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Wednesday, October 11th, 2023
Homebuilder Keepmoat has enrolled almost 120 sales professionals as members of the Institute of Sales Professionals as part of a focus on customer service through sales excellence. Announcing the move on 5 September, the ISP emphasised how the initiative will support continuous professional development of Keepmoat’s salespeople and promote high ethical standards. The salespeople will take the ISP’s registration exam…
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
What does it mean, and does it add value to businesses? In a world where sustainability is the new buzzword, is “sustainable sales” just greenwashing or can it genuinely support the creation of a company’s unique selling proposition? Academic concepts sometimes languish through lack of action as they cannot be translated into professional practice; however, this article defines sustainable sales…
Monday, February 13th, 2023
As AI-guided selling takes hold, ethics remains an important foundational principle. Today, AI can do things that humans could never do before like finding the quickest route to a destination; personalising suggestions for books, films, music, and clothes; identifying new chemical compounds and medical treatments; predicting equipment failures and coordinating maintenance across complex supply chains; using quality-assurance data to improve…
Monday, February 13th, 2023
Persimmon is the first homebuilder to achieve the Institute of Sales Professional’s Investor in Sales award. The award recognises commitment to develop strong customer relationships based on integrity, trust, and ethical selling. To date, 114 sales advisers have been fully accredited with the ISP with more to follow. Meanwhile, staff turnover within its sales excellence programme has fallen by 70%…
Monday, July 4th, 2022
Almost every leader claims to be ethical in business, but do they have the character to foster trust? Ethics, necessary but not sufficient Corporate scandals from Enron to Freddie Mac occurred despite the fact that the organizations and individuals leading them were operating in environments governed by a code of ethics. Yet, people still behaved poorly. Why? Why do people…
Monday, January 10th, 2022
We interviewed Kelly Garramone and Phil Styrlund to understand how character is a key driver of organisational success in sales. They explained how sales organisations can take part in some ground-breaking research that will drive performance. What is character science? Pioneered by Dr Fred Kiel (amongst others), character science is a new field of study that was born out of…
Monday, September 27th, 2021
Sales ethics is essential in the new normal. Good business strategy Many companies, even entire industries, struggle to remain open during this ongoing period of challenging economic uncertainty. Business models that were shifting prior to the pandemic, such as the move from instore shopping to e-commerce, have accelerated because of the pandemic. Businesses are adjusting strategies to stay ahead of…
Monday, July 26th, 2021
Nostos (Ancient Greek: νόστος) is a theme common in Ancient Greek literature. It was brought to life in Homer’s Odyssey. Nostos concerns an epic hero returning home by the sea and retaining both his status and identity. In a metaphorical sense, I planned to use Homer’s Odyssey to draw upon my business life experiences and journey. Little did I know…
Friday, May 22nd, 2020
How to manage and lead through the current crisis with the wisdom of Aristotle. In a recent London Business School poll, we asked an audience of over 1,000 senior executives how as leaders they would like to look back on the current crisis. They could choose from five possible outcomes – for them personally as well as for their organisations:…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
TomTom Telematics has been recognised as an Investor in Sales for its commitment to ethical sales standards. More than 50 per cent of a company’s sales team are required to pass the APS professional registration assessment to gain this status. TomTom’s pass rate, across their UK sales force, was 100 per cent and their sales team now appear on the…
Thursday, March 8th, 2018
Completed in May 2016, this Masters project investigates links between ethics and education, and sets out to evaluate the impact that longer-term education will have on individual sales behaviour. The aim of this research is to investigate if there is a link between the subject of ethics and education, and to evaluate the impact that longer-term education will have on…
Sunday, April 23rd, 2017
In an original project submitted for his Doctor of Professional Studies qualification, Phil Squire asked: How can a “client-centric values” approach to selling lead to the “co-creation” of a new global selling mind-set? Here’s what he found out. In 2002, I conducted an interview with the Chief Information Officer of IMS Health, a large, global, pharmaceutical company. The subject of…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Pressure on the sales function has placed the salesperson in the uncomfortable position of dealing with complex, unrelenting ethical dilemmas on an almost daily basis. The sales department has never been more important to the organization. Given clearly established metrics and direct revenue contributions that connect to financial performance, coupled with an essential role in creating customer value, it is…
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
Professor Mark Johnston explores the conundrum of the high-performing, low ethics salesperson. Organizations strive to hire, train, develop and enable salespeople to reach a high level of performance. Of course, as every sales manager knows, only a few can truly be considered “high performers”. Research on high-performing salespeople suggests they are different and often require sales managers to “adjust” their…
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
Ethics is the foundation stone for trust between sellers and buyers. A core task for all sales professionals is to ethically balance responsibility to shareholders with a duty of integrity towards customers. At work, sales professionals are much more likely to be driven by following rules than in their personal lives. Rules are an insufficiently robust mechanism to guide behaviour…
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
It’s not just customers who need protection from unethical behaviour; a code of ethics would also help defend salespeople. Who at Volkswagen could possibly have thought it would be a good idea to install emissions-test-cheating software in the company’s diesel cars? The scam sought to disguise output of nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times the level allowed in the…
Monday, July 6th, 2015
How can sales survive in a banking sector beset by scandal? Interest rate hedging products where businesses were mis-sold complex insurance deals… tax dodging… manipulation of the London interbank lending rate (LIBOR) to boost profit from trades… money laundering… the manipulation of foreign exchange rates by out-of-control rogue traders – these have been the scandals which for many have come…
Tuesday, April 7th, 2015
What is the relationship between sales ethics and business performance? Professor Mark Johnston takes us through the latest research. From Apple to Volkswagen, the axiom – ethical business is good business – is firmly embedded in today’s corporate culture. While this ethical business model is driven at all levels and throughout the organisation, nowhere is it more important than the…
