In this article series, we’ve been talking about bringing honorable purpose back to being a salesperson. When aiming for their true goals, we’ve seen that salespeople create wealth and bring peace.
It is certainly these goals we’re aiming for at Pipeliner. 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.
Today there is constant war, which is why I support the theory of creation instead of the “Big Bang Theory.” I’ve never seen anything beautiful or good come from an explosion, which today is expressed in falling bombs.
The Trust Character of Trade
Trade indeed brings peace, for if two parties—or two organizations or two countries—are engaged in trade, they will 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.
The traders of old, such as Marco Polo, were held in high regard. 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.
The question then becomes, how can we bring this quality about once more?
The Ethical Component
I don’t bring up this idea lightly, for especially in the last few years, we’ve been living in fear with all the troubles we’ve been experiencing.
In an ebook I wrote several years ago, Emotions in Sales, 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 “solution” 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 look at the larger picture when it comes to trust, for the foundation of trust has been crumbling in our society 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.
How can we begin to restore trust, beginning in our own sales field? 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.
Making a Difference
Perhaps one person conducting ethical sales would hardly make a difference in the overall culture. 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.
I truly believe that salespeople have a tremendous capability to create 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.
Today such agreement must be written into complex contracts and letters. 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.
You can see from all this that salespeople have a vital role in recreating trust in society. You, as a salesperson, should figure out how to take your stand and your responsibility.
For a full examination of this subject, have a look at my new ebook Restoring Purpose to Sales, which you’ll soon be able to download for free at SalesPOP.
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