BUSINESS DURING PROPHET MUHAMMAD (PBUH) ERA

As far as we know, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is last messenger of Allah.
He is the one who brings new era in the development of world civilization and a leader that
succeeded in bringing Islamic civilization into glorious days. Apart from the fact, Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) also known as a successful businessman and a trader.
Since he was a child, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is taught on how to do
business by his uncle, Abu Talib. When he was twelve, his uncle invited him to run a business
and they need to left Mecca and headed to Syria (previously known as Syam).Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) was very honest and fair while doing business and trading. His customers
never have any complaint of his goods sold to them. He always kept his promises and delivered
the goods exactly on time.
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) always showed high responsibilities and high integrity in
business. In other words, he was practicing the principals of modern business management which
includes customer satisfaction, best customer services, ability, efficiency, honesty, and fair
competency. His honesty was approved by the Meccas citizen and he was called As-Sidiq
which brought the meaning of a trustworthy person. Apart from that, he also entitled by the name
of Al-Amin which also portrayed his good and honest sides. According to history, it was stated
that Muhammad had been through six business trips including Syria, Bahrain, Jordan and
Yemen. He always succeeded in his business and never experienced loss.
When doing business, Muhammad always practices the principle of honesty for the sake
of his customers.
1. Honesty as the Pillar.
Prophet Muhammad always said to be honest either with supplier or customers. On his
early stage of starting his own business, he always dealing with Khadijah, a rich woman
which later he married to. When working with Khadijah, he still stick to the value of
honesty even when trading goods. It can be proved when customers came to him, he
explained to them about the advantages and even disadvantages of the goods, without
having intention of gaining extra profit from the transaction.

2. Customer Services.
Customers are always right. It is a principle of doing businesses. Interesting, but it is very
hard to gain trust from customers. However, our Prophet showed some benefits of doing
business honestly. He is totally upset when customers were fooled by a trader. The
message conveyed by him was love your brothers as much as you love yourselves. He
always served the best for the customers so the customers will continue to purchase his
products and goods. We have to put customer satisfaction on top of everything. Try to
fulfill the promises on your advertisements. This will help to restore the customers faith.

3. Categorized Your Goods.
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) gave good examples on how to group your goods according
their qualities. He also gave the reasonable prices of the goods according to their
qualities. Low quality goods will be sold at a lower price.
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) awares that the main element in doing business is honesty.
Being honest will not cause you any harm but people will trust you more instead. In this context,
Prophet Muhammad succeeded to introduce and show good examples of the right way of doing
business. Every people who do business nowadays seem to neglect this element. They are being
too greedy and want to make huge profit easier way. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: Should
you be honest, because honesty can lead a person to do good, are good deeds can bring a person
into heaven. Someone still do right by him written of the God as an honest man. (Hadith Sahih
al-Bukhari)