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Are you looking for a way to really impress your prospect? Here’s one of the simplest. Send a handwritten thank you note after your meeting. In the day when technology often makes us feel isolated, a handwritten note helps make or reinforce the connection. This technique is ideally suited to heart-centered, soft sell salespeople. Few things tell your “prospectors” (prospects who are looking to buy a solution to their wants and needs) that you actually care about [...] 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. [...] 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 more to life than money alone. I know that sounds shocking from someone who trains people to sell and who considers himself a businessman. Nevertheless, for most of us, it’s true. And from my experience working with small business owners, I find that most of them have a passion for what they do. Naturally, we all want to make lots of money and be able to have the freedom and possessions it brings. In both my experience and reading, I find that most of us work to make a living to do the things that are important to us. The rare ones among us do the work out of love for the job itself. In my case, I sell for the love of it. I do sales training because it gives me even greater pleasure. So, sell for the love of it! Personally, I want the fullness of job satisfaction too. I love selling for the fun, fulfillment and mutual rewards I get from heart-centered, soft sell sales and [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] 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. [...] |
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