7.4 Ethics and personal selling

Ethical issues may arise in personal selling where there is a tension between a salesperson’s obligation to their organisation, their own interest and the needs of consumers. Thus, they have to reconcile short-term sales quotas against building long-term consumer trust. In addition, salespeople often work on their own, under time pressure and do not have readily accessible support mechanisms when they encounter ethical conflicts (Murphy et al., 2005).

Push money (also termed PMs or spiffs) are incentives for salespeople to promote a certain product (Murphy et al., 2005). Push money can raise ethical issues if it is misused. For example, by offering it without the approval of the retailer, if it is not offered fairly to all salespeople, or if it encourages the mis-selling of products to consumers.

Sales-related practices that involve ethical issues include (Murphy et al., 2005, p. 193):

• overstocking, i.e. getting a consumer to take more stock than required to meet a sales quota
• overselling, i.e. selling consumers a more expensive model than they require
• overpromising, i.e. promising an unrealistic delivery date
• overtelling, i.e. divulging confidential information
• under-informing, i.e. withholding information from consumers that could affect their purchase decision
• gift-giving, this is accepted practice in some countries but can sometimes cross over into bribery
• product tampering, i.e. sabotaging a competitor’s product, for example in a retail store or trade show.

Many of the ethical conflicts and temptations to act unethically arise because of the way in which salespeople are rewarded. This could be addressed by making sales quotas more realistic or basing compensation on measures that reduce conflicts of interest.