Social networking can be a blessing or just another annoyance. Used properly, it’s a wonderful tool for heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers because it shows you as a person. Prospects and customers want to come to know, like and trust you. When they discover you’re a person too, it can help you to connect with them. Done wrong it merely shows you’re a twit and will hurt your chances. Remember, social networking is about being social and interacting with people. Which brings us to today’s social networking tip: If you’re writing me to become my friend or connection, then write to me.
LinkedIn and Facebook as well as most other social networking sites have marvelous tools for inviting everyone in your different mailing lists to join you on their sites. If we’ve never met, then I would appreciate knowing why you want to be friends. What do we have in common? If creating a new friendship isn’t important enough to jot a very short note as to why you would like to be friends on Facebook or connect on LinkedIn or any of the other social networking sites, then you don’t really want my friendship. You are just trying to attract numbers. That’s all right. It’s just not what I want in a friend or a [...]
I read a quote this morning that got me thinking back on my early years in sales with all the challenges one faces. I was raised with a strong perfectionism streak. I was always looking for the “best” solution. Naturally everything fell short. It tended to undermine my sales until I learned instead to focus on what the customer wanted and felt he needed. Based on that criterion, I helped customers buy. Doing this, I was always a sales leader despite my perfectionism.
The seed idea that got me thinking this morning was the following quote from Larry Wilson that Tom Justin included in his book, How to Take No for an Answer and Still Succeed: “Everyone is seeking an adequate solution. Not the best one. No one really knows what that is. They want what works.” There is the key point, “They want what works.”
Don’t let perfectionism kill your sales – there is no perfect product. As a heart-centered, soft sell salesperson, you can with integrity help customers buy products that don’t meet your ideal standards provided you tell the truth and avoid lies. Just be certain that what you recommend works because above all else, that is what people [...]
Decades before I heard the term “soft sell,” at a time when I was still floundering at figuring out how to sell in a way that allowed me to sell with integrity, being true to my values, I came across Harvey Mackay’s first book, How to Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive. I immediately became a fan! I loved the image he came up with because I’d used a similar one. I choose to avoid sales organizations I call shark tanks. I do poorly in companies that believe they need to create a feeding frenzy within their sales pool. Yet I swim in the same ocean. So I chose the orca as my totem because I see orcas as having fun, being social creatures, and being fearless when they need to attack sharks.
Again, Harvey Mackay has impressed me with his soft sell approach, this time with promoting his newest bestselling book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You. On his thank you page for opting into his mailing list, Mackay speaks to you on another video. “If you decide you don’t want to invest in yourself and the book, that’s okay.” This is an outstanding example of soft sell sales and marketing. [...]
This weekend a friend described an ethical situation at work. In Mike’s (not his real name) case, his employer is actually breaking the law. It requires courage to act in such an environment. Unfortunately, most ethical situations, in my experience, manage to skirt the law thereby making the judgment call even harder. This is particularly true in sales and marketing where people who are driven solely by the numbers, i.e. money, care only about getting the contract signed. The methods used to get the signature are unimportant to these types of business people.
Actually, salespeople who want to use heart-centered, soft sell sales techniques will be coming from a place of integrity and from an attitude that their relationships with their customers or clients are more important than the immediate sales. So, how do you know what the right thing to do is in any given sales situation? While philosophers have all sorts of answers to that question; my preference is to go back to the Golden Rule: do onto others as you would have them do unto you. Or you could take Richard Bach’s advice in Illusions: do unto others as they would have you do unto them. The point is, go with your gut or, better yet, go with your [...]
Charles Green got me thinking the other day about the right way and the wrong way to ask for testimonials. He was actually talking about how to do customer service surveys but his point applies to asking for testimonials as well. In Trust-Based Selling, Green wrote, “It’s manipulative to ask customers point blank if you have given them excellent service; it is embarrassing, self-serving, and highly self-oriented.” (p. 201)
The reason I’m writing about this is because it relates also to requesting referrals and testimonials. So how does a heart-based, soft sell salesperson get testimonials? I think it’s a bit of a tightrope walk to do it right without losing the trust you worked so hard to develop. The key to heart-based, soft sell sales lies in which has priority, my prospects’ challenges and desires or my profit. Assuming I have earned their trust and delivered what they need, I have found customers very willing to give me a [...]
Strange as it sounds, soft sell sales and marketing are, in some ways, tougher to do than hard sell because they require the self-discipline to focus on the concerns of others, and they require caring enough about others to delay your gratification of “closing” the sale. You must wait to describe how wonderful your products and services are until the customers are satisfied that you know and understand what their problems and/or desires are. When you have earned their trust by listening and by asking meaningful questions showing you want to understand better, they will be open and receptive to your advice. This is natural because now they feel you care about them, not just their wallets. Then, when they are ready, you can help your customers buy. [...]
For hundreds of year or longer, there were merchants who traveled from town to town, country to country. You’ve doubtless seen movies and TV shows of the Old West when a peddler came through a remote rural area with his wagon loaded with as much merchandise as he could carry. If you wanted something then, like a skillet, you bought what he had or did without. This gave rise to an expression in retail that I was taught when I first went to work for Radio Shack Computer Centers in 1981: sell what’s on the wagon.
I’m telling you, don’t sell your customers what’s on the wagon just to get the sale regardless of whether it’ right or wrong for them. Soft sell sales and marketing are about aligning with your customers. Get to know and understand their problems and desires, wants and needs. Then advise them with all the honesty and integrity you would want if you were the [...]
Congratulations, Judith & Jim, on an incredibly successful email campaign to get The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back (Morgan James Publishing) to hit #59 on Amazon overall (which means that only 58 books sold better than it.) You truly demonstrated the impact a well orchestrated campaign can have if you have the involvement of lots of friends and people who care about your work — and if you give those supporters the tools and the reminders to make it easy to share news.
But all of the good marketing efforts will fall flat if they are wasted on people who have no interest in what you are offering. The fact that The Heart of Marketing http://TheHeartofMarketing.com soared to the top in so many categories is reassuring because I long believed the way to sell and market was the soft sell approach. Still for years I felt insecure about my decision. After all, the top trainers in sales and marketing when I was starting out pushed the value of hard sell techniques. But when I used those techniques, I did not feel good about myself. I want to help customers buy. [...]
This past Tuesday, DeBorah Beatty taught a lesson that applies to all sales people and sales managers: how to handle our memories of the sales call gone badly. The negative emotion we record with the experience can undermine our self-confidence in the next sales call that reminds us of the one we want to forget.
I participated in her preview call for “Creating a Passionate Life Full of Joy.” As a taste for her new five week course, DeBorah had us pick a negative memory and write down a brief, factual descripton of what happened. Next to it, we wrote down how we felt about the experience.
When I volunteered, I described a sales call fourteen years ago with my boss. We were calling on our largest customer in Reynosa, Mexico, a Fortune 100 company. My boss presented his plans for manufacturing in Mexico. He carefully stated the savings but spun it so the customer would read it to be greater than this move would really deliver. Without thinking I blurted out an objection. I was so embarrassed for violating the “rules” of business etiquette which says that you don’t embarrass you boss publicly. I felt so terrible I just wanted to run away. For all these years, I have felt shame for speaking up. DeBorah taught us a little exercise to reframe that event. She helped me see the positive lesson so that I now feel good about my role in that meeting. This technique anyone can use to get the positive value out of a “bad” sales [...]
This title is in tribute to Judith & Jim’s “Bridging Heart & Marketing” Conferences and to my desire to take their topic just a skoosh further. On their interview by Janet Beckers they clarified some perceptions of soft sell. It’s often thought to be the domain of women. That’s not true. Many men sell using a service-oriented style because it’s best for getting people to know, like and trust you.
As Jim said, “The fact of the matter is, it’s a more human and, in fact, humane, and, in truth, more profitable way of marketing.” There is a place for the traditional hard sell approach to marketing though, in my experience, hard sell works best when it’s a one time sale. That’s because most people I’ve dealt with resent having been manipulated or pressured or intimidated into buying — whether they needed it or not. The soft sell or service approach to selling leads to long term relationships, which are more enjoyable for both the buyer and seller. Additionally, they are more profitable to the seller, if for no other reason than that his investment of time becomes more effective with each sale after the first.
This brings me to the only place where I feel I can extend their idea of Bridging Heart & Marketing: business-to-business sales. Judith & Jim mentioned several areas where a soft sell approach works better than hard sell. Judith defined it thus, “When we talk about soft sell marketing, we’re talking about marketing services like coaching, healing, spirituality, interior design, … and where the caring from the seller to the buyer is the heart of the marketing [...]
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Social Networking Tip: If you’re going to write me, write to me
Social networking can be a blessing or just another annoyance. Used properly, it’s a wonderful tool for heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers because it shows you as a person. Prospects and customers want to come to know, like and trust you. When they discover you’re a person too, it can help you to connect with them. Done wrong it merely shows you’re a twit and will hurt your chances. Remember, social networking is about being social and interacting with people. Which brings us to today’s social networking tip: If you’re writing me to become my friend or connection, then write to me.
LinkedIn and Facebook as well as most other social networking sites have marvelous tools for inviting everyone in your different mailing lists to join you on their sites. If we’ve never met, then I would appreciate knowing why you want to be friends. What do we have in common? If creating a new friendship isn’t important enough to jot a very short note as to why you would like to be friends on Facebook or connect on LinkedIn or any of the other social networking sites, then you don’t really want my friendship. You are just trying to attract numbers. That’s all right. It’s just not what I want in a friend or a [...]