Ethics
What If The Customer Wants To Buy The Wrong Thing?
There is an expression in selling:
?Never get in the way of a customer who wants to buy something!?
It?s practical advice, don?t you think? After all, if they?re making it easy for you to profit, why slow them down?
Only a fool would do that, or so it seems.
For instance, in the car leasing business, there are some clients who want to have cloth seats, believing them to be cheaper, and perhaps more comfortable than vinyl or leather.
But on many models, having cloth seats actually makes leases much more expensive, because frighteningly few want to buy a used Cadillac with anything other than leather beneath their derrieres.
So, if the expected resale value is less, then the monthly lease payments go up.
Clearly, if the customer is driven by a need to save money, ordering cloth, is outright foolish, but the customer, particularly one waving cash in your face, is always right, isn?t he?
Does the seller have a duty to set him straight, to try to talk him out of his choice?
If he does, might it be risky? Could he lose the sale, entirely?
What, exactly, is the ethical obligation of a salesman when a customer wants to buy the wrong thing?
If he really wants it, can it ever be ?wrong??
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone? and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, ?The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,? published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman
Tags: customer service training, sales training, bus coaching, telemarketing training, customersatisfaction.coSimilar articles
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