Company Asking You to Sell to Family Members
Should you ever push products onto your friends?
Yous take a cracking production that yous think your friends would dearest. But they feel that you're giving them the hard sell. What to practise?
Q
Q. How do I avert a conflict of interest if I involve my friends in my business life? Where is the line betwixt giving people data or selling them a product that I think could help them (knowing that if they get customers, I benefit financially), and taking advantage of our relationship to sell something? How can I keep my friends while also being true to my employer?
A. The line between friends and business prospects is a fluid 1. In fact, some businesses are built expressly on eliminating this separate: call up Avon, Tupperware, Scentsy, Stella & Dot or whatsoever in-home party-programme model, which encourages sales representatives to sell directly to their friends and broader circles.
But problems can ascend if you call back you're providing the people in your network with a valuable product or service, but they feel similar you're giving them the hard sell. No one likes to be the target of an unwanted sales pitch — or feel that their friendship is being exploited.
Y'all'll have to exist careful non to be overly pushy about making sales, non to brand friends feel badly for maxim no to your pitches (or your suggestions that they tell their ain networks about your products), and non to use guilt as a weapon to strength purchases on your friends. This is specially truthful if you're in network marketing, which uses parties to sell jewellery, clothing, or diet plans, amid other products.
Should y'all sell to your friends? It's a question people take asked for decades (Credit: Alamy)
"If your business concern involves these kind of social sales, be ready for a lot of polite 'no' answers, and don't push besides hard lest information technology ruin your friendships," said Christine Whelan, a clinical professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the U.s.a..
To mitigate potential problems, give friends a few options, Whelan suggested by email: "Share information based on your expertise, perhaps offer them an insider discount and clearly say that there is no pressure to buy."
Be transparent
Transparency is the best way to get around these potential conflicts, said Deborah Rupp, a professor of industrial-organisational psychology at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, in the Us. "The best style to deal with potential upstanding quandaries is to talk most them," Rupp, who is the university's inquiry integrity officeholder, said by email.
Don't ambush your friends. Be upfront with them about your task or your relationship with a visitor that'southward paying you to sell things. And back off if they seem uncomfortable or tell y'all they aren't interested in what y'all're selling.
If yous're also pushy, your friends may start feeling exploited
The reverse problem is besides an issue for employees, Rupp said. Companies often have conflict-of-involvement policies that govern how staff should interact with outsiders: vendors, clients, regime regulators and consultants. "The term 'conflict' in this phrase tin can sometimes lead employees to fear that networking in certain ways will become them in trouble with their employer," Rupp said.
Speak upwardly
Once again, the primal is to speak up. Tell your dominate or your human being-resources section if you're concerned near a potential conflict — or damaging your relationship. Equally presently as you become aware, say, that your friendship with someone who works at a vendor will make it difficult for that firm to requite you competitive pricing, raise it as an result.
It's non reasonable for you to jettison your professional acquaintances, non to mention your family or friends, because of your chore. Both yous and the company are ameliorate served past letting yous keep your network, Rupp said: "Many times, one time disclosed and documented, such relationships tin continue, even potentially with additional back up from the system."
Spend Wisely
Think of your business with friends as promoting "prosocial spending", Whelan said, the idea that you can use your resources to do good others. When a friend buys from another friend, that can make the purchaser happier than buying from a stranger can, because you'll derive satisfaction from finding "a way to evidence your friend that you lot share their vision and are cheering for their success."
The ethics of a dignified leave
Q. Later on a senior manager was fired, to help preserve his dignity, the company told everyone he had retired. Now his former direct reports are complaining virtually the new supervisor hired to replace him (who reports to me). Some of the issues relate to the new person, but I recall it's mostly well-nigh the employees' confusion, suspicion, and anger that he "retired" without maxim goodbye, and their concern that information technology might be a smokescreen for a mass back-up. How should I handle this while protecting his privacy?
A. It sounds like your visitor has a culture of distrust: a senior managing director disappears without a trace, and people presume he's the harbinger of more job losses to come. It's likely that they see through management's ruse and doubtable he's been fired. And you're in a bind, because y'all can't tell anyone he was fired for cause without betraying the promise the visitor gave him not to divulge the real reason he left.
The company's upstanding impulses were correct when it came to treating him with respect. In the time to come, nonetheless, think twice before making a top director vanish like this.
Hired or fired? It can be a question of ethics (Credit: Alamy)
"Information technology'southward not unusual to say a person has retired when in fact he or she has been fired, just it is a mistake not to have an event and honour his or her service," said Hilary Pearl, an executive motorbus and organisational consultant in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.
If yous're trying to maintain the fiction that this person was of value to the system — and at that place is no legal reason you had to show him the door immediately — you have to follow through on making it look like he concluded his tenure respectably. If the person might exist embarrassed and not desire a big party, consider asking him to do something easygoing, like meeting the team for drinks afterwards work or coming into the role for a cake.
It'southward non too tardily to mop up the mess. First, figure out if indeed in that location is to be a mass layoff. If and so, anything you practise volition be seen as further evidence of disingenuousness, considering you will have proved the doubters right.
To maintain the image that someone quit and wasn't fired, some depression-cardinal leaving drinks helps to send them off (Credit: iStock)
If the firing is a one-off, work to allay your employees' fears that their new supervisor won't treat them well or run the business in the best way. Encourage the new dominate and the employees to go to know each other.
Consider bringing in an executive autobus (either from within your organisation or outside) to conduct some 360-caste interviews. Questions should include: What'southward going well? What could be improved or changed? What should the new supervisor do more of, less of, or continue doing? What can you do to aid your team succeed and to help the team work more effectively? Once the supervisor gets this anonymous feedback, he or she can create an action plan and share it with the employees — in a manner that makes them confident of their job security.
This might turn out to exist a lot of piece of work on your part, merely it tin can clear the air in the office and assist the new supervisor move alee, Pearl said. "The 360 process shows the staff that their opinions matter, offers them a formal opportunity to air their concerns and, if there are residual bug related to how their former boss left, gets that on the table."
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160718-should-you-ever-push-products-onto-your-friends
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