Miller's Sales Blog Applying Character in Sales

What is character?

What is character?

Dictionary.com: “the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person…”

A couple of observations: everyone possesses their own individual nature which sums up their character; character can be bad or good; when we consider “character and selling” we are thinking of the application of good features and traits of an individual’s nature to the sales process.

Sounds pretty basic, but I can see and hear the reactions of people when I begin to imply that there may be an objective standard of what defines “good” or “right” character. When I insert the words “good moral” in front of character, people (especially HR) suddenly start to squirm in their seats. If I post “absolute moral standards” in my discussion of what qualifies as good character, then some people start to get fairly uncomfortable. I’ve seen it first hand.

I do a lot of volunteer work with university students at a local college campus in the context of our church. One of the absolutely hardest things for students to agree on in our current culture is that there exists an objective standard of right and wrong. Our culture has so affected the youth of today, that the one wrong thing for them to say is that someone is right and therefore someone else is wrong about a particular issue. The discussion invariably leads to a discussion of the Holocaust and the question of whether Hitler violated an absolute moral standard by practicing genocide. This is the place where most students finally plant a flag, draw a line in the sand and say, “Well maybe there are some moral laws which apply to all people, in all places, at all times…” I have also seen some students however that theoretically cling to the possibility that we should not judge Hitler's actions given his context. Absurd.

When I was a student (giving away some of my age here), there was never any question about whether right and wrong existed. There might be a good debate regarding some nuance, but in general there was strong agreement that there was a standard and around what the standard was. So without apology, I will approach the discussion about good moral character from the perspective that right and wrong really exist, that right and wrong are objectively definable, and that we (people) generally agree on this objective moral standard. I can assure you that your customers hope that you have an objective moral standard that guides your sales process, as do you. You want the bank in which you deposit your commission checks to have an objective moral standard of right and wrong. This is how we live, and we could not live otherwise.

So if you were going to argue against the existence of an objective moral standard, I’d say right away, that you have some character issues that need some real soul searching. I’d love to discuss it with you further.

Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss some of the traits I’m convinced make up the type of character we want to apply as we sell – things like integrity, diligence, and discipline.

Posted at 07:20AM Jul 12, 2007 by George Miller in Personal  |  Comments[1]