We’ve been exploring, in this series of articles, the topic of bringing honorable purpose back to salespeople. When aiming for their true goals, we’ve seen that salespeople create wealth and bring peace.
At Pipeliner, we’re indeed aiming for these goals. And anyone sane would certainly agree with these goals—for who wants war? Who wants a whole social order and entire cities to be torn down or destroyed? One has to be very cynical to state, as some do, that war is great for an economy. It might make a few people rich, but it makes many more poor or destitute, and the costs to rebuild are tremendous.
Because of today’s constant war, I refuse to support the “Big Bang Theory” and instead support the theory of creation. I’ve never seen anything beautiful or good come from an explosion, which today is expressed in bursting bombs.
Character of Trade—Trust
It is obvious that peace is a direct result of trade. When engaged in trade, two parties—or two countries or organizations—can never be involved in conflict. Trade inherently includes the factor of equality, the trading of items equal in value or an item for an equal amount of money.
Traders in history, for example, Marco Polo, were regarded with respect. The traders trusted the people they were trading with, and most importantly, the people trusted the traders. The quality of trust was ever-present, trust that people would receive what they were trading or paying for in equal measure.
How, then, can this quality be restored?
The Factor of Ethics
With all the troubles we’ve experienced in the last few years, we’ve certainly been living in a cloud of fear. For that reason, I don’t approach this subject lightly.
Several years ago I wrote an ebook entitled Emotions in Sales, in which I discussed the fact that the opposite of fear is trust. Trust is something we certainly need right now, in a society that is daily made afraid by just about everything in the news media. The government doesn’t help any by doing things such as giving us a “solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges.” of a vaccine that turns out to be ineffective, which leaves us incredibly skeptical or enacting “solutions” that cause gas prices to go out the roof. The government is a salesperson, too, one with unlimited funds for campaigns, and we certainly don’t trust this salesperson much today.
Let’s step back and examine the larger picture, and we see that in our society the foundation of trust has been falling apart for quite some time. People aren’t even trusting their own currencies anymore, and investing in cryptocurrencies. Besides the government, we’ve lost trust in other professions such as medicine, with the whole vaccine fiasco, and law. We lost trust in education when we found that the wealthy could simply pay to have their children accepted in higher learning institutions.
Beginning in our own field of sales, how do we start to restore trust? This is where the ethical component I brought in the last article comes into play, for there must be an element of ethics for sales to truly accomplish its mission. When ethics is present, then trust will be also. When people don’t trust salespeople, commerce does not occur. But when they trust salespeople, commerce does happen, and overall, an economy, small or large, can survive.
How Can We Make a Difference?
It might be that one ethical salesperson by themselves wouldn’t make that much of a difference. But here’s the good news: it does not take a majority of ethical salespeople to change society for the better. It was found in a recent study that it only takes 25 percent of a population to create a tipping point for the better.
Salespeople have an incredible ability the creation of trust. In the old days, a good deal would be confirmed with a simple handshake. It was a sign of commitment and agreement, a confirmation that the salesperson would be delivering exactly what they promised.
Agreement, today, must be backed up by letters and contracts written in complex legal language. Despite that, though, it is the agreement on trust that is the essential part of any contract. When that is gone, trust has completely vanished, and factually people no longer own anything.
Salespeople, evidently, have a crucial role for the recreation of trust in our society. You, as a salesperson, should figure out how to take your stand and your responsibility.
You can get a much more detailed look at this subject from my new ebook Restoring Purpose to Sales, which you’ll soon be able to download for free from SalesPOP.
