Sales Ethics

Introduction

Oxymoron, defined as a contradictory elements that a phrase or speech has within a single expression (Boyd, Josh 2013). Business ethics studies how business people’s moral reaction when facing a situation of dilemma. Sales ethics is a specific component of business ethics. Sales ethics studies how sales people react morally when they meet with situations that they have to deal with.

Why oxymoron?

All companies will have set corporate policy on sales ethics. We cannot deny that there are companies who execute sales ethically. For example, a soon-to-be consultant of Defence Science Technology Agency (DSTA) rejected a bribe offer of S$500,000 during a lunch appointment to procure military equipment (Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau 2013).

However most of the companies chose not to be strict and undertake disciplinary actions with their sales people behaving unethically as the objective of all companies is to maximise profit.

Companies also set bonuses, incentives and recognition awards as sales force motivational techniques to pressure on sales people to strive for sales performances. It looks like a win-win situation for both the organisation and the sales people; however they overlooked the ethics of what a sales person should have (Bellizzi 1995).

Sales ethics is an oxymoron

Sales ethics is an oxymoron to a large extent. How can we discuss about sales and being ethical in the same context in the reality world? We have many cases of sales personnel strive for sales performance through unethical behaviours.

Behaviour of sales people is often unnoticeable by sales manager as they are mostly unsupervised (DeConinck 1992). Bribery such as receiving cash or gifts in return is often seen in procurement cases – that is to secure a contract of sales. For example, Singleton Marc Alexandra, ex-Managing Director of Performance Motors Limited, accepted gifts such as designer watches and handphone from Teo Tian Seng Motor Credit Pte Ltd (TTS), an...