Recently I hired someone to help me with a piece of my business I couldn’t manager myself.   For two years I attempted to handle myself with limited success.  The truth is I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t and couldn’t devote the time to this and guess what, it never got off the ground.  So imagine how excited I was when I found this person who had years and years of experience doing just what I needed done.

A couple of days later I was having coffee with a colleague and shared with her my new resource.  The next day I receive an email from my colleague with a link to several articles on the Internet written about my new resource…and they were all negative.   I admit I never checked them out before signing on.  Perhaps I’m too trusting and frankly since the fee was less than $500 it didn’t seem like a huge risk. Maybe that was a mistake.  Yesterday I had a conversation with her about these articles and all I can say is ‘we will see’.  The explanation she offered seemed reasonable and if we are honest we all have made mistakes in our business lives.  So I’m open to giving her a chance to prove all the negative press wrong and hope that I’m not being naïve and ultimately scammed.  As I write this article I am waiting for several deliverables that have been promised to me within the next two days.  I suspect before our next issue I’ll have my answer.

So let’s assume that most of what is written is false or at least an alteration of the truth.  It begs the question, when there is negative information about you on the Internet should you share this with prospects during the sales process?  Or do you wait and deal with it when they bring it up?  I come from the premise that playing offense is always easier than playing defense and thus if it was me I would share the information as part of my presentation, and long before they hired me.  I’ve had times where I was told about a problem or situation that was negative and it didn’t prevent me from hiring them.  It’s more important to me that they are honest, how they ultimately handled the situation and even how they sound when they explain it to me.  I do understand the desire to say nothing and hope you won’t be found out or it doesn’t come up, but to me it then appears that you were trying to hide it.  In that situation I would nod my head and say “I understand” and then be waiting for proof that the information I read on the Internet wasn’t accurate.   I’d be waiting for them to disprove a negative.

Of course even if someone shared it right up front I’d still be waiting for results but somehow I’d find myself being more trusting and assume something positive would happen, rather than waiting for proof that a negative wasn’t accurate.  I focus on building high trust relationships right from the get go.  So sharing any negative information along with the positives just feels like the right thing to do as I begin a relationship.  But I do understand the desire to hold back, say nothing and hope it doesn’t come up.  What do you think?  If there is negative information about you on the Internet do you think you should share this with a perspective customer before they say yes?  Or do you think that waiting and dealing with it should it come up is the better was to go?

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