Monthly Archives: July 2010

Thank you Tech Support

By John Aberle | Blogging , customer service

I love working with other professionals who have skills and knowledge I don’t have. This post is a thank you to four talented people who pulled my blogging bacon out of the fire.

I’ve been tied up for a few days now trying to correct the fact that my blog’s front page would not redirect to the full page article. I thought the problem was due to having tried to do a backup and having it lock up on me. So I loaded an old back up on an alternate domain name on my other hosting account, HostGator.

There were technical challenges with the restore. Continue reading

In Emails, Should You Greet or Not Greet?

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Social Networking

I’ve heard one of the foremost people in Internet marketing state that he doesn’t respect emails that come with a greeting. He wants to get right to the point. I find this ironic because the whole issue with social networking is to be social and to be personal. So the social networking question becomes, to greet or not to greet.

Ever since the advent of the computer, people have complained about being treated like numbers. I realize we are in the age of Twitter and the microwave mindset; nevertheless, in my experience, people still want to be treated like individuals. They want to count, not to be lost due to false efficiency.

Is dropping the greeting a false efficiency?

I will admit that I have changed my standard greeting, especially for e-mails, to “Hi, (person’s first name).” I find it much more warm and friendly than just blurting out the message and signing off. Eliminating a quick greeting, like “Hi, Joe,” just doesn’t seem like that much efficiency to me. What did it take to type that? Two, three seconds? That means Continue reading

How to Avoid Looking Stupid When Asking Questions

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Sales and Marketing , Sales Calls

I’ve often wondered why salespeople have such a hard time asking questions that dig deeply enough to understand what their customers want. I’ve seen consultants do the same thing. The danger is that we make assumptions and then propose the wrong solution. Because the customer either recognizes immediately that it won’t work or maybe tries it before discovering it doesn’t work, we’ve lost credibility and trust.

Among the many reasons I’ve discovered for not asking enough questions, is that people are afraid of looking stupid when asking questions. They figure that what the prospect just said is probably something they should know so they ignore it or try to bluff their way through it. The result of this approach is to fail to cover something that’s really important to your potential customer, try to fake it when making your presentation about how your products and services will take care of that issue – which you mention but didn’t really understand so your solution looks dumb, or you propose a fix to something that was really a surface issue and not important.

When you operate from a heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing viewpoint, it should make sense that you want to come across sincere and trustworthy. You do this largely by taking time to ask the questions for understanding. People forgive a lot of mistakes if they feel you really care about helping them. This presupposes, of course, that you actually have the in-depth product knowledge necessary to recognize the solution needed once you understand their concerns.

Two key points before you get into your sales call:

• Put your attention on really helping your prospects solve their needs or reach their dreams. The more you focus on the other person, the more you will be able to put the pressure of making salesContinue reading

Social Networking Tip – How to Comment on Other Sites

By John Aberle | Social Networking

Have you noticed how people resist change? Change involves risks. We never know when we make a change if we’re going to be better off or worse off. So what can a heart centered salesperson or marketer do to encourage prospects to change to his or her products and services? The answer is to find ways to reduce the risk. One of those ways is to use social networking to develop relationships. This social networking tip describes how to comment on other sites.

Commenting on other sites is a form of social networking as attraction marketing

With the emphasis today on attraction marketing, Continue reading