Poll: Over half UK salespeople asked say they'd leave a job if they had ethical concerns
The majority of the UK salespeople surveyed in our poll are concerned about principles, ethics and accountability, our survey for sales performance management provider Xactly has found, despite salespeople's sometimes dismal reputation in these areas.
- Over half (55%) of survey respondents said they would leave a job because they had issues with the product or service they were selling
- Of the 196 sales professionals surveyed almost a third (32%) said they would leave because they felt colleagues were behaving unethically
- Women were found to be slightly more likely than men to leave a sales job as a result of behaviour they believed to be unethical (58% vs. 53%)
The research also explored the extent to which today’s salespeople consider themselves to be more or less ethical than the previous generation.
- 45% of respondents born before 1978 (‘Generation X’) considered that their generation are more ethical than those born afterwards (‘Generation Y’)
- This compares to only 10% of ‘Generation Y’ respondents surveyed who thought ‘Generation X’ were more ethical
- And while 42% of those surveyed said that they would not find it motivational to have their personal sales progress made visible to colleagues, a very similar proportion (43%) said that they actually would find this information motivational at work
Christopher Cabrera, Xactly CEO, commented on the poll, saying “selling underpins business competitiveness – it’s a role many of us play at some point in our lives. So why would those who have chosen sales as a career be any less ethical than other professions? In fact, salespeople are even more accountable for their actions because their performance is often directly linked to compensation and therefore tightly monitored.”
Used by companies including Motorola and Siemens, Xactly Corporation offers sales compensation and sales performance management solutions, enabling sales and finance executives to easily design, implement, manage, audit and optimize sales commission management programs.
