Sales Ethics

A study in Business Horizons magazine from Indiana University, found that customers increasingly base their buying decisions on whether they believe a company is ethical. Credibility has replaced depth of product knowledge, trust has replaced being likable and partnership has replaced relationship. Cynicism promotes fickle buying habits. If we wish to improve our relationship with our clients, we must let the “stakeholders” know when they participate in undertakings with us that it benefits the health and wealth of their company. You can pull off 10 miracles for your buyer, but if those with bottom line responsibility do not know of your heroics, you have no relationship with the company. Your relationship is just with the buyer, making you just another vendor, instead of a strategic alliance or an “outside partner.”

If you take a principal, ethical, integrious position in your selling, you will make lifelong customers out of even the most distrusting buyer. Remember that you are the common connection between our company and our buyers! Our company’s ethics and integrity are based on the relationship between you, the salesperson, and the buyer. How does one build or maintain an ethical foundation that will make a lifelong customer?

Does my decision affect anyone else besides the bottom line and myself? If a salesperson falsely reported that a buyer has Okayed a change order for the sake of keeping up with the buyer’s timetable, or tells the company, in order to win a project we have to be at certain price, but never did get a budget from the buyer, is simply cheating. This type of cheating ends up affecting many people in adverse ways.

One must consider the effect of one’s decisions on the company, the customer, and on one’s own integrity. The best decisions are made when you become “other focused.” Will the greater good be for you or your customer or company? Focus on what is around you and what is the message. What kind of culture or ethics field...