Ethics + Sales = Success

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Ethics + Sales = Success, even when you don’t think they do.  After graduating from a state university with about a 2.5 grade point average in business (marketing), one of the jobs that was readily available to me via our placement office was in the world of sales.  Although my childhood desire was not to grow up to be a salesperson, I did grow up with a fantastic father who sold Yellow Pages advertising for his entire career.  If the sales profession was good enough for my ethical Dad, his success was absolutely good enough for me!

Very early into my inside sales job with a small high-tech start-up company, I realized that people don’t always treat salespeople very well – especially those salespeople who are making cold calls! I also realized that some companies and some managers might condone tactics and strategies that did not fit my value system.

So, how was I able to align the stereotypical salesperson persona – fast-talking, slick, insincere, unethical – with my very strong values and integrity-based, Catholic upbringing?

My initial assistance came from my first business mentor on the planet – my Dad.  He was always one of the top producing salespeople at the telephone company and he personified the exact opposite traits of the salesperson that I mentioned above. My Dad was a slow-talking, smooth, sincere, meticulous and ethical individual.  I knew that if my Dad was able to have a very long successful career in this profession by displaying those traits, I was probably going to be okay too.

The next major milestone came in the late 1980’s when I was working for a $700M high tech company based in Irvine, CA.  My new sales manager bought me a book to read that changed my life.  He gave me a small paperback sales book called, The Greatest Salesman in The World, by Og Mandino.

At that point in my life, I was not a big reader but I proceeded to crack the book to learn more about sales tactics and strategies.  Instead of entering a world of sales tactics, I found myself in the middle of an engaging story of a salesman in the Middle East. The story lead up to the finding of ancients scrolls which contained the secrets to success in sales. I quickly found out that the author – Og Mandino (named after St. Augustine) – was an unbelievably talented writer with the ability to take Christian principles and incorporate them into spellbinding stories.

The 10 secrets that were written on the scrolls were explained in great detail with each secret receiving its own dedicated chapter. The reader’s responsibility was to read one chapter, twice a day for several days to allow the information to slowly and permanently enter the mind.  Here are the 10 principles from the scrolls:

Today I begin a new life. I will greet this day with love in my heart. I will persist until I succeed. I am nature’s greatest miracle. I will live this day as if it is my last. Today I will be master of my emotions. Today I will laugh at the world. Today I will multiply my value a hundred times – How will I accomplish this? My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. Who is of so little faith that in a moment of great disaster or heartbreak has not called to his God?

I couldn’t get enough of Og Mandino’s principles for success. After I had consumed that book, I proceed to buy every one of his books and do the same thing until I had completely digested each and every one of his concepts. In case you couldn’t tell from the list, Mandino was not creating a list to assist salespeople with their vocation – he was creating a list of attitudes and habits that are encouraged for success for every person in every vocation.

The most recent gift that I received was when I participated in sales and sales management training from Guru Ganesha Khalsa at Sandler Training. I received that training in January of 1998. Among many other things, this turban wearing, ZZ Top-bearded Guru, let me know that the most important thing that influences our success in sales is our attitude. The Sandler Training concepts that he taught me reinforced the concept that our attitudes are controlled by our feelings about ourselves – mind, body and spirit, – the company that we work for and the marketplace in which we’re selling.

The single-most important component that influences our attitude is our feeling about ourselves – mentally, spiritually andphysically.  This also happens to be the piece over which we have the most control.

Having a strong spiritual component to our lives leads to an internal peace that assists us in all that we do. It allows us to connect with other humans at a significantly deeper level.

Developing a strong, positive mind is essential in manifesting the potential that is inside of us.

Taking care of ourselves physically allows us the stamina and health to be able to live today and each day to the fullest free from disease.

That training impacted me so much that I left my high-tech sales management position at a very successful company that was growing 70% per year to purchase my very own Sandler Training franchise. I spent the next 10 years of my life letting thousands of salespeople, sales managers, sales engineers and executives around the world know that not only is it possible to be tremendously successful in sales when acting with honesty, integrity, ethics and spiritual values but, there is no better way of doing it!