Would You Sell £25,000 Solar Panels To An 82 Year Old ?

Even the noblest of causes offers cynics an opportunity for gain. And its supporters aren't always as noble as the cause. Green issues are a case in point. There's a whole green industry anxious to exploit our desire to help the planet and save on energy costs.
Solar panels seem like a great way to avoid wasting the earth's natural resources. So far so good, but if you've got solar panels to sell, you'll want to appeal to more than altruism. So what about good old fashioned greed?  Suggest the customer can save money as well as the planet and the sale is assured. Even if they'll never save enough to pay for the huge cost of the panels.
One sales rep recently tried to sell top of the range panels to an 82 year old I know. The kind of panels that generate electricity, enough to cover your own use and leave some over to sell to an electricity company. Only £25,000 (which is already £9000 more than the highest price I could find on the web). Even on the salesman's own figures, it would take 20 years to pay back the cost, let alone the lost interest on savings. Remember he's talking to an 82 year old.
Then there's scientists so desperate to prove their case that they massage the figures and eco warriors who fly on private jets to campaign the cause. Yet the fact is, just because there will always be unscrupulous or stupid people who attach themselves to a cause, it doesn't make the cause unworthy. Just as a few fanatics are being used to discredit a whole religion, so we should be aware that climate change sceptics will use any bad behaviour by 'greens' to create doubt about the need to take action on damage to the environment.
Having been in marketing for much of my life, I'm aware that, because of some unethical types, there's an assumption on many people's parts that marketing is about lying, saying anything to sell your product. My own experience is that marketing is about finding a truth within the product that will connect it to the potential purchaser.Add to which, you can't build a longterm reputation on lies. The problem with environmentalists being discredited by a few bad apples is that it doesn't just affect a few sales, it could damage all our futures.

Fowl Play in The Apprentice

I know The Apprentice is set up and edited to make great TV, but I'm still astonished at the basic failings it reveals each show of these young business people.

Every week they are given a task and spend next to no time planning and researching. Last night they were trying to find sundry items in Marrakesh and spent a lot of time running around like headless chickens (and there was a halal butcher just waiting to make a few more chickens headless for them.) At least Lee's team had researched where to get kosher chicken- Jennifer's team didn't even research what 'kosher' meant. None of them seemed to have a clear plan as to how their day's shopping was going to pan out or any contingencies for things going wrong.

Once again there was poor teamwork. They should know by now the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues and yet Jennifer let Claire twice sabotage Alex's bartering with shop owners. Despite or perhaps because success depends on teamwork, it seems many of the candidiates have been deliberately chosen because they are poor team players who believe the way to personal victory is to undermine their rivals.

Worse of all last night was Jenny's decision to try to bribe a shopkeeper into not providing tennis rackets to the rival team. There is some debate about whether this might be a legitimate business practice but this argument takes the view that business is a dog-eat-dog world. To some extent, business is about survival of the fittest but a successful market economy is supposed to deliver value and that depends on following rules and behaving fairly in order to provide best value. For example, it's legitimate to win a contract through making the best bid but if you win it through bribery (or by operating a cartel) the end user does not get the best value. Jenny could have helped her team to victory by her unfair tactic but the winning team was supposed to be the one who found the right products at the best price.

It is perhaps not surprising that Jenny thought she might get brownie points for her underhand behaviour since many big firms have indulged in unfair practices. Microsoft have been fined by the EU for anti-competitive practices; BA indulged in dirty tricks against Virgin Atlantic. Before we give up trying to do business honestly, it's worth considering that if the shop manager had accepted a bribe, the shop owner would have been out-of-pocket. Translated to a bigger scale, if she had accepted a bribe from a competitor to sabotage sales, the shop owner might have been out-of-business, and ultimately customers would end up paying higher prices because of the lack of competition.

Business Is About Profits Not Ethics

We're just in the middle of buying shop premises at the moment, which is why the entries are few and far between.

It's been a reminder to me, if I needed it, of how dog-eat-dog the business world is. When you work in a business where everyone knows one another and has to deal with same people again in the future, reputation is important. It's vital that you're seen as reliable and trustworthy.

Not so when you're buying property (commercial or residential). The property owners- and I guess the buyers as well- know they're not likely to be dealing with you again so notions of honour and ethics are somewhat different.

We started negotiations with a landlord to rent one of his properties. In the theatre world, a manager would be called dishonourable and unethical if he or she began negotiations with another promoter if they had even a pencil (provisional) booking.

Not so in the property world, it seems. This landlord had no scruples about beginning negotiations with another prospective tenant after negotiations were already under way with us. As our 'rivals' were a more established business, they got the shop and we were out-of-pocket for £1000 in solicitor's fees. And, no, our man wasn't interested in compensating us. Fortunately we hadn't had the survey done or we would have been a further £1500 down.

This is not to say this fellow is dishonourable or unethical, just that different rules apply in the property world. I am under no illusions, having been a business person most of my life, that the world of business is about profit not sentiment- companies may present themselves as ethical, compassionate, caring, loyal to their customers or whatever- but this is a response to what they feel they need to do to keep selling their products at a profit, nothing deeper. Tesco are generous to schools but they trample on suppliers and rivals.

From my own experience as an employee, I found that you can be loyal, help your boss turn a company around, protect him from mistakes and coups, and still be shafted when his interests don't coincide with yours.

When business people complain about red tape what they really mean is that they resent laws and regulations that make them behave better than they otherwise would. Still we're now negotiating for another property and look forward to the challenge of running an ethical business at a profit.