Integrity Selling Point #7: Ethics and Values Contribute More Than Do Techniques or Strategies

Willingham's 7th point: "A salesperson's ethics and values contribute more to sales success than do techniques and strategy." See Integrity Selling; How to Succeed in Selling in the Competitive Years Ahead (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. xv.

A story: a commercial and a residential realtor shared a client. This particular client, the residential realtor had referred to the commercial realtor.

The client wanted to get money from his property. He could find a renter for it or sell it, but first he had to evict a squatter, a person living in there without paying rent. The client finally got the squatter out of there finally and changed the locks and sent them to the commercial realtor.

The residential realtor called the commercial realtor and asked if he could get copies to him. The commercial office was pretty far across town and the property was equally distant between the two offices.

The commercial guy said they keys would be at his office for the residential realtor to pick up. The residential realtor asked the commercial guy, could he have his people make copies of the keys and have them ready for the residential realtor.

The commercial guy called the residential realtor lazy and a prima donna for expecting the commercial realtor's staff to "drop everything" and do for the residential realtor. The residential realtor had to go over to the commercial office, pick up the keys, have them copied, check them to make sure they work, then take the keys back.

The moral: Don't e like this. Pay it forward. If I had been the commercial guy, I would have said, "I'll have the keys copied and dropped off at your office within 24 hours.

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This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.