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.
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 business owners and managers seem to forget everything they know when they are now responsible for profits and efficiency.
Whether your preferred sales and marketing efforts follow the heart-centered, soft sell approach or not, the way to win a customers’ repeat business is to ensure an exceptional [...]
I was listening today to a download of the Cathy Perkins interviewing Kelly Rudolph, Your Personal Safety Trainer on Cathy’s April 30, 2009 The Wizard Teleseminar. Kelly gave one of the best explanations of how and why negatives fail to work — and of the power of reframing negative expressions. When I heard her explain, I had one of those “Ah ha” moments.
I’ve long known that the subconscious mind works in images, not words. As a spiritual student all of my adult life, I’ve studied intensively in the area of personal growth. I’ve corrected expressions I was raised with, like “I fear that ….” When you are working to develop self-confidence, especially important to any soft sell salesperson or soft sell marketer, the messages you program into your subconscious have major impact on your self-image. After some 40 years of study, Kelly kicked up my understanding a notch when she pointed out that the subconscious has no images for negative terms, like “not,” “don’t,” “never,” and “no.” So what does this have to do with soft sell sales and marketing? Everything. There’s something about human nature that seems to like negative statements. [...]
This past Sunday, I read the draft of my ebook, Building Trust through Questions, to my writers’ group. Despite the variety of their work experience, several members stressed that in my efforts to emphasize the importance of questions, I shouldn’t forget that the salesperson needs to know his product and the company needs good customer service. Don’t forget the facts.
They are right, of course. Successful salespeople grab all the product training they can get. They ask questions to really understand how the products and services work and why they are important to your customers. They don’t forget the facts. Soft sell sales isn’t just about the customer’s situation, which you must understand before doing any selling. It’s also about helping him or her to solve a problem or fulfill a desire. That means you need to know first about your products and services and secondly about the benefits they deliver so that you can, in fact, be a trusted [...]
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 [...]
Recently, while I was making tunafish salad, I had an experience that reminded me why prospects distrust sales and marketing statements. I decided to mix and match types of tuna from Bumblebee. I grabbed a Chunk Light Tuna and a Solid Tuna. What I got was flakes of tuna and chunks of tuna respectively. Not what I expected by the labels.
It’s no wonder that most Americans don’t trust marketers. Label something properly and customers buy because no matter how often we’ve been lied to we want to trust the words. This hard sell approach of “Get-the-sale-however-you-can” works until the words have been abused and misused so long that they lose their power. As soft sell marketers and soft sell salespeople, we have our work cut out for us. We have to win our customers’ trust. Yet we are up against our prospects’ cynical suspicions that we only care about getting their money out of their wallets and into ours.
Despite our national trait of skepticism towards marketing hype, you can help customers trust you by showing you genuinely care about aiding them. Trust comes from using relevant questions then listening — and responding — to their answers. Help customers buy when doing so either solves their problem or gets them their desired result. You’ll find that soft sell sales are more exciting and fulfilling than merely earning a commission because you have that emotional and spiritual connection as a [...]
Think about it. Do you cringe when you meet a salesperson? Why? Is it because you expect to be bombarded by all sorts of information you really don’t care about? But what happens when he or she actually asks about a problem or desire you are facing? Do you notice how you gradually start to come alive, to become interested in finding out if this could be the solution you’ve been looking for?
The key to soft sell sales and soft sell marketing is to only talk about the benefits your products and services offer that your ideal prospect cares about. Remember, everyone, consciously or unconsciously, is always wondering WIIFM — “What’s in it for me?” When you maintain your focus on their interests, using your understanding of your ideal customer profile to guide your questions, you build relationships. Take it slowly enough to fully understand what they are looking for before moving to the solutions. In this way, you help customers buy resulting in sales that are fun and mutually rewarding. That’s heady [...]
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