All Posts by John Aberle

Social Networking Tip: If you’re going to write me, write to me

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Social Networking

Social networking can be a blessing or just another annoyance. Used properly, it’s a wonderful tool for heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers because it shows you as a person. Prospects and customers want to come to know, like and trust you. When they discover you’re a person too, it can help you to connect with them. Done wrong it merely shows you lack good sense and manners so it will hurt your ability to connect in a positive way. Remember, social networking is about being social and interacting with people. Which brings us to today’s social networking tip: If you’re writing “me” (anyone you want to join your network) to become my friend or make a connection, then write to “me.”

LinkedIn and Facebook as well as most other social networking sites have marvelous tools for inviting everyone in your different mailing lists to join you on their sites. If I know you personally, especially in the non-virtual or physical world of daily living, then you can get away with an impersonal automated request – and I will probably join you because you are my friend out here.

Even then, however, taking a moment to write a little bit extra about why you want me, or everyone else in your database, to join you on this latest social networking site would be nice. For example, “I find that LinkedIn is really popular with business people and has lots of useful forum or groups that I think you might find as useful as I do” would help me to understand it’s value to me.

To connect, make it personal

If, on the other hand, we’ve never met, then I would appreciate knowing why you want to be friends. What do we have in common? Are you a Continue reading

Old Selling Secret Improves Sales

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

Are you looking for a way to really impress your prospect? Here’s an old sales secret; it’s one of the simplest ways. Send a handwritten thank you note after your meeting.

Thank you notes work following job interviews too

I had the pleasure of attending a networking group meeting last night for the Career Marketplace Search group that meets at the Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena California. When the guest speaker on Emotional Intelligence had to cancel because of illness, the group coordinators substituted a session on job search skills. I suggested that one technique that works really well for those who actually get the interview is to remember to send a handwritten thank you note. Sandy Edge, the program facilitator, reinforced my point by reminding the group that a couple members of the group had come back to report that they got their job offers because they were the only finalists to send thank you notes.

Use handwritten, personalized thank you notes to differentiate you

While this blog is about sales and marketing, remember that job-search candidates need to sell their perspective employers just as much as you do your prospects. A handwritten note will set you apart. Most people won’t make the effort.

Sending a hand written thank you note isn’t a miracle worker. But it does Continue reading

Increase Sales through Package Pricing

By John Aberle | Pricing , Sales and Marketing

I recently encountered a vendor who could not understand one of the basic concepts in sales and marketing: people love a bargain and are inclined to buy more if there is a special. I’m sure you are familiar with this idea as many successful marketers create package prices to encourage buyers to purchase more. Interestingly, I’m usually at the other end of the spectrum wondering if merchants understand the other basic of business, i.e. that you have to make a profit (or at least break even) to survive.

Not everyone accepts the value of selling a package of products

One of the easiest ways to increase sales is to offer bundled packages. Yet the management of this company refused to give customers a choice of buying several pictures at a reduced price once they’d bought the first one. It would appear that they wanted the full profit on each sale.

Here’s the problem that comes from holding the line on prices in this unique case:

• They have a fixed number of prospects, only those attending this event.
• Their labor costs are already spent – I call this sunk costs – because the photographers already took the pictures “on spec,” i.e. hoping to entice buyers to purchase them, and already printed them up so the customers could see them.
• Their material costs to print up the pictures are also spent as the prospects wouldn’t purchase without seeing the pictures.
• Their overhead was a fixed expense regardless of how many pictures they sold.

Here is the basic profit formula:

Continue reading

Hard Sell Intervention Ad Disrespects Customers

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

There’s a marketing struggle for survival going on amongst the traditional, generally hard sell marketers. They are finding it harder to grab people’s attention and offer something new and exciting. The latest hard sell ad is a television commercial in which a discount fashion store chain shows friends conducting an intervention to save another friend from over spending on the fashions she could get for less at Marshalls / TJ Maxx. This attitude shows disrespect for customers’ judgment.

Hard sell reveals I’m right; you’re wrong attitude

You may feel that I am making a big deal out of nothing; it’s simply advertising and a humorous effort at that. Obviously, I disagree. The Marshalls / TJ Maxx TV commercial shows an attitude that is prevalent in hard sell sales and marketing: I have the right to decide for you that you need to buy my product. Because I know better than you do, I can use guilt, pressure or other manipulations to control your actions.

Some people with spiritual training recognize this for what it is, Continue reading

Appeal to Prospectors Instead of Prospects

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

Months ago I first heard Judith & Jim, founders of the Soft Sell Marketers Association, talk about using the term “prospector” instead of “prospect.” Although I wrote last summer about heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers needing to pay attention to terminology, such as using “broadcast” instead of “blast” (“Choose More Powerfully Attractive Words“), I resisted changing this phrase I’ve used for decades. Then, the other day I was listening to a Soft Sell Marketers Association teleseminar I’d downloaded. It was a session late last year called “Keywords with Rick Hubbard.”

Prospectors are already searching

Rick pointed out that Jim’s use of the term prospector gave him one word to explain a concept he’d struggled to describe for years. Instead of striving to find prospects, put your attention on attracting people who want your solution to either fix something or to fulfill some desire.

Suddenly, a light came on for me too! This is the very angle I’ve taken with my eBook and lessons on 9 Steps to Finding Prospects Who Want What You Provide. (It is currently my free bonus for signing up for my mailing list.) When you appeal to people who already want to buy the help you offer, you need far less time and effort than you do to create demand in people who don’t yet see they need it.

Use heart-centered, soft sell skills to connect with prospectors

Your heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing efforts connect with “prospectors.” Your knowledgeable questions showContinue reading

Be Enthusiastic – If You Don’t Care, Who Else Will?

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

One of the strongest tools I’ve had in sales is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm sells more than any other skill that I’ve seen. The point is, as the salesperson, “If you don’t care, who else will?”

This doesn’t require you to be really outgoing and dynamic in expression. If it’s a natural part of your personality to be energetically expressive, then that’s how you authentically show your enthusiasm. But if you have a more restrained personality, don’t try to act expressively enthusiastic. People will recognize it as fake, which will undermine your credibility. Just be yourself. Show your belief and excitement about your products and services as you would normally and naturally. Subdued enthusiasm is still enthusiasm. When you speak with conviction and confidence, you will be believable.

Your Voice Tone and Energy May Tell a Different Story than Your Words

Prospective customers want to know that you believe in what you are selling them. If you speak without enthusiasm, Continue reading

Passion in Sales Will See You Through

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Sales Motivation

Selling is one of the toughest jobs I know, especially for heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers. Selling can also be one of the one most exciting, rewarding, and fulfilling jobs I know, especially for heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers. For me, it depended on what I was selling and how much I believed in the value my products and services delivered to my customers. When I was excited about the benefits of my products and services, I could be passionate and really enthusiastic about sharing with my potential buyers. But for me to have passion in my sales, I had to believe what I sold would improve their lives. And passion was important to seeing me through the rejections and the dull and unpleasant activities required in sales.

Among the most rewarding sales calls were those when I took the time to find out what the clients felt their problems were and what they were looking for before I started selling. When I knew what they wanted, it was easy to share, explain and demonstrate how my solutions would help them achieve their dreams or solve their problems. In other words, I would feel passionate about what I was doing.

I can think of few things more energy draining, and spirit-killing than going to work at a job I hate. I speak from experience. While I loved the Air Force and stayed in for 9.5 years, not counting my time as a cadet, I put myself into a dead end career field as an electronic warfare officer. For six years, I tried to find a way out and into management and command. I finally left the Air Force on January 1, 1979. My first sales job was in radio advertising in Riverside, California. While I lost the security of my military salary and benefits, I loved helping customers buy.

Questions to Help Find Passion for Your Sales and Marketing

So how do you find passion for what you do? Continue reading

How You Gain from Giving Testimonials

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Sales Training

The other day as I was preparing for my meeting with a client, I was looking at the testimonials on their website and realized for the first time, the irony of giving testimonials.  I used to think that asking for testimonials was one-sided.  In other words, if I asked you for testimonial of the work I’ve done, then you didn’t really get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of showing your appreciation for work well done. I didn’t realize that the giver of the testimonial actually benefits too.

First Benefit of Giving Testimonials: Publicity for You

The first benefit you get from giving me a testimonial is that you get free publicity wherever I use it.  Provided I attract a lot of readers to my blog or do a lot of mailings, you stand to gain a lot of recognition.

Reveal Your Values without Being Obvious

Interestingly, while working with clients on ways to fine tune their marketing and sales activities today, I realized a second, more significant benefit about giving testimonials: when you give a testimonial, you have an opportunity to indirectly state what you believe.  The mere fact you are giving a testimonial points back at the values you hold as important.  For instance, I Continue reading

The Problem with Thinking Outside the Box

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Sales Management

How often have you heard people advise you to “think outside the box”? If you’re in business or sales and marketing management, you’ve probably heard it a lot. One problem with this admonition is that they rarely tell you how to do it or even really what it means. So first, thinking outside the box means to be open to ways that you can do things differently than they ever were before thereby finding new and exciting ideas to capture people’s imagination and earn their business.

You need to get out for your thinking to get out

The bigger problem with thinking outside the box is that we are all limited by our experiences. So in order to creatively think outside the box, you need to get outside the box of your current experiences.

My friends Judith & Jim, in SSMA recorded teleconference, “Focus 2010 – What Do You Want?” brought up the point that if you have no frame of reference for something, you can’t see it even if it’s directly in front of your nose.  Judith & Jim described how when the Spaniards first came to the New World, many of the Indians were unable to see them as the ships were so far outside their experience these American natives were blind to them. The shamans, because of their openness to new experiences, were able to teach their tribe members how to see the ships.

I have a similar experience when playing Continue reading

How Objections Are Gifts

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Sales Training , Soft Sell

Have you ever noticed how most people want to avoid conflict? Salespeople are no different. That is why it’s hard to appreciate that objections are gifts. After all, objections tend to come across as either rejections or as pending conflicts.

This is why traditional sales trainers teach you to prepare a list of all the objections you can think of that your prospects might bring up. Then develop strong counters to each one. Then, when your potential buyer raises one of the objections, you can quickly and smoothly defeat it.

See Sales as a Battle, Lose the Customer

The irony of that approach is that each victory you have over your prospect’s objections sprouts another objection. Eventually, unless you just happen to get lucky and find a prospect who wants to buy anyway, your prospect comes up with something like, “Well, let me think about it. I’m not ready to buy right now.” And so, with this effort to be polite, the meeting is over. It’s unlikely you will ever get back in to see that person or, if you are in retail, that he or she will come back looking for you to sell him again.

See with Your Heart to Find Objections as Gifts

The key to accepting objections as gifts is to take a heart-centered, soft sell approach: step outside our own personal feelings long enough to ask, “Why did this customer bring up this objection in the first place? What does she really want?” Change your viewpoint Continue reading