Are You Selling for Sleazeballs?

Two key questions that every sales pro must confront are "What are my basic values?" and "Do I believe in what I'm selling?" If the answers don't agree, you'll never be very successful in sales. Even if you've got fantastic sales skills, customers will sense internal conflict and be far less likely to buy.

According to Ron Willingham, author of Integrity Selling for the 21st Century (Doubleday, 2003), if you believe that lying is a sin, you'll frequently flub the presentation if it requires you to misrepresent the product. If you believe that your life's purpose should be helping others, you'll flub the close if, in your heart of hearts, you know that you're selling something the customer doesn't need.

Many sales cultures automatically have sales processes that conflict with commonly held values. For example, many car dealerships subtly emphasize closing a deal quickly rather than making a customer happy. While there may be posters in the washroom touting customer satisfaction, rewards are parceled out according to who closes deals by the end of the day.

To be truly successful in such an environment, a sales pro must not care about the customer. Since only borderline sociopaths (i.e. con-men) think that way, organizations that encourage high pressure sales tactics always have high turnover rates and, among those who remain, a high incidence of stress-related illnesses, including alcoholism, drug usage, and depression.

The reason I bring this up today is last week I posted some sales advice from a different Ron, the porn star Ron Jeremy. Several comments to that post blasted me for suggesting that such a "sleazeball" (as one person put it) might have useful advice for sales pros in other industries.

Those comments, of course, entirely missed the point. I wasn't approving (or disapproving for that matter) of the product Ron was selling, but only pointing out that he was good at selling it. And, in fact, his values (such as they are) and his product are congruent. And clearly, those who commented would feel uncomfortable (and be ineffective) if they were asked to sell pornography.

But I wonder if they've looked very deeply into whatever product they actually are selling. Because, if I were going to compile a list of sleazeballs, it wouldn't include fat guys who make sex films, but:

• Food industry executives who are blocking laws to put country of origin labels on food and produce that could warn consumers of the possible presence of child-killing chemicals and pollutants.
• Semiconductor industry executives who continue to buy chips from factories in China where the pollution is so bad that people have died from the fumes emitting from "rivers" of chemical sludge.
• Toy industry executives who import lead-laced products, hem and haw before recalling them, and then cover up the fact that the workers at their factories are likely to become cancer victims.
• Government contractors who win no-bid contracts during a time of national emergency and then defraud homeless people and short-change our military personnel.
• IT consulting executives who after building giant companies by promising much and delivering little to American firms, promptly relocate their headquarters overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The reason I'm pointing this out is because, if you have high values and you also work for a firm that's doing awful things, you'll never be truly successful. And the world would be a better place if the truly talented sales pros (this means you!) stopped helping these companies become more "successful." So, if you're selling for sleazeballs, do yourself and the rest of the world a favor, and go find someplace else to work.