What are Ethical Sales – and how can they help you?
Using Ethical Sales builds you a reputation you're proud of, earns you more than you need to thrive, and grows your waitlists to fill your calendar with ideal clients who thank you for working with them.
A sale is any “yes” or “no” question that creates a transaction of time, energy, attention or money:
- "Sweetheart, would you take out the trash?"
- "Darling, I want you to choose what we eat for dinner tonight. Can you do that?"
- "Sounds like I can help you with exactly what you're needing. Would you like to work together?"
Sales are the lifeblood of any business and life. Yet so many business owners hesitate to ask for the sale or talk about their services because we don’t want to be seen as (or feel) slimy, inauthentic, pushy, or greedy.
The solution? Ethical Sales.
An Ethical Sale centers consent, includes the emotional and physical experience of all people involved in the transaction, is authentic to who you are, and celebrates choice whether it’s a yes or no answer.
It’s a compassionate and respectful replacement for old, exploitive traditional sales that instead prioritizes connection and trust-building, and transforms your sales experience into a safe and positive interaction for needs to be revealed, recognized, and met for the benefit of all.
The 3 Core Values and 6 Pillars of Ethical Sales detailed on this page and included our membership and trainings are as much for your sales practices as they are for achieving an Ethical Business and thriving life.
They’re for you – the ethical professional who cares about serving your clients and building a reputation that serves you.
They’re tools built for a regenerative business and life.
Everything in our lives are based on sales. We help true visionary professionals who are burned out on traditional strategies that exploit or require a mask to operate behind, and who want to experience more ideal clients, more money, and more joy.
3 Core Values Of Ethical Sales: Our Philosophy
Ethical Sales has three defining values: Humans Over Transactions, Sell The Way You Serve, and Celebrate Choice. They guide all our trainings and are the basis of our community.
Explore each one in depth below, and if you’d like to learn more, sign up for our business mentorship program or check out our curriculum courses.
Humans Over Transactions is a favorite with our community, and we firmly believe that if every sales person and practitioner practiced it, our world and communities would come out of conflict in one generation.
Humans Over Transactions means we treat each person we’re in a conversation with as a person first, and care for their experience and needs rather than merely closing a sale.
This tenet emphasizes the value of human connection and building Trust Relationships in sales.
Humans Over Transactions is about understanding and valuing your potential client as a person first, and as a revenue stream only as a byproduct of the service you can give them.
This value is one of the most common struggles we see in our community members, and one of our favorite ways to help.
Sell The Way You Serve encourages you to maintain the same level of personality, confidence, and integrity in your sales process as you do in serving your clients in the fulfillment part of your business.
This includes creating a safe space for both you and your potential clients during the sales conversation for a clear choice to emerge at the end.
Sell The Way You Serve closes the gap between the epic expert you are in your fulfilment, and the person you are when you come to a discovery call or consultation with a potential client. It’s how you truly enjoy your sales conversations, discovery calls, and consultations!
When we Celebrate Choice, it means that whether a potential client says “yes” or “no” to working with us, we meet their decision respectfully and even with joy.
Celebrating Choice is the ultimate display of honoring a client’s autonomy.
Our students often get referrals from potential clients who said “No thank you,” because their choice was celebrated and their humanity seen, respected, and honored.
6 Pillars of Ethical Sales
Each pillar contains various techniques you can apply to develop meaningful relationships, identify ideal clients, and complete high-value sales with ease, joy, and fulfillment.
They are used best within a sales conversation with one applied after the other, and they can also be used independently of each other.
Reflection begins with a review of your current sales process to discover and celebrate where Ethical Sales practices already exist!
Once you have identified those areas, reflection becomes a process of continuously and intentionally discovering where your current process is out of alignment and could better serve both you and your clients.
These points become your primary areas for refinement as you implement more Ethical Sales practices.
Environment means taking care and being aware of both your inner and outer environment during your sales conversations.
In learning to prepare the environment surrounding a sales conversation, you discover the importance of holding dualities by becoming aware of your internal environment, the potential client’s internal environment, and the external environment surrounding the sales conversation.
For a sale to be genuinely ethical, you must be aware of these factors to minimize their negative impact while amplifying their positive effect on the conversation.
Consent is the first step toward placing humans over transactions. Many unethical practices throughout the sales industry manifest when a salesperson forgoes consent and uses subtle manipulation, coercion, intimidation, and “influence” to push a potential client toward closing the sale.
In learning and practicing Consent, you take the first step toward developing the mutual trust and respect required to successfully lead potential clients through the rest of the Ethical Sales Process.
This practice of Consent is the primary way to develop lasting positive relationships and a reputation for kindness and respect.
Learning about Objections teaches you to address the natural potential client objections before they arise.
While intentionally talking about the four main objections – Time capacity, Financial capacity, Doubt, and Decision maker – you evaluate the resiliency of each potential client to ensure they are an ideal match for your company or services.
During this step, you can solidify those clients who will likely lead to a successful sale and fulfillment, reduce the likelihood of “ghosting,” and determine potential customers who aren’t an ideal match.
This is about learning to make confident invitations to ideal potential clients once all the potential customer’s needs and desires are apparent, their objections addressed, and the beginnings of a new relationship established.
So many sales conversations fall apart because the salesperson is afraid to experience rejection after explicitly asking if a potential client is ready to work together; neither you nor the client benefits from a conversation that ends without a clear choice. In fact, we consider this an unethical practice. By learning to make confident invitations, you can receive a clear choice without taking the response personally before moving on to celebrate the outcome.
Clear Choice means receiving and celebrating the potential client’s clear choice. A clear choice means your potential customer has walked themselves at least 51% of the way toward a “clear yes” to working with you or investing with you, and anything short of that becomes a “clear no.”
Once the potential client has made a clear choice, you can celebrate their decision one way or the other! If the answer is a “clear yes,” a celebration of a new partnership is in order. If the answer is a “clear no,” a celebration of a new relationship and potential next steps are likewise in order.
By celebrating clear choice, the relationship can grow without confusion, leaving open doors to future opportunities.
Meet Our Founder Marla Mattenson
Welcome to our Community!
My vision is to provide you with proven resources and insights that help you instantly build trusting relationships with your ideal clients.
Marla Mattenson, Founder of The Ethical Sales Institute and the visionary behind the Ethical Sales Process, is a trailblazer in transforming sales paradigms from transactional to relational for professionals who prioritize the integrity and fulfillment of their services.
With a rich background that spans neuroscience, mathematics, and relationship-based sales, Marla is at the forefront of championing a human-centered, consent-based approach to sales. This revolutionary method is especially crucial for professionals like attorneys, financial advisors, coaches, and consultants, for whom traditional sales tactics fail to resonate with their values and the nuanced nature of their work.
Throughout a distinguished 25+ year career, Mattenson has profoundly impacted a wide range of business owners and high-profile clients, including Academy Award-winning figures, NBA coaches, Grammy Award-winning artists, and millionaire entrepreneurs. Her innovative strategies and insights continue to redefine sales and relationship methodologies, garnering international acclaim.
Mattenson is a sought-after speaker and expert in the fields of sales, business, and love. She has been featured across platforms such as The New York Times, Forbes, Oprah, Entrepreneur, NBC, CBS and more. She is currently faculty at UT Law.
Through The Ethical Sales Institute, she continues to inspire and equip professionals with the tools to thrive in an evolving marketplace defined by integrity, care, respect and genuine connections.