 The most important question you can ask in sales or in consulting is, “Why?” There’s one question that has served me extremely well in over six years as a small business consultant. It’s the same question that heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers need to ask their customers and prospective customers. The most important question is, “Why?”
Sales scripts seek to control the sales call.
I’ve had salespeople and small business owners ask me about writing a script. I have used them successfully 18 years ago when it was a required part of the job. I didn’t like them then, and I really dislike them now. Other than to memorize an opening question to get you started so you can avoid being tongue-tied, scripts are designed to control the flow of questions so as to control the prospect.
That’s a hard sell approach to sales because it only cares about one thing, getting the prospect’s money. While I did well, I only lasted a short time at the job because I began to really question whether our product did what we said it did — despite the stack of testimonial letters the company gave me from around the country.
Heart-centered salespeople seek to see their customers’ viewpoints.
Following that experience, I returned to talking with prospects. Heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing focus first on the customer’s needs and wants. While people may quickly tell you what they think they want, it’s very important to dig deeper to understand why. Nobody wants to look stupid so Continue reading The Most Important Question on a Sales Call
 This squirrel blends in with his environment due to natural camouflage. Reading my friend Bob Poole’s book, Listen First – Sell Later, he reminded me about the value of getting to know your customers’ industries. This is important to all salespeople and marketers, not just to soft sell sales and marketing people.
The First Step Is to Decide Who Your Ideal Prospects Are
To really help yourself get established in your sales and marketing efforts, study up on your ideal customers’ market or industry. While you may have several different ideal customer profiles, pick one that you are most interested in, one which has a sizable potential for sales. Becoming an expert in an industry takes time and effort so be smart about your choice. Remember, your ideal prospects are companies like your best customers because they are most likely to have needs like those you are solving already.
Next, Learn about Their Industry or Market
Once you choose where you want to initially focus, start reading up as much as you can about it. Naturally, the Internet has a wealth of information on almost everything imaginable. The problem is that not all of it is accurate or true so you need to read broadly. A great source of information is to get a subscription to industry publications, most of which are free to people in that industry, including vendors. Also, get involved in one of the trade associations – one to which the people you want to contact actually attend.
Your Goals for this Research
There are at least three purposes to your doing this research and getting involved in a low key way: Continue reading How to Fit in with Your Prospects
 In sales skills, as in baby steps, failure is the key to success. My baby granddaughter reminded me of an important point
This past week, I watched a video of our youngest granddaughter that Ian posted on Facebook. He captured her as she made her first efforts to stand. What a treat! She was so proud of herself and excited as she wobbled trying to learn balance. She had a good grip on the pole she’d used to pull herself up. She’d let go with only one hand just pleased as could be. Naturally, daddy heaped praise on her too.
All success in life starts with failures
I often think about the parallel in sales and marketing to infants learning to stand, walk and talk. It fascinates me that infants are risk takers. Survival demands it. When we learn to stand and then to walk, we spend more time falling than we do standing or walking. The exciting thing is that everyone praises these early efforts. The same goes for learning to talk. Have you ever strove to understand a toddler’s gibberish? They try so hard to communicate. They’re so sincere and committed. Yet the process normally takes months, even years to become clear enough that people can understand anything more than the most basic images.
Yet somewhere along the line we forget that all life’s activity takes failure to succeed at new skills. This is true especially true in sales and marketing. Continue reading Failure as Key to Success in Sales & Marketing
 U.S. 2010 Census provides a perfect opportunity for scammers to steal your identity. The creativity of scammers never ceases to amaze me. You would think that applying it to selling legitimate products and services would net them comfortable livings without the risk of jail. But I suspect that part of the thrill for scammers is to prove how clever they are and that they can get away with it. Using heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing would just be too tame for them.
I’m writing this blog post because a friend of mine, Tom Lenzo, a business & technology consultant in Pasadena California, recently sent me an email he received from the FBI about the census and possible scammers taking advantage of another opportunity to misrepresent themselves so as to get your money.
Here is the gist of the FBI reminder plus tips from the Better Business Bureau:
Preparation for the 2010 Census is well underway nationwide. April 1, 2010 is “Census Day” however there is lots of preparation and marketing that needs to be done between now and then to ensure that EVERYONE IS COUNTED. This is the first in a series of messages that we will send to remind you to do your part to ensure your household, and your community, is counted. Check out www.census.gov for schedules, timelines, partnership and more. Remember, the 2010 Census form will be the shortest in history with just 10 questions.
Regarding the Census, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) recommends the following: Continue reading What Sales Line Will You Buy into Related to the U.S. Census?
One would think that the way to win a customer's repeat business is intuitively obvious. For instance, at the January 8, 2008 Pasadena Art of Small Business Survival workshop, Glenn Rowe broke the audience into five groups to discuss customer satisfaction.
Business owners and managers often seem to forget what it's like to be a customer
The fascinating thing to me was that everyone seemed to agree on what makes up good customer service as well as what bad service looks and feels like. Excellent customer service is intuitively obvious to virtually everyone – when they are customers. Often, though, business owners and managers seem to forget everything they know when they are now responsible for profits and efficiency.
Use heart-centered, soft sell approach to resolve problems with customers
The wonderful thing about heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing is that they naturally focus on what needs to be done to give customers exceptional service. Your attention simply needs to be on what your customer really wants and needs. When it comes to bad service, faulty products or missed delivery dates, the customer first wants someone to care. You show this by listening, asking questions to understand, and doing something to repair the situation.
This example shows how important it is to follow up with an upset customer
In a Yelp.com review of Slater’s 50/50, David L. revealed how Scott Slater handled an earlier negative review he gave Slater’s 50/50. When he read David L’s December 20, 2009 review, Slater took responsibility to discuss the problem. As a result, on December 26th, this same customer wrote another review, this time giving Slater’s four stars (out of five possible) and retracting his last one, all because “Mr. Scott Slater himself messaged me with my concerns and addressed them accordingly. With that alone made me want to come back and try their food again. Which I did.. a few days ago.”
By showing you care, you win back an upset customer as a loyal fan
Whether you apply a heart-centered, soft sell approach or not to your sales and marketing, the way to win a customers’ repeat business is to ensure an exceptional experience. Surprisingly, just like Scott Slater did with his Slater’s 50/50 customer, you can turn a negative experience into a positive by fixing the problem as best as possible as quickly as possible. Excellent customer service means using empathy and listening closely, asking questions as needed to learn what this negative experience means to them – and how can you make them happier? Finally, take action.
Take time today to say thank you to someone who’s provided you exceptional service.
 Search engines spiders look at what you don’t see behind the pictures on your website. What you don’t see on the website still affects you
Although the first impression is critical when it comes to websites, there’s more to an effective website than meets the eye. For marketing purposes, what you don’t see can have a major impact on the ability of your site to be found by people who want the products and services you provide. It would be like locating your business on a busy highway then erecting a wall between your company and the road so nobody could see it as you drove by.
So what can you do to help your website be found? This critique will focus on Internet marketing. Typically, good graphic designers lack the marketing background to maximize the effectiveness of your site for you.
Obviously there are a lot of Internet marketing activities you can do to have your website found, including pay-per-click advertising and social networking. You can also use traditional marketing, such as mailing postcards and purchasing newspaper inserts. This article focuses instead on the things you can do in your website design to become more attractive to the Internet search engines.
Meta tags and alternate text
Although it takes a programmer or web designer to explain the differences and purposes of meta tags versus alternate text, from a marketing viewpoint, the important thing is that these are areas visible in the source code of your website that the search engine’s software, called spiders because they “crawl” the “web” looking for information they need to catalog the sites on the Internet.
 Slater’s 50/550 landing page provides three gateways into the site. Do you remember the last time you met someone and took an instant like or dislike to them? Have you ever bought a book because your first impression was so strongly positive? Regardless of what decisions you’ve made based on first impressions, we all do it. In sales and marketing, it’s long been known that we make our first impression on a prospect in the first 20 seconds. If it’s not positive, we may never get to make a second impression.
First impressions are more critical in Internet marketing than they are in business because people can click off your site and onto another almost instantly. In fact, research shows that you have 1/20th of a second to make that first impression. Nobody makes a decision that fast on the content. The first impression your website makes depends all on the appearance, which includes pictures, white space, and graphics. I personally find examples help me understand concepts better so I’m going to analyze Slater’s 50/50’s website to show how this works. With his website, Scott Slater continues to demonstrate a good understanding of marketing. For my purposes, it’s instructive that he misses a few more subtle points, which I’ll mention as we go along. Overall, Slater’s 50/50’s is a good example of what a small business can do to promote itself.
Strong first impression graphically
Their landing page (the page where you first enter the site) comes before you get to their Home page. This is different from most websites. I find it is both positive and negative. Continue reading Slater’s Website Creates that Critical First Impression
 Communicating back and forth is part of what builds a community. The first time I heard about the concept of viral marketing was in Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book, The Tipping Point. He described the elements necessary for a product to take off and catch the public’s imagination like a virus. The impression I got was that while you can know what elements are necessary, you can’t guarantee that you can get the mix right when you deliberately try to make a product go viral.
The marketer’s dream is to have a product go viral.
This remains true about social networking. Some things are so well done that they capture the imagination of a few people who are influencers, and those people spread the word. If they’re respected and their followers or audience agrees, they too tell their friends. Suddenly your product or service goes viral. At least that is every marketer’s dream.
Continue reading Social Networking Gets Slater’s 50/50 off to a Strong Start
 Time to show our gratitude to Wikipedia If you really care about building relationships with your customers and prospects, then you will frequently find yourself doing research to confirm your facts. Because trust is a fragile thing, I often look information up to double check things. I want my clients and potential clients to be able to count on me. Trust is core to heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing.
Wikipedia Needs Donations for the World’s Largest Free Encyclopedia
Recently, my favorite reference site put out a request for support. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, is asking for our help. You probably already use Wikipedia. If not, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to support this nonprofit organization that seeks to become the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia is already the “fifth most-read site in the world.” “More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected world.”
To Preserve My Relationships of Trust Requires Checking Facts
Ever since I was introduced to Wikipedia, it’s been my primary resource for information and checking my facts. Their information generally gives a detailed explanation as well as the history or background. For instance, I looked up Sears’ Craftsman Tools’ lifetime warranty because I couldn’t find the warranty on their website. Then today I inquired about the meaning of the term “whitelist.” On the Sears lifetime warranty, the writers explained which products Sears covers with a lifetime warranty and which have a more limited warranty. I am so incredibly grateful to the Wikipedia community for the gift of this free encyclopedia.
Wikimedia Will Appreciate Any Size Donations
Heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers, please join me in saying thank you to the Wikimedia Foundation for making it so much easier to research our facts. Any size donation will be welcome.
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