Monthly Archives: November 2009

Thanksgiving – heart-centered sales and marketing thrives on a spirit of gratitude

By John Aberle | Gratitude , heart-centered , Holidays , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s filled with abundance including feelings of love and family plus food including my favorite turkey and Dorothy’s favorite, pumpkin pie which she bakes. There are family recipes we enjoy year to year, like the cranberry relish Mother always made with fresh cranberries. It’s thrilling to see the next generation active in helping prepare the family meal for 20 to 21 members of our extended family.

A day to appreciate the good things in life

Most of all, I love that Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude for all of the blessings of the prior year, even those that don’t look initially like blessing. Additionally, it’s free of the anxiety of gifts, both giving and receiving.

Over 20 years ago a friend taught me the value of keeping a gratitude journal. In sales and marketing we often talk about how important attitude is to a person’s success. Customers and clients want someone who’s upbeat, positive, who sees the opportunity to help them improve their situation.

Wish I’d learned earlier the value of focusing on gratitude

I know that as well as I have done in sales, I could have succeeded to an even higher level had I recognized that commiserating with people about how bad things are or how tough we have it puts them into a defensive, protect what I already have mindset while it simultaneously dropped me out of a position of positive expectancy. It’s tough to help customers buy when we are both in a negative frame of mind. Filing your heart with gratitude for the people, experiences and opportunities in your life will boost your desire to use heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing to grow your business relationships too.  Continue reading

Customer Service Metrics Can Do More Harm than Good

By John Aberle | customer service , heart-centered , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

Cable Internet Installation Leads to Distrust of Customer Service Metrics

After our recent switch from DSL to cable service for Internet, I feel a kinship with Charles H. Green’s comments in “Killing Trust with Measurements and Rewards,” in Trust-Based Selling. Green describes how the pharmaceutical industry has been increasing sales representatives while their effectiveness keeps dropping.

Among the problems they have is that as their sales force gets younger and younger, the expertise of their representatives declines. Doctors are seeing these representatives as “pill pushers” rather than as knowledgeable advisors and consultants. Why should they bother wasting precious time they could spend with patients to see salespeople who only care about their own metrics, i.e. how many scripts are written for their products. This is definitely a hard sell approach to sales.

Soft Sell Approach Requires Concern on Getting Right Solution for Client

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Unique Selling Propositions – A Quiz of Famous Marketing Lines

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Unique Selling Proposition

This article is about famous marketing lines often called taglines or slogans. This week I finished the 6th lesson that’s part of my opt-in bonus, an ecourse, 9 Steps to Finding Prospects Who Want What You Provide. This lesson, “How to Stand Out in a Cast of Thousands,” describes how to identify your unique selling proposition.

Having been frustrated with this topic myself in the past, I really wanted to help members of my community develop their own unique selling propositions. Specifically, whenever I researched the topic, I found lots of articles telling me how important it is to have one and almost none giving me any tips for designing one. I felt like a joke we used to have back at the Air Force Academy when I was a cadet, “It’s intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.” That line generally was related to the explanation that they did it all with “strings and mirrors.” So in “How to Stand Out in a Cast of Thousands” I told the readers that this lesson would accomplish the following:
1.    Help you recognize that the differences don’t need to be major in order to be unique
2.    Show you what some USPs look like when stated as taglines or slogans
3.    Provide questions and exercises you can use to identify your distinctive qualities
4.    Give you ideas of how to use them to establish your brand, your presence in the market

Writing that article inspired this blog post. Here are some of my favorite taglines for you to match up in a little quiz. To keep it interesting, I researched a few movie taglines too. These slogans become brief statements of the company’s or movie’s unique selling proposition. Notice that some describe very minor differences between the company whose slogan it is and its competitors. The key point is that they are establishing their position in the minds of the public. Not all of these statements are taglines. Some will be identifiers I think you’ll recognize because the company’s branding is so strong.

Try matching the company – or the movie – up with its tagline or identifier:

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Mac’s Soft Sell TV Commercial Has Major Impact

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

Yes, You Can Teach Old Sales and Marketing Dogs New Tricks

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing

American English has lots of interesting expressions and clichés. I like them because they tend to convey concepts or morals, as in “the moral of the story” is, like in melodramas. Good writers try to avoid them because they become so overused they lose their punch. Nevertheless, the moral of “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks” seems to be that as people age, they get so stuck in their ways that they refuse to learn.

People Once Considered Too Old to Learn New Skills Are Excelling at Internet Marketing

However valid that once was, in Internet marketing the leaders I like to follow are within five to ten years of my age. In some cases, like Judith & Jim, I know how old they are because they’ve told us. I turned 62 in June, by the way. I don’t recall how old Cathy Perkins, the WordPress Wizard, is; but I know from things she’s said she’s done that she’s around my age, maybe a little younger. Alex Mandossian, from what I know of him, fits in this group as do Jeff Herring, the Article Guy, and Tom Justin. One of the women Continue reading