Monthly Archives: July 2009

To Stand Out, Give Your Customers a Memorable Experience

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

I’m really excited about the changes I see in the business world. More and more businesses are realizing that the key to long term relationships is to act from a core belief that customers matter, not just their wallets. They seek to make an emotional connection with their customers, to give them a memorable experience.

“Connective Marketing” Webinar Detailed Marketing Changes

Renee Miller and Bill Williams of The Miller Group put on a free webinar yesterday for the Los Angeles Region of the California SBDC. In their excellent presentation, "Connective Marketing: A Culture of Intimacy," they presented both figures and stories to reinforce their message: marketing is changing radically. Bill called it a secular change. I call it a paradigm shift. In other words, whereas fads come and go quickly, this change will spread and become stronger.

Customers Love Those Who Care and Connect

People want to make connections. They want to do business with Continue reading

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

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

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. Because of my years in business-to-business outside sales, I admit, I took product knowledge as a given. Wrong. I know better. Not every salesperson is committed to a career. For some it’s just a job, a paycheck. On the other hand, successful salespeople grab all the product training they can get. They never rely on their employers for all of it. They take what the company is able to give and then dig further. They ask questions to really understand how the products and services work and why they are important to your customers.

Product knowledge is important, whatever style of sales or whatever marketing you do, hard sell or soft sell. When I got started in selling microcomputers in 1981, I stayed after hours to practice with the company computers so I could master word processing and spreadsheets. I also studied our other programs. Because I knew my products, I projected confidence and enthusiasm Continue reading

The Seductive Voice of Soft HARD Sell

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

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, or maybe it was that we can increase our prices thousands of dollars by not focusing on the value of our material but on the cost of not buying, such as on all the money you’ll leave on the table for passing on the chance to learn what we can teach you. Why did that bother me? Isn’t closing the whole purpose of sales?Continue reading

Don't Let Your Passion Blind You to What Your Customer Wants

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

I’m a big believer in walking the talk. Yesterday, however, I asked my client how I did. What he told me was eye opening, and my ego would have preferred to not have gotten the answer. Despite the soft sell sales training I do in which I stress using questions to understand before selling, I almost allowed my passion blind me to what my client wanted.

Actually, we’d had a great session. We were talking about soft sell sales and marketing activities he can take to grow their business in these tough times in one of the hardest hit industries in America: apparel. I was teaching him about the soft sell sales approach to selling: get to know the customer’s concerns and interests, her issues.

We did some brainstorming that he, his wife/partner, and I all enjoyed. We discussed identifying the real benefits. We talked about the challenges their retailers are facing and how difficult it is to get to the buyers these days.

That’s when my own passion overrode my listening skills. Continue reading

In Soft Sell Sales, Questions Are to Understand

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

About twenty years ago, I attended a sales training class that has ever since stood out as the classic example of hard sell. This former vacuum cleaner salesman taught us how he sold 90% of the homes in this small town in Nevada or Arizona. He told us to just develop a series of questions that everybody would answer yes to. Each yes was like a degree on a thermometer. Eventually you had so many yeses that the temperature reached a point where — that’s right — where they couldn’t say no. Degree by degree he built his closing momentum.

I left that training really disappointed that I’d wasted my money. Talk about manipulation. Long before I heard Judith & Jim talk about soft sell marketing and their Soft Sell Marketers Association, I was a soft sell salesperson and soft sell marketer. My spiritual convictions are such that I’m responsible for my actions. If I control people subconsciously so as to take away their freedom to choose, I will eventually find my actions come back on me.

The irony is that when you use the soft sell approach and ask questions to better understand your prospects’ situation, Continue reading

The Hidden Lie about Seven Impressions in Advertising

By John Aberle | advertising , Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

For some 30 years of my career in sales and marketing, we’ve used a rule of thumb that it takes seven impressions for the average person to buy — assuming he or she actually has a need for what you are selling. And as rules of thumb go, it’s a good one — if you understand what it means. Otherwise, it’s a lie to the extent that it can be very misleading. It’s a lie of omission.

When running ads, in magazines and newspapers, you would normally expect to run for seven days or seven monthly issues and get seven impressions. Wrong. Perhaps because my first sales job when I left the Air Force was in radio advertising, I immediately got a different slant on the seven impressions. Someone has to hear your spot or see — and actually notice — your ad for it to count as an impression. So immediately one has a challenge getting seven impressions.

How many people do you know who actually read every article and every ad in every issue for seven issues. That means that they might notice your ad every third or fourth one.

The other issue is that it needs to be frequent enough that the last impression hasn’t faded from memory. This is why in Internet marketing, Continue reading

Insight that Increases Your Marketing Effectiveness

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

I love it when someone can help me appreciate my profession in a new way. The fascinating part of it is that after over 30 years in sales and marketing, it took a couple psychologists to give me a major insight into how to make my marketing activities more effective. I found their tweak to the definition of marketing in The Heart of Marketing by Judith Sherven & Jim Sniechowski, known as Judith & Jim.

This significant change is so subtle yet simple. I was always taught that marketing is about making yourself known in the marketplace. To quote them, “The essence of selling is converting your prospective customer into an actual customer. And the essence of marketing is — preparing your prospective customer to buy.” (p. 25)

While things like sale flyers and discount coupons obviously have that goal in mind from the beginning, many of our marketing activities lack that clear intention. A common example is blogging. Continue reading

Choose More Powerfully Attractive Words

By John Aberle | soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

There’s a fine line that soft sell salespeople and soft sell marketers tread with words. At least 25 years ago, I read a book by one of the leading sales trainers in America. He was a hard sell sales professional with manipulative closing techniques. Despite my feeling really icky about such manipulation, he had a chapter that I liked about choosing more powerfully attractive words.

 In every culture, certain words have connotations the dictionary definition doesn’t cover. In America, there are many terms that have implied sexual meanings. Soft sell sales and marketing people will avoid using them as they undermine your efforts to develop trust. The chapter I enjoyed in this hard sell sales trainer’s book talked about words that have baggage attached to them. Continue reading

The Passionate Road to a Sales Career that Is Fun, Fulfilling, and Mutually Rewarding

By John Aberle | sales career , soft sell sales

When I’m consulting with clients on soft sell sales and marketing, I come alive. I absolutely love training people on how to improve their sales and marketing effectiveness. I really think that a career in sales is fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding when you help customers buy.

At the same time, it is work, lots of work. Nor is it a get-rich-quick scheme. A career in soft sell sales offers a lifestyle of hard work rewarding success with much more than money.

Identifying your ideal customer profile takes digging into your records and analyzing them. Developing the understanding of your customers so that you can relate to prospects’ concerns honestly takes research, thinking, and listening. A life worth living in sales takes time and effort, study and practice. It’s my passion that makes it enjoyable.

I really agree with Randy Pausch Continue reading