SELLING IS A MORAL ISSUE

 

            Last month I mentioned that I’ve been in sales for many years, and for the past ten or so have written articles about sales and marketing.  From dress code to facial expressions, I’ve touched on every subject that comes to mind concerning how to improve sales.  Many of you have enjoyed my articles as a valuable resource.  I thank you!  However, Selling is a moral issue and every so often I feel the need to help you remember why.

Foremost, it is too easy to take advantage of customers if you are a well-trained salesperson.  Unscrupulous salespeople use successful techniques to their advantage, rather than keeping their customer’s best interests ahead of our own.  This is the crux of the moral dilemma of Sales.

            When thinking about the ethics of selling, I always suggest basing every sales activity on the good old Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  In other words, cheat and be cheated; treat and be treated.  I want my customers to feel treated after dealing with me.  Unfortunately, there are those salespeople among us that are known as users.  This rhymes with abusers and, frankly, means the same thing in my book.  These people give all sales professionals a bad reputation.  Every one of us has been taken in by them at one time or other.

            Look at it this way—we all know people who are users.  These people will take advantage of you in a heartbeat if you’re not good at saying “no.”  “May I borrow your lawnmower?  Mine broke last week, and between carting the kids to school and my wife being sick, I haven’t had time to take it to the shop to get it fixed.”  Four weeks later, you force yourself across the street to ask when you may have your lawnmower back.  Your yard has turned into a field, while the exploitative neighbor’s stays manicured at your expense.  Or perhaps this:  “Mind if I stay in your beach house this weekend since you’re not using it?  My boys have never been shrimping and I would sure love to take them.  I already asked your real estate partner if it was okay with him and he said fine.”

In my line of business, janitorial supplies, a trick from the fifties was for the unscrupulous salesman to drop a silver dollar (when they actually were silver and worth a dollar) into the bung of a drum of cleaner, right in front of the janitor.  That fifty-five-gallon drum of detergent would be gone in the blink of an eye.  Fortunately, real silver dollars are too hard to come by these days—and our Clinton “gold bucks” are simply pieces of worthless gold-colored tin.

The key to the user’s successful exploitation lies in the fact that most of us are too compassionate.  We will listen to a seemingly honest salesperson, and purchase from them over and over again, knowing their merchandise or service is never what has been promised.  Don’t become a one of them.  Once you are identified as a user, word gets around.  Your sales reputation will suffer, but more importantly, your employer’s reputation will be harmed too.  This could mean the loss of your job.

Years ago, we had a representative that took advantage of our customers by sending products they had not ordered—without our knowledge of course.  He worked for us three whole weeks and did major damage to our company’s reputation.  We started getting irate calls from customers that had dealt with us for years.  It only took three seconds to relieve him of his position, while it took months to regain the trust our company had lost.

The moral of this story is don’t be tempted to cheat anyone using your knowledge of successful sales techniques.  You may profit in the short run, but eventually your reputation will be tarnished and you will get canned.