The Greatest Salesmen I've Ever Seen!

I just finished watching a movie on Netflix about something called the FYRE Festival and the failure/fraud that was perpetrated by the founder. I thought it was a great movie and I thought the message about don't trust everything you see online was also relevant. One aspect of the film that made me angry was one of FYRE's former employees said the founder was "the greatest salesmen I've ever seen." Ever since I began my career in sales, I've heard this statement and it always frustrates me when people say this about fraudsters/cons and here's why:

To me, a salesperson (or sales professional) is always an upfront, honest, and trustworthy individual. He or she represents the product or service that is being sold accurately, and does not deceive the buyer into purchasing. If the salesperson does not follow this mantra, I don't consider him or her much of a salesperson at all, but a conman.

During this time, there exists hundreds of thousands different types of financial instruments: bank accounts, credit cards, CD's, investment accounts, life insurance, annuities, and other financial instruments all behave a little differently. In fact, even though some products may be labelled as let's say "fixed annuities" none of them are the same. Different crediting rates, guarantees, fees, etc. all make each of these products unique. Although you may be able to research how a "fixed annuity" is supposed to work, you rely on the information presented to you by the company (or salesperson) to figure out exactly how their product works.

I could sell a life insurance policy to a client and promise them that the money inside the policy grows at 6% guaranteed and that as long as you make the premium payments stated on the paper, the policy is guaranteed to be there. Customers see 6% on the illustration. Customers also see the payment amount and how it never changes on the illustration. If they know and like the salesperson, the information gets hardened into belief. If I used these tactics, I could probably sell a hell of a lot more life insurance to people. But that is not the case. I'm deceiving the customer into purchasing, I'm not truly representing the product and how it works. I'm basically lying, and lying to me does not make me a good salesperson, just a horrible individual.

Wolf of Wall Street, Gordon Gecko, Boiler Room, and a hell of a lot of people on American Greed; all individuals are praised on these shows by being great salespeople. Please stop representing these individuals as great salespeople, all they are are liars who cheat people out of their money for their own personal gain. Every time these people are referenced as being great salespeople, they degrade the selling profession and the true selling professionals.

-Dwight Bentz