Integrity Selling

If Todd Duncan pointed out things you should avoid, Ron Willingham in Integrity Selling; How to Succeed in Selling in the Competitive Years Ahead (New York: Doubleday, 1987) gives you 10 elements of things to base your selling practice on.

To reiterate, an entrepreneur is a salesperson, so everything about sales applies to him or her.

You will notice the publication date on this book, 1987, is over 20 years ago. It shows that sound sales principles do not change with the times. They're just as valid today as they were then.

Willingham doesn't define "integrity," so how about this one from Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia:

In general, integrity refers to wholeness, in the sense of unity, consistency, purity, unspoiledness and uncorruptedness.

The etymology of the word integrity stems from the Latin adjective integer (whole, complete). In this context, integrity may comprise the personal inner sense of wholeness deriving from (say) honesty and consistency of character. As such, one can judge that others "have integrity" to the extent that one judges whether they behave according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold.

Integrity comprises perceived consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles. As a holistic concept, it judges the quality of a system in terms of its ability to achieve its own goals. A value system's abstraction depth and range of applicable interaction may also function as significant factors in identifying integrity due to their congruence or lack of congruence with empirical observation. A value system may evolve over time while retaining integrity if those who espouse the values account for and resolve inconsistencies.

Integrity may be seen as the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one's actions. The term "hypocrisy" is used in contrast to integrity for asserting that one part of a value system demonstrably conflicts with another, and to demand that the parties holding apparently conflicting values account for the discrepancy or change their beliefs to improve internal consistency.

I think Willingham would agree with this.

Here are the 10 ingredients in selling, as laid out in Willingham's "Statement of Integrity Values and Ethics:

1. Selling is an exchange of value.

2. Selling isn't something you do to someone, it's something you do for and with someone.

3. Understanding people's wants or needs must always precede any attempt to sell.

4. Develop trust and rapport before any selling activity begins.

5. Selling techniques give way to selling principles.

6. Integrity and high ethics are accepted as the basis for long-term selling success.

7. A salesperson's ethics and values contribute more to sales success than do techniques or strategies.

8. Selling pressure is never exerted by the salesperson. It's exerted only by prospects when they perceive they want or need the item being sold.

9. Negotiation is never manipulation. It's always a strategy to work out problems...when prospects want to work out the problems.

10. Closing isn't just a victory for the salesperson. It's a victory for both the salesperson and the customer.

I don't see anything on this list either with which Todd Duncan would disagree. As we go forward, we're going to unpack this list. Come to think of it, I don't think there's anything in Willingham's statement that Duncan would disagree with. In fact, I think they would get along quite well.

What do you think about this? Post a comment to this blog.

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.