Monthly Archives: May 2009

How to Overcome the Fear of Making Sales Calls

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Sales Calls , soft sell sales

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. When I’d reviewed their website, I made notes about what would improve it as part of the suggestions I would give to take their marketing efforts up a notch or two.

Imagine my shock when my clients showed me the screen of the new website. Continue reading

All’s Fair in Love and War, Not – to a Soft Sell Marketer

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

This concept crystallizes for me the hard sell position when taken to an extreme. Do what it takes to get the sale because “All’s fair in love and war”; and sales, to the hard sell marketer, is war. There are winners and losers. The good ones make sure they are the winners most of the time. On the other end of the spectrum, soft sell salespeople and soft sell marketers work to achieve a win-win.

Mind you, there are degrees between hard sell and soft sell sales and marketing. Rarely do you find people anchored at the poles. Usually salespeople are moving in one direction or the other, being mostly hard or mostly soft sell. Nevertheless, the “All’s fair” mentality causes a tremendous amount of heart break in this world.

While many men probably would not describe a failed business trust or failed business relationship as causing a broken heart, Continue reading

Defining How to Sell with Heart and Integrity

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

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 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. Continue reading

How to Sound Like a Soft Sell Marketer Instead of a Spammer

By John Aberle | email marketing , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

On Wednesday, while I was doing research for a report that included a section on autoresponders and email “blasts,” I checked out MailChimp. My friend DeBorah Beatty, Solopreneur Logistics Specialist, praises them highly for being an excellent service and offering the best value. I really liked their site. More importantly for this post, I liked the point Ben brought up on his MailChimp Blog in the article, Rant: How To Sound Like A Spammer.

Ben’s point was that he’s had spammers ask about how they can do blasts on MailChimp. They’ve turned a lot of potential customers away for using that term because it shows they don’t understand permission based marketing. I left a comment asking what term he uses then for legitimate mailings of email newsletters and for mailings about events to everyone on your list at once. Ben’s reply was “@John – I’d call it an ‘event invitation’ or ‘weekly email newsletter.’”

He got me thinking about the term “blast” from a different angle than spammers. Continue reading

How Soft Sell Sales Can Give You Your Self Respect Back

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

Have you ever made a sale you didn’t feel good about where you got your sale just because you could, not because your customer would get the help they needed? I remember one employer in particular where that was true. I didn’t last long there – despite being on the fast track for rewards and promotion. I didn’t feel right about selling their product when I stopped believing it delivered what we claimed it did. Today I met a client who once quit sales for the same type of reason.

Ralph (not his real name) and I started out by going over some of the questions I sent him about his sales and marketing activity. I learned that Ralph had prior sales experience selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. He excelled at it for awhile. He was aggressive, and he was good at it but found he hated himself for what he was doing. He had one of those moments many in hard sell sales have. It was an experience where he knew he could get the sale, but his prospect had no need for the product. In danger of losing his self respect, he quit sales.

Interestingly, he’s a small manufacturer now and the only one in his company at the moment who is doing sales. But today, he sells in an entirely different way. Continue reading

Get Magical Results in Soft Sell Sales Using Focused Benefits and Solutions

By John Aberle | soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

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?”

At the pace the world moves today as well as at the rate information overwhelms us, people will tune you outContinue reading