Sales vs. Ethics

I know this topic doesn’t really come as a surprise to most people (especially any non-sales people who may be reading) but seeing it firsthand kind of did shock me. In the field I work in, financial services, the by-word has always been Ethics and even more so since Mr. Spitzer came on the scene a few years ago. Every year each of us has to take a continuing ed course, three hours or so, on Ethics where we are presented with various scenarios regarding “questionable” ethics and the right actions to take in them. Like most continuing ed courses the general feeling most of us get is “this couldn’t be more lame” and/or “what kind of idiot doesn’t know this?”

Well I’ve seen the idiot and he is us.

Over the years I’ve seen many situations where, although there may not be any real malice involved, the thinking is “we can make the sale, so we should make the sale” with very little thought as to how the client is impacted. Does the sale always come first? Shouldn’t there be some tangible benefit to the customer? We all think our product and our service and our company are better than the competition, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case. Some customers have perfectly good deals with other perfectly good vendors and what do we make of those situations? Isn’t that what the Continuing Ed classes are really supposed to be teaching us?

I’ve got an ethical issue with selling a product just to generate new commissions but due to the pressures of the job (or whatever) I don’t think a lot of sales reps see it that way. In certain industries (like Life Insurance) there are specific regulations prohibiting replacing products in this manner. Many of us have to put up with onerous laws and regulations that, for the most part, we think are unnecessary, overdone and a hindrance to our selling ability. If we don’t start policing ourselves and actually think about what we’re doing, there will be more and more and more such regulations.

Are Sales Reps an IT security threat?

Many, if not most, employers arm their field sales folks with laptops so that they can be productive on the road, and more often than not these laptops are loaded with security software (virus protection, VPNs, encryption software, etc) meant to protect the corporate network from security threats. While this security software seems like a good idea there are instances where it may not be enough, due to the nature of the beast that is the field sales rep.
There’s a couple of fundamental issues with field laptops in general that are issues that don’t come up with corporate desktops. One is that while you can block websites and application loading when someone’s using a desktop on the corporate network, it’s trivial to just not launch the VPN and go and do, basically, anything you want to, unfettered by corporate Mom.
A more likely scenario in the case of sales reps is the checking of personal e-mail. While it’s not usually a big deal for Home Office employees to wait until they get home at night to check e-mail, if you’ve got a rep constantly on the road, they’re not likely to wait 3 or 4 days to do so. That’s especially true for reps with families, who likely use e-mail or chat to communicate with family members while they’re away.
Of course there are corporate rules against some or all of this type of behavior, but human nature being what it is, it will continue to happen, and locking laptops down even more is definitely not the answer. Right now I turn on CNBC and get a cup of coffee before I start booting up so I have something to keep me occupied while I’m entering passwords and waiting.
Sure you can scan for virus’ and rogue applications once reps get back on the network, but sometimes (as in the case of the Storm worm) that step might be too late.
What to do? I have a solution that I’d personally like to try, but so far, I’ve been unsuccessful in convincing corporate IT to let me do it. The answer of course is to let me use my Mac laptop. Since Windows based virus’ and worms don’t run on Macs, what I do on my laptop with the Mac layer on the road doesn’t threaten the network and I’d be happy to have IT control (and lock down) the Windows layer for corporate only use. I don’t need, or expect, IT support for the Mac.
This seems to me to be a good solution, but, obviously I’m missing something. What is it?

We apologize for any inconvenience …

Really.

Feel badly, do you?

This "We apologize for any inconvenience" phrase is rapidly becoming meaningless, seeing as how it’s both overused and usually immediately follows someone telling you the corporate equivalent of “go pound sand”. The truly irksome thing is not the insincerity of the sentiment, it’s that most of the time the inconvenience is, if not intentional, certainly not causing any sleepless nights over at the XYZ Company.

If you want to be truthful, the response should be “Yeah, we know it’s a pain for our customers. What of it?”

I imagine there really are some firms that are sincerely apologetic, it’s just the two I’ve recently been dealing with (Chase & Vonage) clearly aren’t. But it’s not just them, I see this phraseology all the time and virtually always with the same preceding “shove it”.

Listen, don’t fake sincerity. If the customer is wrong, you can point out their error, apologize for the misunderstanding and offer solutions to fix it. If the customer isn’t wrong, you need to make it right for them.

Case in point is the Chase situation. Their interpretation of their fine print (define “may”) and mine vary. Their corporate policy is to define “may” as “will”. Legal issues aside, they should either change their disclosure wording or acknowledge my understanding. Instead their response is “This the way we do it” (go pound sand) and “We apologize for any inconvenience”. It’s not inconvenient – it’s wrong and you should offer to fix it.

How about “We’re sorry you misunderstood what we meant, but you’re gonna have to live with it.” At least it’d be honest.