Ethics and Professional Sales Management (Part 1)

Almost a day doesn't go by where there isn't some news report of a firm or individual that has gotten caught for some "wrong doing" in the conduct of business activities. This range is very broad, such as failing to pay taxes, or deceptive advertising practices - just to name a few.

Within the vast sea of opportunity for any business or person to get in trouble lurks the sales function. Probably no other activity has so much chance to destroy a company or individual's career. The sales person is the first contact point and for the customer the sales person is the company and the wrong doings of the sales person will be viewed by default as the wrong doings of the company.

One important relationship between sales and ethics is the lack of preparation and planning needed in order to work as a salesperson. To begin with, few people grow up desiring to be in sales in the first place. Often, most young people fall into it because they can't get any other type of "real" job. Second, nothing is taught in classrooms about sales, either at the high school or college level.

For example a sales person who buys discounted products of his company and uses it for himself is legally not doing anything wrong but ethically definitely he is disgracing himself. Same is the case with air line staff that hog all the scratch cards for themselves and give only those scratch cards (which are slightly scratched so that the item is known) to the airline passengers are not doing anything wrong from their point of view. They can always claim that what item that they are scratched is not free but available at a subsided price and that they are paying the same price as the airline customers. But the point is the scratch cards are never meant for the airline staff. They are meant to act as a incentive for airline passengers to use the same airline again and again (This has happened to the author on Jetlite flight from Hyderabad to Mumbai)

An accepted definition of ethics is the science of moral duty or the science of ideal human character. Therefore, ethics are moral principles or practices. That's why they are referred as standards of professional conduct. When someone acts in an ethical fashion it means they are conforming to some standard of moral behavior.

Most people operate their daily lives under a personal code of ethics which dictates things that they will or will not do. For example, take a salesperson who desperately needs a certain order to make quota for the year and tells this to the prospect who wants to delay the order until after the first of the year. The fact here is that while it would be legal to share the information about how bad the representative needs the order, it would be viewed as unethical to do so.