Sales Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sales Ethics - Essay Example The problem now lies on our yardstick or the standard that we use in measuring what is acceptable as ethical. Surely, legal measures are not viable in setting an ethical standard. Though, sales conduct is often regulated by government acts like the Clayton Antitrust Act with its associated and Robinson-Patman Amendment Federal Trade Commission Act with its associated Wheeler-Lea Amendment. Often, a lot of sales practices are considered legal yet unethical. An example of this is when a sales rep treats his prospective buyer to lunch and wins the contract by proposing a drink of alcoholic liquor after it. This is tolerable in the basis of legality yet, this is an unethical sales conduct. Sales ethics captures idea of the "golden rule," that is an action is considered ethical if you want somebody to do the same thing that you do to them. This is very reasonable as nobody will allow a salesperson to take advantage of him/her. Of course, all of us would want to be fully informed about the products we are considering to purchase. Next, sales ethics is present a salesperson is willing to publicly inform his conduct to the society. This is logical as anybody would be hesitant in notifying the public of any flaw in his transactions and business dealings with customer. If a salesperson is brave enough to be transparent so as to allow others to know every detail of his actions, then he is undoubtedly ethical. The last component of ethical behavior is examining whether or not it aggravated anyone. If the business dealings of a salesperson harms the customer or the company, his conduct is out of the ethical standard and is morally unacceptable. For me, these three measures fully capture the true essence of sales ethics. Sales ethics is a very crucial factor in the success of any business operation. Increasingly, it is observed that customers base their buying decisions on their perception of the company's ethical background. It was found out that buyers prefer to purchase from firms they consider as ethical (Bucaro 1998). It is also important to note that the market's perception of the company's image is strongly associated to the conduct of its salespersons as they are the firm's direct link to customers. Thus, the sales representative's conduct significantly affects the sales and profitability of a business entity. Question 3. There is a role for transaction-focused traditional selling as well as trust-based relationship selling in personal sales. Do you agree Explain your reasons. Answer: The changes that the business world undergoes call for innovative solutions to provide maximum customer value. Because of this, a lot of marketing strategies have evolved in order to suit the changing needs and preferences of buyers. There is an increasing trend of "moving away" from the traditional practices and innovating a new set of technique to boost sales. Traditional selling is now replaced with newer solutions like collaborative and relationship selling. Traditional selling is the salespersons' conventional way of doing business transaction with customers. This transaction often