Ethical B2B Selling versus Manipulative B2B Selling
A Baker’s Dozen for Both!
By “Sales Baker” Michael Griffin
Ethical B2B salespeople who demonstrate integrity are a competitive advantage. Customers want to collaborate with salespeople they trust. Professional salespeople who demonstrate integrity have a much better chance of gaining a profitable long term customer relationship.
Unethical salespeople are those that are only focused on getting the deal, meeting their targets, and getting their commission possibly at their customer’s or even their own organization’s expense. Their moto is “the end justifies the means.”
This “checklist” sales blog gives you the “baker’s dozen.” 12 + 1 insights of selling behaviors or attitudes that demonstrate ethical B2B selling or those unethical ones that destroy trust and long-term client loyalty.
12 + 1 Behaviors and Attitudes of Ethical B2B Salespeople
Consultative, Curious Discovery
Have a serving, curious attitude to approach customer needs & pain points as a “diagnostic physician” rather than an eager “feature peddler” pushing inventory.
Active, Empathetic Listening
Practice focused active learning with the customer in your mind, behaviors and emotions. Prioritizing a deep discovery/comprehension of the client's internal political, budget, and operational needs, motivators & constraints over rehearsed pitch delivery. Listen first, not tell and sell.
Diagnose Before Prescribing
Invests significant time understanding the prospect’s operational, financial, and strategic pain points before mentioning their product. Also look for the client personal motivators, or “need behind the need:” performance, achievement, image, safety, order, and risk needs.
Probe, Ask Good Questions to Understand, Not to Reply
Ask clarifying questions and paraphrases back the prospect’s concerns to ensure absolute alignment before proposing solutions.
Respect for Competitors
Acknowledging your rivals objectively without resorting to mudslinging, fear-mongering, or misinformation. Never bad mouth a competitor nor “praise” them. Just acknowledge they are a decent or good company.
Give Real Data-Driven Proof
Offer relevant proof: performance claims, ROI metrics, and operational outcomes with verified, verifiable case studies and evidence. Third party proof works best.
Collaborative Problem-Solving
Working jointly with the economic buyer, the buying committee, procurement and end-users to design solutions and implementation roadmaps that minimize operational disruption and achieve win-win outcomes. This means you must be able to build trust with different personalities to gain buy-in and collaboration inside their organization as well.
Empower the Internal Champion
Equip the economic buyer or champion with objective case studies and third-party validations, or power point presentations so they can confidently sell the solution internally without exaggerating claims.
Respect the Buyer’s Timeline
Defer to the prospect’s pace, timing, procurement cadence and internal approval processes without applying artificial pressure to expedite.
Accountability for Mistakes
Owning delivery delays, software glitches, or training gaps immediately and outlining actionable remediation steps without excuses. Do this early if needed, because “run and hide” leads to disaster.
Disclose Limitations Proactively
Honestly points out where their solution falls short or is overkill, allowing the buyer to make a fully informed decision.
Protect the Buyer’s Data
Handles all prospect and client data with the strictest confidentiality, using it only to improve service, never for covert retargeting or leverage.
Measure Success by Outcomes, Not Deals
Ties client personal and organisational success to metrics to the client's achievable KPIs (e.g., cost savings, efficiency gains) six months post-implementation or possibly during a pilot phase.
12+1 Behaviors & Attitudes for Manipulative B2B Salespeople
Sell the "Dream," but Hide the Gaps
Over-promises on roadmap features and integration capabilities that are still in beta or non-existent to close the deal today. The over-promise and then under deliver trap to get the contract or deal.
Push the "Big Bang" Solution
Insists the buyer must purchase the enterprise tier and multi-year contract immediately, ignoring the prospect’s phased or pilot requirements. This can be deadly to get the initial deal because tying the customer up is poor business sense.
Bait-and-Switch Pricing
Advertises a low "seat price" but buries mandatory setup, feature overages that cost extra, and premium support fees deep in the fine print of the contract. Cover up details when in the sales discussion is seen as evasive.
Selective Hearing Because Product Feature Push
Acknowledges or ignores the prospect's stated needs but steers every conversation back to the product's features, regardless of whether they address the actual customer concerns. These types of salespeople are “feature dependant” and rarely become sellers who can demonstrate value to the customer’s problems.
Ghost post-Sale
Disappears the moment the contract is countersigned, handing the client to an undertrained, under-resourced support team with zero transition handover. “It’s not my job to implement” – yikes!
Gaslight the Buying Committee
Dismisses valid technical objections as "change resistance" or "old-school thinking" to invalidate the concerns of diligent stakeholders or buying committees. They are not curious or teachable to address concerns across buying committee members.
Blame Shift on Failures
Attributes poor implementation results to the client's "lack of internal adoption" or "poor data hygiene," rather than taking responsibility for the solution's flawed architecture. “it’s your fault, customer, not mine! – OMG!
Gives Unrealistic Timelines
Promises implementation timelines or ROI that are not realistically achievable to accelerate the buying decision. Another tactic similar to “bait and switch” using false time lines to force a sale.
Manufacturing false urgency
Fake deadlines, "this price expires today" pressure not grounded in reality. Similar to number 8.
Discrediting competitors
With exaggerations or falsehoods rather than honest comparison. Bad mouthing ruins trusting relationships.
Overwhelm with Fluff
Floods the buyer with feature heavy, dense, jargon-heavy slide deck and 100-page proposals to confuse them, hoping they will sign rather than read the fine print.
Hide Product Limitations
Intentionally avoids discussing known weaknesses, implementation risks, or feature gaps until after the contract is signed. Avoiding objections or lying about product limitations.
Fake Social Proof
Exaggerates customer success stories or references to create false confidence in the solution. I have seen this one a lot.
Read and see what ones you need to use with your sales team to inspire integrity and the ones you need to eliminate to continue to be a company and salespeople that can be trusted.
Michael J. Griffin
CEO and Founder of ELAvate
Global Sales Productivity Coach
Partner with Salesably AI
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com
+65-91194008 (WhatsApp)