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 habit of speech is one of the hardest I can think of to break. It’s natural when we feel attacked to defend ourselves. The problem is that we can harm a relationship we’ve worked hard to build. There’s something about saying “yes, but …” that undermines trust and liking someone.
Years ago I learned to never give a compliment then follow it with “but ….” In the mind of the person receiving the compliment, the “but” cancels out everything positive you said before it. In sales and marketing, whether heart-centered, soft sell sales or hard sell, you can do the same thing, particularly when handling objections.
It’s common to take them personally, to become defensive. As a result, we try a little empathy. We get in trouble when we follow our statement of understanding with a ”but …” to show our prospects or customers that while they made a good point, they are still wrong.
This is when you can win the battle but lose the war. So what’s the answer? Train yourself not to react. Avoid the battle. Develop your natural curiosity about what is really being said. Use heart-centered, soft sell sales by focusing on them. Start a dialogue. Ask [...]
Dorothy and I just went to see Julie & Julia. It was a delightful movie about overcoming obstacles through persistence and creativity, about frustration and “meltdowns,” and about a passion for writing. I’m an average cook with no real desire to attend Le Cordon Bleu so that’s not where I connected with this story. My ability to relate comes from my passion for what I do and have done. I could relate to both Julie and Julia’s love of cooking and of writing as well as all that they went through, including Julia’s being rejected by her first publisher. Interestingly, in both cases their passion developed over time and had lots of points where they could have quit. Sales has been that way for me because, like Julie and Julia, I grew into both my commitment to and passion for a career in [...]
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 [...]
This week I had an insight into the concept of perceived value that came out of visiting with my brother, Jim. We were in Madison, Wisconsin for a family function. As we live across the country from each other, we rarely get together. I was wearing one of my Disneyland hats and commented that it really is “the happiest place on earth.” He disagreed. He felt ripped off when he took his family to Disney World. He wanted to buy his daughters some refreshing treat until he found out that this item, which he could normally buy for $.75 would cost him $5.00 at Disney World.
I understood how he felt as he’s right. When you’re in a Disney park, if you want it, you pay the price they want to charge. Then it dawned on me. This is the brother who plays golf all the time. And he’s complaining about prices at Disney World for something he’s only going to pay for once, yet he gladly pays his golf fees?
Like my brother Jim’s and my discussions on the relative merits of Disney’s markup on treats versus the cost of the golf course fees, our prospects and customers have views that may differ from ours as to what’s a value-added service or product. If they don’t care about it, regardless of how much you spent on it, it wasn’t [...]
When you really believe in soft sell sales and marketing, it’s hard to admit that the soft sell approach is not for every customer. While most people I know love it when they find a salesperson they can come to know, like and trust, strange as it may seem, some customers actually want hard sell salespeople.
The choice is yours how you want to handle prospects who prefer hard sell salespeople. But remember, you will never sell everyone. This is part of being selective. I’ve written a lot about identifying your ideal customer profile because people like your best customers are most likely to want and need what you provide. Moreover, there is a price to pay for trying to accommodate a customer by becoming hard [...]
I listened to an exceptionally fine preview call this week. It was so good that at first I did not realize it was the seductive voice of a soft hard sell. The man and the woman used all the right terms about their mission being to help you with your mission and about doing this for you and for your customer. It was very convincing how for a mere $5,000 they would teach me about how to close more sales as well as how to close them at a higher ticket value.
Still, something bothered me about the presentation. At first I assumed it was just that I was uncomfortable with putting people on the spot about committing to their own business growth or choosing to miss out. Why did that bother me? Isn’t closing the whole purpose of sales? Then I realized, it’s a matter of mindset: Hard sell versus soft sell [...]
In my meeting this afternoon with my client, we got into a discussion about experiences we’ve had with small business owners who waste time on quotes they won’t win. To most salespeople, any live request for a quote is exciting. Eventually, experience teaches us to pass on doing some.
This article presents seven situations where smart salespeople, whether soft sell salespeople or hard sell, win by walking [...]
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