I had forgotten that people may interpret soft sell sales as an effort to succeed simply on the power of one’s great personality. Jim Sniechowski in his recent blog post, Soft Sell Marketing Misconceptions – A Dime a Dozen, mentioned misconceptions about soft sell. Among these is the flaw in thinking that soft sell sales is about personality. This false image produces the erroneous idea that soft sell salespeople are limited to sales to prospects who already know they wanted to buy that product or service.
I can appreciate how someone might think that soft sell means personality. Unfortunately, regardless of your approach, whether traditional, hard sell or the rising in popularity heart-centered, soft sell one, sales success takes proactive work. True heart-centered, soft sell sales success has little or nothing to do with having a likable personality. [...]
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?”
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. After a short stint using scripts because a job required it, 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. Look for their real motivation then help your customers buy what will do the best job you can for [...]
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. To really help yourself get established in your sales and marketing efforts, study up on your ideal customers’ market or industry. Once you choose where you want to initially focus, start reading up as much as you can about it. There are several approaches to successful research. Likewise, there are at least three purposes to your doing this research and getting involved in a low key way. [...]
After our recent switch from DSL to cable service for Internet, I feel a kinship with Charles H. Green’s comments in “Killing Trust with Measurements and Rewards,” in Trust-Based Selling. Green describes how the pharmaceutical industry has been increasing sales representatives while their effectiveness keeps dropping.
Among the problems they have is that as their sales force gets younger and younger, the expertise of their representatives declines. Doctors are seeing these representatives as “pill pushers” rather than as knowledgeable advisors and consultants. Why should they bother wasting precious time they could spend with patients to see salespeople who only care about their own metrics, i.e. how many scripts are written for their products. This is definitely a hard sell approach to sales.
Before you attempt to measure your customer service effectiveness, put yourself in the place of your customers. You build trust by demonstrating understanding of their problems and acting to solve them, not having the computer call for a customer service survey.Take the soft sell sales and marketing approach of listening and then guiding them to the right solution for their wants and needs. Make sure it works. A partial solution only serves to generate hostility towards you and your products and services. Done right, selling – and customer service – can be fun, fulfilling and mutually [...]
Yesterday, Dorothy and her sister Martha and I enjoyed Labor Day at the Los Angeles County Fair. I love fairs! I love the crowds and frenetic activity. I love the commercial booths with the salespeople demoing their products. And it brought home to me something I already know but don’t always think about when talking about soft sell sales and marketing.
Not every sales situation requires or even benefits from the investment of time and effort required for soft sell sales. Sometimes the customers qualify themselves. This is especially true in the typical retail sale where the customers are well informed and basically know what they want. And it works at county fairs with products that can be easily demonstrated so that the customers qualify themselves. However, when you want long term business relationships and repeat purchases from you, use a soft sell sales and marketing [...]
Bill Gates, Sr. in his memoir, Showing Up for Life, said that “in certain traditionally Zulu parts of South Africa, when two people greet each other the first one uses words that mean ‘I see you.’” (p. 155) He goes on to say “That greeting is a powerful statement about how much being recognized and encouraged by others in our lives has to do with the kind of people we become. It also drives home the role community plays in all our lives.” (p. 156)
I was reminded of Gate’s statement when I listened to Judith & Jim last night on their second free preview call for their upcoming Bridging Heart & Marketing III http://tinyurl.com/ktmklb virtual conference. They talked about how the soft sell marketer sees the prospect as a person in the relationship first and as a customer second. Hard sell marketers instead focus first on making the sale. More and more customers want to be seen as people [...]
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 [...]
Stop wasting your time, effort, and money trying to sell to the whole world. It takes discipline to train yourself to narrow your efforts to your best effect. I too have to discipline myself: soft sell sales and soft sell marketing appeal mostly to small business owners and people who care about developing long term relationships. Yet we find it tempting to be available to anyone and everyone who might want to buy our products. We don’t want to miss out on any sale. The whole world is our oyster. Not so.
The people who thrive are those who identify their niche and tightly focus on what they do that appeals to that specific group. That’s why I strongly encourage everyone in soft sell sales and soft sell marketing to determine your ideal customer profile. Prospects who match that have the greatest likelihood of wanting and feeling they need your products and services because such problems are common to people and companies like your best customers. Help customers buy because it works for them. You’ll find your sales more fun and the results mutually [...]
You’d think as an experienced soft sell salesperson and consultant, that I now longer have to deal with the fear of calling on someone. But then, I’ve read even highly successful public speakers still get jittery nerves or apprehension before giving a talk. In my case, I was going on a consulting call yesterday with a client in Glendale, California.
I was going in feeling somewhat cocky because I had done my homework on their website. I was prepared to take their marketing efforts up a notch or two until they showed me the screen of the new website. As I made further suggestions I learned most of what I said, they’d already known and were changing. What do I do now? I applied advice I heard years ago to ask Spirit, “What do I have to learn? What do I have to teach?” I’ve learned to apply this to any interaction. I stopped trying to teach first. I asked questions and listened to the other people in the meeting.
In my experience yesterday, I overcame the fear about conducting a consulting session when I put attention on them. I relaxed then and enjoyed the meeting. This is way to make your fear of making sales calls disappear too or at least of making it manageable. Prospects and clients have a reason for investing their time with you: they want help with their problems or desires, wants and needs. Focus on them and on what can you do to help make their lives a little better or more successful — you’ll be to busy to notice that you were afraid or [...]
If your expressions about selling sound like a military commander planning for a battle, you probably learned from someone who taught traditional sales and marketing techniques. Their terms sound like a military engagement: overcome objections, take control of the prospect, and conduct a marketing campaign (which I still use to describe the multiple aspects of a coordinated program to find and sell to customers). Internet marketers have added a new one, squeeze pages. What a controlling sound for something as simple as inviting you to sign up for an ezine (electronic newsletter), usually in exchange for a gift. It’s no wonder business people call “old school” sales and marketing tactics hard sell.
People who believe, like I do, that selling is a spiritual service prefer farming analogies to war and fighting because, like farming, soft sell marketing sales and marketing nurture and cultivate relationships with perspective customers. Like farmers who care about their crops, soft sell marketers care about taking care of their customers.
So stop waging war with prospects. Start farming instead. Prepare the ground, plant your seeds, nurture and water them with helpful information, suggestions, and ideas. Weed out the misinformation. And prepare for a thanksgiving celebration of gratitude for an abundant [...]
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