The Reality of Business
Welcome to The Reality of Business with Bob & Jeremy, your go-to podcast for insights, stories, and practical advice on all things business.
Since meeting at drama school in 1991, we've been lifelong friends and business partners, drawing on over two decades of experience running a successful sales and management training company together. With Reality Training at the heart of our journey, we've coached thousands, spoken at countless conferences, and travelled the world, gathering a treasure trove of stories, insights, and actionable advice along the way.
Originally launched during the lockdown of June 2021 as Bob & Jeremy’s Conflab, this podcast has evolved into The Reality of Business. Each episode offers a blend of thought-provoking discussions on the most pressing business topics, light-hearted banter, and real-world wisdom to help you think differently and make positive changes in your professional life.
Whether you’re listening as you multitask at work, relaxing at home, or on the move, we've crafted every episode to bring value, a fresh perspective, and a smile to your face. Tune in to discover what you didn't know about the world of business and beyond.
We proudly work with organisations of all sizes, from global corporations to ambitious start-ups, through our company, Reality Training – www.realitytraining.com.
The Reality of Business features original music by Charlie Morrell.
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The Reality of Business
Disloyal Bonding: The Hidden Costs of Strategic Deception in Business
What happens when small favours or special treatment for customers start to undermine an entire organisation’s integrity?
In this episode of The Reality of Business, hosts Jeremy Blake and Bob Morrell explore the concept of disloyal bonding and strategic lies, inspired by their new book, Whose Side Are You On?.
They uncover how seemingly harmless actions in customer relations – like offering discounts or preferential treatment – can create a false sense of loyalty, slowly eroding company policies, trust, and culture. These hidden dynamics often go unnoticed by managers and executives, but come at a steep price for long-term business success.
Join Bob and Jeremy as the examine the high cost of deception in achieving conversion rates that seem too good to be true. While short-term gains may benefit individuals, they often come at the expense of an organisation’s long-term viability and ethical values. Managers might overlook these deceptive tactics in their drive to meet targets, while higher-level executives might exploit them for personal gain - leaving the company to deal with the fallout.
This conversation sets the stage for our next episode, where we’ll explore the strategic planning behind these deceptive practices. Don't miss this eye-opening discussion on integrity, trust, and the unseen impact of disloyal bonding.
Whose Side Are You On? Disloyal Bonding and Strategic Lies is released on 1st October 2024. Pre-order your copy now on Amazon.co.uk!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Hello, I am Jeremy Blake and I am Bob Morrell. You are listening to the authors of a new book that is coming out on the 1st of October. What's the title? Bobby?
Speaker 2:The book is called Whose Side Are you On Disslaw Bonding and Strategic Lies? This is a book that we have written based on our experience of over 20 years training and developing people in all sorts of organizations, and this concept dislaw bonding and strategic lies is something that we've picked up over that time as a very endemic habit that is found everywhere in all sorts of organizations, so we thought it was important to highlight it and write a book about it, and the title is just to remind you Whose Side.
Speaker 1:Are you On? We're making just a short series of these podcast episodes to explain it. In this first one, we just want to get across what the concept is, so it's very clear. When you read this book, you know what you're in for. We're also going to talk about why it matters. So this is really the introductory episode. So let's just have an explanation, if we can. Bob, whether you take the second part, not whose side are you on, but what is this concept of disloyal bonding? Because that's what we're saying in the title. We're saying whose side are you on? Question mark Disloyal bonding? That's the. Are you on question mark disloyal bonding? That's the problem. So what?
Speaker 2:is disloyal bonding. Well, disloyal bonding is a term that you came up with. Thank you very much. I don't know if you remember the actual day that you came up with it, but you wrote it in a blog and if listeners want to google the term disloyal bonding, they'll find that blog because it was you who wrote it and this is a quote from that blog. You said if disloyal bonding exists in your organization, then you need to get under the culture to find out why it is there. So let's explain a little bit about what that actually is.
Speaker 2:Many of us in life will have to go through the the task of ringing a contact center from time to time, whether it be insurance, energy, anything that we buy on a subscription. We need to bring up that contact center and have a conversation with them, and it's something that most of us don't relish. We don't enjoy it, it's not something we look forward to, and we'd like to get it over with as quickly as possible, and some of those transactions can go fairly well and be fairly swift. Some of them are long drawn out and painful, and this habit is well exhibited in contact centers, and it's where the person you're speaking to tries to bond with you in a way which is disloyal to their own company and, in fact, does their own company a disservice, whilst they are metaphorically putting their arms around you and pretending to be your friend rhetorically putting their arms around you and pretending to be your friend. So it might be, for example, when you hear somebody say oh, you're unhappy with that cost for your car insurance. Well, let me see what I can do. So you can almost feel their invisible arm going around your shoulder and taking you to one side and saying I'm going to do something special for you that nobody else can do. I'm going to give you a special price, a special discount, in a way that is going to stick it to the company in a way that they won't like, but nobody's going to know because it's our little secret.
Speaker 2:So actually, what you're doing is lying. You are pretending to the customer that this is something you can do. Of course you can do it. You can do it for everyone, but you pretend and you put on this little false friendship act which is what it is, and you pretend to be friends.
Speaker 2:You offer them something which perhaps you shouldn't be offering, and the way it is expressed is quite demoralizing, because you're buying from an organization who stand for something, who are there to give you insurance which is going to be very valuable if you have an accident. You're believing that what you're paying is valuable, that it has a value. The amount you're paying is the equivalent to the value of the policy or whatever it is that you're buying. But actually, what you're getting is this idea of they this invisible force at the top of the company don't know what they're doing, they're sending out these quotes and not speaking to us, and they don't know what's going on for the customers. But I, I'm the one person that you've come through to, lucky old you, who's going to be your friend for the duration of this conversation and therefore make you feel happy.
Speaker 1:So that is what disloyal bonding is it could extend into blaming things that the seller or customer service person wishes they had more control over the system is letting me down, so it's letting you down, let's see what we can do.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, and if you were to put sort of a general banner over this of sort of discounting masquerading. It may not even be a discount, it might be one of the levels of banding that they even have discretion over, but they're leading you to believe that it's not them, it's the organization, and between you you'll come to some form of resolution. Now, this is just one, as Bob's brought to our attention, just one area where it sits. Because of the frequency, the frequency of needing to book various insurances or financial policies or subscriptions we're dealing with contact centers if we don't take the straight renewal we're offered. So that's in the book quite a lot, because that's a common touch point that we'll all receive. Why do we need people to understand this? Why does it matter? Why do we need a book about this? Why do we need action to take place? Can't we just let it pervade? What?
Speaker 2:we found is that quite often it's completely unconscious and unconsciously unrecognized, so managers don't realize their people are doing this or, if they do, they don't mind, and the individual chooses to basically lie to the customer in a disloyal way to their company in order to get a result, and the managers, by not doing anything about it, are effectively encouraging it. Or and we'll come on to this idea of the strategic lie what they're doing is using this tactic to introduce an underhand way to increase conversion for the brand, in which case it becomes a strategy. Let's pretend to our customers that this is the situation and that will help us increase conversion. So it's either something that's unconscious from the individual going well, I'm going to use this bull that I'm talking about in order to get a sale, or it's going to be the company saying here is our policy use any and all means at your disposal to get the conversion rate for our organization up by using these tactics. And that's why we thought we've got to talk about this, because we're either victims of it or we're perpetrators of it.
Speaker 2:It's something that we are doing in our organizations now, and there's a really big message here. If you have an organization that is known for this sort of tactic. Give them a bell, give them a push, they'll give you a discount. Okay, we all know the sorts of organizations we're talking about. That affects their reputation, it affects their profitability and, in many cases, it affects their long-term viability, because they're no longer selling their products or services at a fair price with a good profit margin that allows them to grow and develop and continue.
Speaker 1:They become a discount shop, which is ultimately damaging and destructive and over the what is now 25 years of training salespeople, we've often found individuals who are not doing what Bob is saying. It isn't unconscious, it's wholly conscious and they are changing the organizations. You can look at them on LinkedIn. They go from B2B organization to B2B organization where they become an individual that claims they have more power over the destiny of the customer and they go this guy's amazing.
Speaker 2:He's doing so well. He's selling all the time. Now, what you don't realize is that person is using lies and disloyalty in order to get that conversion rate, and what he's actually doing, through his own success, is damaging the long-term viability of your organization, and managers are not picking up on it because they're being driven to hit targets. So that's what this book is about. It's about saying look, if you do those sorts of things, if you tell those lies, if you demonstrate that disloyalty, then whose side are you on? Because you might be benefiting yourself, but you're not benefiting the brand.
Speaker 1:You're not benefiting what we stand for, our values and the fact that we actually have a right to make a profit from what we're doing, and in the next episode we'll look how even higher up people cotton on to the individual skill of disloyal bonding and decide to make it strategic for their own benefit before they hop, skip and jump to the next company three years later. We're going to look at the strategic aspect of planning the lie. Thanks for listening.