[kgbdrop1]

> Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped".

I guess I would clarify what you mean by deception. One of the key parts of sales, at least when it comes to technical sales, is that an answer to a question or a presentation of capabilities needs to be made in a context. You have to know your audience. When you're talking about how your software does authentication it's absolutely appropriate to describe it as "integrating into your existing investments in authentication" when speaking to the business side of the audience. This is compared to going into detail (e.g. NTLM, Basic, SAML, Kerberos, OIDC, JWT, whatever) when speaking to the technical side of the audience. Is the generic answer to the business side deceptive? I don't see how it is. It's not their role to analyze the technical merits. They just want to know how much extra work will it require, in general, to deploy the software.

Is outright lying necessary? No. I've only been on the sales (technical sales, but nonetheless sales) side of the world for 1.5 years, but no, you don't. I am fortunate that my manager has carved out a team where the _expectation_ is that we are technical stewards of our customers. Obviously our end goal is selling software, but the immediate goal is to make the software work. It's a norm on our team that it's entirely acceptable to join a call and tell the customer that a competitor would be better suited for the use case.

While it's not necessary, it is hard. The incentives for sales aren't aligned with telling the truth. But this is where culture matters quite a bit.