Misleading sales strategies are now much riskier

Customers are vulnerable creatures. They’re responsible for making lots of decisions about services based solely on information they receive from vendors selling those services. Customers also are busy. Rarely, if ever, do they have the time to do the research they would need to do to make a completely informed decision on their own.

I assume every service provider reading this column has been victimized by competitors who successfully deceive the customer. Such deception sometimes takes the form of a bald-faced lie, say for example, claiming to destroy materials when they have no capacity or intention of doing so. Sometimes such deception is illegal, for instance, when offering a lower price while exaggerating the weight. Other times it is more subtle, such as pretending their membership equates to a certification or buying a meaningless certification and passing it off to a customer as meaningful.

NAID was founded to promote the secure destruction of discarded information by using qualified service providers.

Has it done so perfectly?

No, of course not. That would be an impossible goal to achieve and, therefore, an irrelevant measure.

But because perfection is an impossible goal doesn’t mean it is a valueless pursuit. We’ve all heard the saying, “Perfection is the enemy of the good.”

Thanks to organizations like NAID, PRISM, SERI and BAN, it is far tougher for service providers to capitalize on customer ignorance. Armed with the tools these organizations provide to reputable service providers, and to their customers, using misleading information is now a much riskier game.

There’s another well-known saying reminding us of the consequences of misleading clients and prospects: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

It is difficult for a service provider to save face once customers learn they’ve been misled. It gets that much riskier with organizations such as NAID shining a light on the issue. The loss of the customer’s trust is often fatal.

In the meantime, NAID will keep beating that drum and shining the light.

Bob Johnson is CEO of the National Association for Information Destruction. He can be reached at rjohnson@naidonline.org.