Love in Sales – It’s not that kind of love

I’ve had a dream of speaking about love in sales for a couple of years now, but frankly the topic scares me a little. I mean we’ve seen Presidents of the United States and U.S. Congressmen brought to task for love in the workplace. Most recently the golf icon, Tiger Woods felt compelled to apologize for love outside his home. So while I whole heartedly believe in the importance of love in sales, it’s not that kind of love.

The problem with English is that many words like love had radically different meanings. In Latin, amor relates to a more physical or sexual love while caritas is the root for our English word charity and so ties in to spiritual love or an unselfish love for others. So when I talk about love in sales, I mean that heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing requires a base of caring for others enough to put their interests ahead of your personal gain long enough to find out what they need and want, what their problems and desires are, what they expect the outcome to be. Provided you can help them, then you do so. This kind of love is related to the expression often associated with the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm.” [...]

Don’t Forget the Facts — Soft Sell Sales Isn’t Just About the Customer’s Situation

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 [...]