I picked up on a story by Associated Press yesterday: FTC: Bloggers, testimonials need better disclosure.

I’ve been very concerned for a while about two things going on in the sales blogging/social networking community. One is wrong information.  The other is endorsements of products provided to bloggers for review—without disclosure by those bloggers.

I realize that this move by the FTC wasn’t aimed at sales bloggers, but since that’s where I spend some time most days, I feel compelled to express my opinion.

Wrong information

Over the past year I’ve turned down invitations by sales “experts” to be on panels, contribute to books (such as compilations of sales-related articles), swap links, and lend endorsements to books on selling. I’ve happily agreed to some and vigorously rejected others. The main reason for the latter is those experts are not really experts at all. It’s worse than that. Some of the advice that is being provided is just plain wrong. That’s not my opinion. It’s based upon widely-available research. Plus, in my role as sales training industry researcher and analyst, a lot of these people pitch to my firm, so we get to test their assertions.

In my recent post, Why Isn’t There A Dominant Sales Training Company? I discuss the non-existent barrier to entry for sales trainers/experts. As a result, we have blogs that are dispensing trash masqueraded as sales tips and other worthless advice. This practice is bad for so many reasons, not the least of which is providing the sales person or manager with the false hope that the next tip they read will improve their sales performance once and for all. It becomes a never-ending quest for the rep—sometimes even an addiction. These tips divert their attention and effort from what they should be doing—the hard work that will really improve their selling effectiveness. It’s a bad situation.

It’s not just the new, inexperienced entrants into the market that are guilty of dispensing wrong information. Some of the better known sales gurus are guilty of it as well. You’d recognize their names. They’ve got best-selling books, are interviewed in magazines, and speak at conferences.

Why don’t I call them out by name? It’s just not my style to do it here on my blog, although our clients sometimes ask our opinion about individual experts. I’d rather educate you and let you decide what advice is valuable and what isn’t.

By the way, LinkedIn groups and the question/answer facility are full of bad advice. Be careful. It’s very dangerous ground.

Another observation/opinion: The amount of self-promotion done by any sales expert is often (not by any means always) inversely proportional to the value they provide. I’m not referring to writing a blog, or having a presence on Twitter, or having a rich, compelling “about me” page or LinkedIn profile. I’m talking about all the references to what those experts are doing and have done—me, me, I, I, me, me, me. What I like to read about is an expert’s clients and the value those clients have derived from that expert. That perks my interest. That makes me look deeper into what the expert has to say.

Not disclosing freebies

From the article referenced above:

The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

I know this freebie situation is going on in the sales expert blogging/Twitter community. I’ve been offered free stuff myself. Giving a sales expert/blogger some neat software for “review” (read free) with an implicit expectation that the blogger will rave about that product in return has always been wrong. Now it’s official.

Where am I headed with all this?

Sales as a function is generally in a pretty bad way. Lots of great people (like Brian Lambert of ASTD’s Sales Training Drivers, Howard Stevens of HR Chally and the University Sales Education Foundation, Gary Summy of SMT and SAMA, to name just three) are working very hard to permanently change the situation. But in the meantime, sales reps and sales leaders are thirsty for information, guidance, and advice. Self-serving, hype-filled, and insincere blogs laden with misinformation isn’t the place to find the answers.

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