Measuring Sales Perfomance on Ethical Standards

This Tuesday I gave my interactive presentation "The Power of Principles" to members of SMEI in Lehigh Valley, PA.  This discussion is focused on ethics in sales and marketing.

Always good for debate, we were reviewing Hosmer’s The Ethics of Management which discusses three alternative means of arriving at a decision when faced with an ethical conflict.

The ensuing debate considered many applications of the ‘Hosmer Triangle’ to decision making in sales and marketing management.  One member suggested that we consider managing to ethics in the sales arena, not just managing performance on the traditional quotas, lead generation and territory management, but include ethical behavior in the matrix.

This is an interesting concept.  What if we managed to ethics?  Some companies have their sales force sign an elaborate code of ethics, hard to interpret unless you have legal training, and even harder to apply. Do these companies measure to this or is it purely for liability purposes?

Dear reader, this is where you come in.  I would love to hear your comments.  How could such performance be measured?  What influences would vary the indicators, if any?  Other thoughts, pros or con?  Perhaps ethical behavior by the sales force could become a measurement in the customer satisfaction index.