Sales Ethics and Sales Cultures
Sales Ethics
Sales ethics in business refers to the use of a professional approach to customers, members of the regulatory bodies, colleagues, and competitors. Sales team is faced with a variety of situations that require the application of ethical practices. Some examples include a customer asking for information about one of their competitors who happens to be their customer, a customer asking for something special that a salesperson is not allowed to give away, and deciding on how much to spend on holiday gifts for clients. While making decisions to apply in the different situations, a salesperson will be required to have respectful interactions, nondiscriminatory behavior, and consideration of cultural diversity. The ethical behavior of a salesperson will also be significantly affected by the ethics of a sales manager (Cadogan, Lee, Tarkiainen, and Sundqvist 913). Sales ethics can be divided into good and bad ethical sales practices.
Good and Bad Sales Practices
Customers
The search for new customers is what drives many businesses. However, a company needs to take appropriate measures to ensure that its drive for customers meets the highest possible standards. When making calls, a salesperson should be honest to clients. In this respect, sales people should not make calls pretending to offer services that are nonexistent to get their potential customers to listen to them (Trudel and Cotte 18). In communicating with their clients, it is
Ethics, in business, refers to moral principles and standards that define acceptable behavior in the world of business. Ethical decisions foster trust among individuals and in business relationships. Recognizing ethical issues is important in the workplace. An ethical issue is an identifiable problem requiring a person or organization to choose from among several actions that may be evaluated as ethical or unethical. When you’re determining is a situation is ethical or not, there are three factors to take into consideration. Individual factors, organizational factors, and opportunity. Individual factors are sets of principles that describe what a person believes are the right way to behave. Organizational factors include the influence of managers, coworkers, and the work group. Opportunity is a set of conditions that punish unfavorable behavior or reward favorable behavior. “Target thrives on competing to win in the marketplace. We compete and negotiate actively, but always with integrity. Taking advantage of anyone by manipulating or concealing
The author Robert Solomon argues that ethics has to an integral part with regard to business management. He does not believe that business management must include unethical or illegal methods to be able to succeed. Solomon preaches that business management is not as simple as obtaining revenue. “Businesses need to abide by fair policies and their owners have to be ethical in dealing with their customers” (Shaw p. 37). The author acknowledges that while illegal practices in business management could bring positive results at first, eventually the business is bound to fail. This is why Solomon recommended eight important policies that can help businesses in integrating ethics into their operations.
Ethics are principles of behaviour that distinguish between right and wrong. Resnik (2011) defines ethics as” a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analysing complex problems and issues” (p.1). People face ethical decisions; however, People working in business frequently face ethical decisions. Business ethics is the evaluation of business activities and behaviour as right or wrong (Society for Business Ethics, 1991).
Buyers never want to feel pushed, manipulated, or rushed. Sales professionalism is another factor into having a buyer and seller trust based relationship. This method is a way to approach customers in a trusting and non-manipulating tactic to satisfy the long-term needs of both the customer and the selling firm. Salespeople play a critical role on the sales floor. Almost all consumers in the society who are early adopters of an innovation often rely on salespeople as a primary source of information. Given the increasing importance of building a trust bond and developing a long-term relationship is an imperative that salespeople are truthful with the customers. It is important for salespeople to
An ethical dilemma happens in the workplace more often then we expect. World Class Bull, written by John Humphreys, Zafar U. Ahmed and Mildred Pryor, is a prime example of how sales personnel can manipulate a potential client into a contract. Christopher Knox, a stellar sales employee at Specialty Fleet Services (SFS), just landed the Armadillo Gas & Power account. Samantha Williams, Human Resources Vice President of SFS, was now filing a breach of the company code of ethics against Christopher and the Vice President of Sales, Jeremy Silva for “deceptive business practices” used to make the sale (Humphreys, Ahmed & Pryor, 2009). Disrupting personal space of the client, starting a dishonorable relationship, and
• I believe that ethics can exist in a commission only bases sales position. Not only does business ethics exist in a commission based sales position, I think it is very important. The way a sales representative makes money is a commission-based position is through their sales. Without the customers purchasing from them, they have no income. Ethics is very important in this position because
This will be an over view of ethics as it relates to business in our society. Concepts from Philosophy will seek to describe the correlation between actions that are classified as morally right or ethical in our dealings with each other as human beings. Clear and concise examples will be given as well as ways in which to improve upon business ethics.
Ethical standards in business are important for every leader to know and understand. The book Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by: John C. Maxwell discusses ethics in the world today. When people make unethical choices, the reason they do because of three main pitfalls. People do what is most convenient to them, people tend to do what they must do to win, and people rationalize their choices with relativism. In this summary, Maxwell’s definition of business ethics will be framed, examples of ethical standards and guidelines, the meaning and contrast of ethical thinking and ethical behavior, and how to avoid these major pitfalls to live an ethical life. The
The movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” presented a series of ethical dilemmas that surround a group of salesmen working for a real estate company. The value of business ethics was clearly undermined and ignored in the movie as the salesmen find alternatives to keep their jobs. The movie is very effective in illustrating how unethical business practices can easily exist in the business world. Most of the time, unethical business practices remain strong in the business world because of the culture that exists within companies. In this film, the sudden demands from management forced employees to become irrational and commit unethical business practices. In fear of losing their jobs, employees were pressured to increase sales despite possible ethical
Business Ethics is a set of moral principles applied in the commercial world. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is becoming necessary both for corporate success and a positive corporate image. Following pressure from
Ethical behavior is behavior that a person considers to be appropriate. A person’s moral principals are shaped from birth, and developed overtime throughout the person’s life. There are many factors that can influence what a person believes whats is right, or what is wrong. Some factors are a person’s family, religious beliefs, culture, and experiences. In business it is of great importance for an employee to understand how to act ethically to prevent a company from being sued, and receiving criticism from the public while bringing in profits for the company. (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt, 2010) Business ethics is when ethical behavior is applied in an business environment, or by a business. There are many
Ethics is the application of one’s personal beliefs and the impact on how a person makes decisions regarding the relationships involving a company. The most common agents that involve a person’s decisions are owners, employees, customers, clients,
In their personal and professional lives, people can and, unfortunately, sometimes do go against their moral and ethical standards. Ethical standards are what it means to be a good person, the social rules that govern our behavior. Ethics in business is essentially the study of what constitutes the right and wrong or the good or bad behavior in the workplace environment. A business is an organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit. The organization has a group of people that work together to achieve a common purpose. The moral challenges that these men and women face each day along with a whole range of problems that could occur, are why ethics plays such an important
To fully understand the nature of the question posed one must know the meaning of ethics. Webster’s dictionary defines ethics as the philosophical study of the moral value of human conduct and of the rules and principles that ought to govern it; moral philosophy, the moral fitness of a decision, course of action, etc. Basically, I believe ethics is how one makes a decision according to the social norm that surrounds him. The social norm includes not only the culture but the laws and standard procedures of the environment. These laws and norms must be fully understood before one can understand the ethical significance of one’s decision.
In this paper, four critical points will be addressed relating to marketing ethics. There are also many other issues that relate to this topic, but these four areas namely, marketing research, market audience, advertising and promotion and pricing, are very important points for potential/current marketers to be precise and knowledgeable, so as to practice ethical values within themselves and their organization.