NOW THAT SHE HAD TO, JEAN M C GUIRE WASN'T sure she could. Not that she didn't understand what to do. Wright Boazman, sales director for Sunrise Land Developers, had made the step clear enough when he described a variety of effective "deal-closing techniques." As Wright explained it, very often people actually want to buy a lot but suffer at the last minute from self-doubt and uncertainty. The inexperienced salesperson can misinterpret this hesitation as a lack of interest in a property. "But," as Wright pointed out, "in most cases it's just an expression of the normal reservations we all show when the time comes to sign our names on the dotted line."In Wright's view, the job of a land salesperson was "to help the prospect make the decision to buy." He didn't mean to sug-gest that salespeople should misrepresent a piece of property or in any way mislead people about what they were purchasing. "The law prohibits this," he pointed out, "and personally I ?nd such behavior repugnant. What I'm talking about is helping them buy a lot that they genuinely want and that you're convinced will be compatible with their needs and interests." For Wright Boazman, salespeople should serve as motivators, people who can provide whatever impulse was needed for prospects to close the deal.In Wright's experience, one of the most effective closing techniques was what he termed "the other party." It goes something like this.Suppose someone like Jean McGuire had a hot pros-pect, someone who was exhibiting real interest in a lot but who was having trouble deciding. To motivate the prospect into buying, Jean ought to tell the person that she wasn't even sure the lot was still available because a number of other salespeople were showing the same lot, and they could already have closed a deal on it. As Wright put it, "This ?rst move generally increases the prospect's interest in the property, and more important to us, in closing the deal pronto."
Next Jean should say something like, "Why don't we go back to the of?ce, and I'll call headquarters to ?nd out the status of the lot?" Wright indicated that such a suggestion ordinarily "whets their appetite" even more. In addition, it turns prospects away from wondering whether they should purchase the land and toward hoping that it's still available.When they return to the of?ce, Jean should make a call in the presence of the prospect. The call, of course, would not be to "headquarters" but to a private of?ce only yards from where she and the prospect sit. Wright or someone else would receive the call, and Jean should fake a conversation about the property's availability, punctuating her comments with contagious excitement about its desirability. When she hangs up, she should breathe a sigh of relief that the lot's still available-but barely. At any minute, Jean should explain anxiously, the lot could be "green-tagged," meaning that headquarters is expecting a call from another salesperson who's about to close a deal and will remove the lot from open stock. (An effective variation of this, Wright pointed out, would have Jean abruptly excuse herself on hanging up and dart over to another sales representative with whom she'd engage in a heated, although staged, debate about the availability of the property-loud enough, of course, for the prospect to hear. The intended effect, according to Wright, would be to place the prospect in a "now or never" frame of mind.)When Jean ?rst heard about this and other closing tech-niques, she felt uneasy. Even though the property was every-thing it was represented to be and the law in her state allowed purchasers three days to change their minds after closing a deal, she instinctively objected to the use of psycho-logical manipulation. Nevertheless, Jean never expressed her reservations to anyone, primarily because she didn't want to endanger her job, which, as a single mother with two children to support, she certainly needed. Besides, Jean had con-vinced herself that she could deal with closures more respectably than Wright and other salespeople might. But the truth was that, after six months of selling land for Sunrise, Jean's sales lagged far behind those of the other sales repre-sentatives. Whether she liked it or not, Jean had to admit she was losing a considerable number of sales because she
couldn't close. And she couldn't close because, in Wright Boazman's words, she lacked technique. She wasn't using the psychological closing devices that he and others had found so successful.Now as she drove back to the of?ce with two hot pros-pects in hand, she wondered what to do.
Next, read and reflect upon the following in preparation for composing a case analysis:
Sales and Marketing Executives International, Inc. (n.d.). Sales and Marketing creed: The international code of ethics for sales and marketing. Retrieved from https://www.smei.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=16
National Association of Realtors. (2012). 2012 code of ethics and standards of practice. Real Estate Resources. Retrieved from https://www.realtor.org/mempolweb.nsf/pages/code
Suppose you knew either that the prospect would eventually decide to buy the property anyway, or that it would genuinely be in the prospect's interest to buy it. Would that affect your moral assessment of this closing technique?
• Do customers have any grounds for complaining about this closing technique if the law allows them three days to change their minds?
- What ideals, obligations, and effects must Jean consider?
What interests and rights of the customer are at stake?
What rule, if any, would a rule utilitarian encourage real estate agents in this situation to follow?
Consider at least one additional theory in your approach to evaluating this situation.
Then, develop your case analysis using the five following sections:
Section 1: Introduction and situational analysis. Describe the ethical dilemma, giving appropriate background information. The term "dilemma" implies that there are pros and cons to various options, even if some are clearly more socially acceptable than others. This is also where you do your situational analysis - identify factors related to the individual(s) involved (consider the readings from this module), company and managerial practices and policies, external factors such as economic pressure, and any other aspects of the situation that you believe helped create the dilemma. Do not tell the story of the chosen case, instead spend time on pulling out the relevant points that form the main thrust of the ethical dilemma.
Section 2: Stakeholder analysis. Identify the key stakeholders and how they are potentially impacted by the various options in the dilemma. Note that stakeholder analysis is particularly pertinent to the consequentialist approach, and that one of the challenges is in estimating positive and negative impacts on relevant stakeholders. Do the best you can, looking at both good and bad consequences for each stakeholder group. Make sure you summarize the overall situation and come to a conclusion about the greater good.
Section 3: Analysis based on ethical theories. Analyze the ethical dilemma using a relevant theoretical perspective from this module's material.
Section 4: Conclusion and recommendations. Up to now, you have been analyzing and comparing options. Here is where you pull together the different threads of your analysis and determine whether or not the company or individual did the right thing. Also, make recommendations about what should have been done. Make sure your justifications clearly flow from your analysis. Make managerial and policy recommendations that would help avoid similar ethical dilemmas in the future and provide guidance to help those facing a similar dilemma.
Section 5: References. List at least three sources (other than the articles provided, your text, or the case article) where you located additional information about the company and the associated ethical dilemma(s).
General guidance: Include a title page, and label the five sections. Your paper should be 2 to 3 pages in length, not including the title and reference pages. All citations should be in APA 6th Edition format. Double space your paper, and use Times New Roman, 12-point font, with one inch margins
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