1. It will enable you to seize and maintain competitive advantage. What the heck does that mean? Does competitive advantage mean your product is better? Your service more pleasant? Or does it mean your profits are fatter? And exactly how does it "enable" it? Enable is a weasel word that means nothing. Of course, I usually see this term in marketing literature--I can't document that an actual salesperson has ever said this!

2. It ensures seamless interoperability. Right. Eternal youth, too. And a perpetual motion machine. World peace. And a decent cigar from outside of Cuba. I never really grokked that word "ensure" anyway. Does it mean "assure" or "insure"? Am I supposed to be en-thused by this? But maybe that lie will be consigned to the dustbin of history as my third big lie starts to take hold...

3. We deliver an ecosystem. Well, I hope not. I'm more comfortable with the thought of a bunch of applications (or services) being stitched together and more-or-less getting the job done than I am of a single ecosystem that (to read the analogy literally) is full of bugs, other creepy-crawlies, big storms, too much heat sometimes and too little light other times, and an unpredictability that continues to make weather forecasting the single most difficult computing challenge on, well, the planet. No ecosystems, please. Just stuff that works!

Allright, show of hands. Who knows the circa-80s joke that the difference between selling software and selling cars is that car salesmen know when they're lying? Rimshot. Ha ha. Yet the serious issue here is that software purchases--and I'm talking about enterprise IT here--are often followed by remorse, panic, and a massive CYA effort that almost invariably means buying more software and the professional services to maintain it.

Let's examine a seemingly unrelated question: why is there such steady business for diet books and plans? Because diets don't work! Some would say the same for software.

I don't think software salespeople actually lie about what they're selling. They are typically putting together large, complex deals with a lot of approvers, a long cycle time, and a brutal competitive environment. Stockholm Syndrome often kicks in as all parties realize they're in this for the long haul and are going to be spending a lot of time together, whether by email, phone, or face-to-face. And they truly are looking for a long-term relationship.

It's the marketing people (and I count myself as one) who are most at fault here. An entire book was written once about how a leading enterprise software company first edged past then ran circles around its competitors years ago when it first marketed the "fact" that its product would run on any platform, then made sure that it didn't run well on even one platform. Customers got addicted to the core concept, spent too much money and time to turn back, and were obliged to become customers for life.

Software companies today routinely accuse one another of following this strategy or something similar to it. They'll attack a competitor's muddled strategy, underperforming products, even executives' strategy and, er, ability to tell the truth. Tell the truth -- what are your Three Great Lies?