money and disappear. Well, that is what is driving down the integrity of businesses.

Speaker 2:

So years ago, an example of where I had this personally was the company I worked for, which was a media organization with advertising wanted to float. We were given a direction to completely ignore the quality of the advertisements we were selling. It was just the quantity. And there were people who couldn't do this, including me having detailed conversations, helping businesses with their marketing and individuals, and yet the people who were praised were the people who sold the vast volume of low cost, low quality advertisements, ironically, which they'd have had poor response on because they were the wrong adverts for the types of businesses. They were A classic example of everything being thrown out the window so that the people at the top can sell, take their divvy and off, Just to say.

Speaker 1:

Whose Side Are you On? Dislaw Bonding and Strategic Lies is out on the 1st of October. We have whole chapters on examples of strategic lies and how to change that dynamic and that policy. But please look out for us on the 1st of October and get your copy so you can start making some positive changes to your organization Exclusively on Amazon.

Speaker 2:

You can get a Kindle version or you can buy your own paperback copy. Thank you,