Whereabouts do you stand on selling ethically?

Do you please your boss and your company by keeping your morality hostage in favour of getting the deal in? Are your sales techniques in line with what you would expect and appreciate as a customer?

Some individuals have no problem with lying or cheating when it comes to sales. Take this story on Watchdog on the BBC.

While this moronic individual is in double glazing sales, professional sales people telling professional lies and cheating others are just as commonplace now. In fact, double glazing probably now has the least unscrupulous sales people given the spotlight that has been firmly fixed on the industry for a number of years. Your friendly banker, accountant or customer service representative is just as likely to sell you into something that you don’t want. Scripts are getting smarter and true reasons for the call are more hidden.

A few of the arguments for ethical selling:
1. You have less to remember if you are always saying the truth
2. You will have to deal with more customers with post-purchase unrest if you sell unethically
3. If you don’t sell ethically you will have that horrible little feeling in the pit of your stomach that can only be quenched with alcohol.

One of our ongoing ethical sales training assignments is with the Association of International Property Professionals. Founded in 2006, the AIPP aims to clean up the international property scene. This means that consumers have extra reassurance when they buy a property in Belarus when they buy off an AIPP member.

The AIPP approached us to present a 4 hour session on ethics and we designed this, a workshop that aimed to motivate and inspire agents to do the right thing. We didn’t want it to be a moralistic finger pointing exercise, and over 18 months the feedback suggests we got it right – lots of interactivity and ways to apply it to your world.

So what constitutes ethical sales training?

Well the crux of ethical sales is a bit of a variation of the old biblical favourite “Do onto others as you would have others do unto you.” The sales version therefore is “Sell unto others as you would be sold to”.

There are three things you really have to know/do to sell ethically:

a. A great starting point is consultation, where you show an interest in customers by asking questions and listening intently. This is a nice and ethical way to make clients feel loved.
b. Buyer collaboration – even better, where you sit on the (virtual or real) side of the customers desk and work on problems together. Hard to be unethical when sitting on the right side of the desk. To collaborate effectively you need to be empathetic and inclusive. “How can we go about solving this particular problem?” would be
c. Buyer facilitation – this is the top territory in ethical and productive sales really work, according to experts on Wikipedia. You are now the “go-to” sales person and confidant who is relied on

Naturally, if you would like some training that helps you to focus on developing or refreshing an ethical (yet really effective) sales culture give us a call on 08700635485.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Natural news, Sales advice, Telesales articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.