To finesse a sale is to maneuver around facts that might hurt your chances of winning the prospective client’s business were she to know the whole truth. Those who know the term use it to describe words or acts which are legal but deceptive. We can legitimately call finessing a sharp practice. Or is it?
The Lowest-Common-Denominator Finesse (hereafter referred to as “the LCD Finesse”) is, perhaps, the most common. Many a rainmaker uses this finesse effectively to win work. They use it most often to make past client work seem relevant to the current prospect when she might not see it that way, if she knew the whole truth. If we are selling to a bank and have limited experience with banks, we might describe work we did at an insurance company as being for “another large financial institution.” When talking with a prospective client from a Zurich-based bank about work we did for a pharmaceutical company based in Geneva, it becomes “another large Swiss company.” By this logic, hotels and airlines are lumped together as travel-based businesses.

A little of this is innocent enough. After all, the descriptions we give are true. But we are withholding information which might make the client uncomfortable with our credentials. How far can this go before we cross the line into unethical behavior? Years ago, while pitching to a precision aircraft parts manufacturer, I referred to a former client in an anecdote as “another metalworking company.” This was an exceedingly low common denominator. The company in my story made the metal straps that tie goods to pallets to for shipping. The two companies had almost nothing in common, and the aircraft parts manufacturer would almost certainly have discounted my story, if I had told him the whole truth.

But the story did have a message, one important for the client to hear and that was relevant to his situation. Was I wrong to tell the story in a way that made it compelling to him? I am not sure. Would it have been better to tell it in a way that made the differences between his company and the one in the story blatantly clear and in doing so risk his rejection of a point that was imprortant for him to hear? That doesn’t feel right either. I can say that we did use the LCD in the story we told, he hired us and later provided us with a good reference many times.

Yesterday I saw George and Ira Gershwin’s musical, My One and Only, in Stratford, Ontario. The show must have collected every professional tap dancer in Canada. The twenty-person cast tapped its way through three delightful hours.

Tap dancing may be alive and well in Stratford this summer, but it’s on the decline elsewhere. For many of us, the last tap dancer we have seen was Gregory Hines, and there is a whole generation which has never heard of the man. Today, we use the term, “tap dancing,” metaphorically far more often than we use it to describe a real dance. And that lead me to wonder, why do we use the term “tap dancing?”

The metaphors we choose tell a lot about our view of whatever it is we use them to describe. “Tap dancing” is a good example. We use it to describe the deft handling of a risky and difficult inquiry. We might say, for example, ”You really had to tap dance your way out of that one.” In this sense it connotes survival of a near disaster. When used this way, it often draws a laugh, usually a laugh of relief and the pleasure of having gotten away with something. That’s because it may also suggest a less than full disclosure of the facts or at least walking a fine line between truth and misrepresentation.

Usually, it is used as a complement, though it can have a negative slant when used to describe how a person maneuvered himself out of a mess he had needlessly gotten himself into.

The term interests me because it is used so frequently to describe what happens in a difficult sales meeting. It might be used to describe the answers to such difficult questions as:

1. Isn’t it true that XYZ Corporation replaced you midstream on their project?
2. Why should we buy the same solution from you that you have already given to our competitors?
3. Do you mean that you have never done a project like this one before?

The ability to address questions like these, especially when unexpected, is highly valued by professionals. What does the choice of “tap dancing” tell us about that talent? I believe that is tells us the following:

1. It requires skill. This is true of both the dance, itself, and the verbal ability. Many may aspire but few can do it.
2. It is done under pressure before an audience. Unlike some forms of dancing, tap dancing is used almost exclusively as performing art. You do it under a spotlight before an audience. A critical audience is essential to metaphorical tap dancing, too.
3. It is hard work. Other dances may disguise hard work behind smoothness and grace, but tap dancing is obviously physically difficult. A difficult conversation with a prospective client at a sales meeting is also exhausting;
4. There is a competitive aspect to it. Unlike other forms of dancing, competition is almost always present when tap dancing. The competition between the lead and another actor-dancer that I saw so recently in My One and Only is repeated in form again and again when tap dancing is featured. A challenge and a response is essential to the application of the term to a conversation between two people, as well. While the client tries to catch him, the professional dances furiously to respond acceptably to each question.

There is a school of thought that tap dancing at a sales meeting isn’t necessary, because a professional is always open with clients. I lean in that direction, too. But I have tap danced through a sales meeting or two in my years as a professional and in doing so, have won some work that helped the client achieve her objectives and helped the firm I was with avoid a layoff. And I have enjoyed the admiration that others in the firm expressed afterwards.

Yes, we should always be honest with our clients. But we also should put our firms before them in the best fair light. That sometimes requires tap dancing. I would wager heavily that those who learn to tap dance make partner more often than those who only know how to waltz.

All of which leads me to conclude that when a rainmaker dances to make rain, it is sometimes a tap dance.

When a prospective client wants to know something that might hurt a professional’s chance of winning new business, many will finesse the answer by saying something that is true but misleading.  When employing one common form, the Rubber Ruler Finesse, the professional chooses a reference point or measure that makes the answer deceptively attractive.  For example, when a client asks how long a professional has been with his firm, the professional may say, “It’s my first year,” instead of the more precise, “Two weeks.” 
 

Or take this example:  “Do you do a lot of work with banks,” asks the client, and the professional responds, “Yes, a lot. Almost 30 percent of our fees came from that industry last year.” He doesn’t say that all of those fees came from one bank, the only one his firm has ever worked for.
 

Professionals at small firms often use this finesse when asked how big their firms are.  They give the number which includes the largest number of people, even though those counted include support staff and, sometimes, employees not related to the delivery of a professional service.
 

Though these answers are true at some level, they pass the definition of a lie found in Sisela Bok’s  Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,  the classic book on the subject.  According to her a lie is “any intentionally deceptive message which is stated.”  So, is this type of truth stretching honest or not when selling a professional service?  I would like to hear from you.  Consider the following additional points:
 

¨      We will assume that the professional successfully deceives the prospective client in order to eliminate answers that deal with practicality rather than ethics.
 

¨      One only has to look at a few clients’ advertisements to realize that they commit comparable deceptions.
 

¨      No one considers it unethical to lie in an oriental bazaar.
 

¨      Professionalism requires a high standard of honesty with a client.