Ethical Buying & Selling: The Hard Sell is Dead

The Fair Exchange of Value

To many clients and customers, ethics and sales sometimes don’t comfortably go hand in hand. That’s a shame – as a sales professional, it’s imperative you’re confident and proud within your purview, and that these traits show through when you’re dealing with others. Ethics and sales, after all, is about the fair exchange of value.

Customers want to deal with sales people who are proactive and patient. They want sales people to listen to them – to understand their desires and requirements. They want to feel that they have engaged in an honest and open dialogue that’s based on trust and respect. As a sales person, this presents a challenge – but one that you can approach with relish, given the right attitude and the right tools.

The world of sales has evolved dramatically since the days of the 1990s and before. Remember when the focus was all on the product or service? When there was little or no interest in establishing long-term business relationships with clients? When it was considered a boon to your job to engage in aggressive and adversarial behaviour? Those days are gone. Integrity is paramount. The hard sell is dead.

As a sales person, you should strive to form lasting relationships with your customers. You must demonstrate trustworthiness. And the basis of that vital trust is built from the moment of your first contact with your prospect. The material in this book aims to help you gain a better comprehension of what it means to be an ethical sales professional.

You’ll also learn about the new sales paradigm and the factors that contribute toward successful modern selling, such as the Law of Reciprocity and what it means to use an emotional bank account. It’s important that as a sales person, you approach your tasks as an enlightened, consultative, business-oriented, co-operative professional who is organised, disciplined, and one who knows how to make business work for yourself and your customers.

We hope you’ll come to understand that you are part of an enterprising, progressive industry that is changing the world for the better.

Remember: everybody lives by selling something.

We hope you enjoy this book.