All Posts by John Aberle

I Wish I’d Listened to My Feelings

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Sales and Marketing

The other day I wrote a blog post, “The Strangest Secret to Business Success”  in which I’d commented positively on the points that that three successful businessmen had all made about looking out for the other person’s concerns first. Yesterday I read an email from a friend who advised me that I should be careful about one of the speakers I’d named. He offered no details, but his comment was enough because in all honesty I had had a bad feeling about this man’s presentation. His hard driving approach came off to Dorothy and me as hard sell, i.e. more concerned about his sales than our needs and wants. I wish I’d listened to my feelings before I included him in the article.

Feeling Insecure I Drowned Out My Inner Voice

This is a case of allowing the opinion of others to drown out my inner voice. I could have used my wife’s reaction to his hard driving presentation to bolster my own response. Instead I was impressed by 1) his examples and points, which I still feel were correct, and 2) his testimonials by famous people, like Mark Victor Hansen and Brian Tracy. I wrote off my concerns with his presentation style to feelings of inadequacy, such as “I just must not be ready to play at that level,” instead of to “this isn’t the type of game I want to play.”

I’ve had other times in my life when I had a negative feeling about someone but Continue reading

Is Perfection Killing Your Sales?

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing

I read a quote this morning that got me thinking back on my early years in sales. Because I was raised with a strong perfectionism streak, I was always looking for the “best” solution. Naturally everything fell short. It tended to undermine my sales until I learned instead to focus on what the customer wanted and felt he needed. Based on that criterion, I helped customers buy. Doing this, I was always a sales leader despite my perfectionism.

“They want what works”

The seed idea that got me thinking this morning was the following quote from Larry Wilson that Tom Justin included in his book, How to Take No for an Answer and Still Succeed: “Everyone is seeking an adequate solution. Not the best one. No one really knows what that is. They want what works.” There is the key point, “They want what works.”

In the 1980s when I was in computer sales, I remember sales representatives I knew complaining about how IBM ruled by fear, uncertainty and doubt or FUD. A person could be selling a superior computer system to a major corporation only to have the IBM rep get to CEO or Chairman of the Board and ask if he really wanted to risk their business by moving away from IBM. What I gleaned from numerous war stories was that IBM was rarely the cutting edge product and maybe even had problems. Their strength lay in their strong customer support.

Obviously in these cases, the top management was less concerned Continue reading

The Attraction Power of Passion in Sales

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing

My client looked at me really strangely when I spoke to him about passion for his products. He was a businessman who manufactured hair and personal care products. This was a business in his mind, not a love affair. But we were talking about passion from different viewpoints. I reminded him of the enthusiasm they had for the unsolicited customer testimonials they receive. He and his adult sons agreed then. Frankly, few things are as attractive in a salesperson as passion and excitement. Your enthusiasm gets prospects excited too. Life rises briefly above the mundane and takes on more colors and more vitality, provided your prospect is ready to listen to your passion.

Sharing your passion before your prospect is ready to listen is hard sell

And therein lays the critical point. If you push your enthusiasm on a prospect before that person is ready to listen, you come across as a hard sell salesperson. Your potential buyer may visit a few minutes longer before leaving, probably for good. On the other hand, if you demonstrate that you care about the customer’s concerns first, ask questions and probe to understand better, without rushing into the product, you are demonstrating a soft sell sales approach. People want you to care about what they really need and want before you try to sell them. If you do this, you will be able to help customers buy.

For example, Continue reading

The Strangest Secret to Business Success

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

It’s ironic that the secret to great success in business lies in service first, rather than focusing on the money. Interestingly, this is a heart-centered, soft sell sales approach. In the past two weeks, I’ve heard several incredibly successful people point out that if you want to really grow your business, you need to serve first, i.e. give something of value with no expectation of return, before you begin to think of selling.

Harvey Mackay on volunteering

First, it was Harvey Mackay who pointed out that his father sat him down as a young man just out of college, to tell him “that 25% of my life will be spent volunteering.” Mr. Mackay is the greatest networker I’ve ever listened to. He’s published his 6th business book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door, and it’s already a best seller.

Stephen Pierce of MRMI demonstrated giving value before selling

Then last week, Dorothy and I invested three days with Stephen Pierce of Stephen Pierce International, Inc. and his current series of workshops, MRMI Infinite Internet Income. Continue reading

Social networking without looking like a spammer

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Social Networking

It seems everything in life is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s called social networking because people want to be social and interact. They want to become part of a community. On the other hand, the Internet marketing is full of spammers, people who only care about their own profit and have no sincere desire to engage with you beyond getting your money. In this case, the spammers aren’t filling email boxes but rather cluttering blogs with meaningless comments. So how do you become part of the Internet community while avoiding looking like a spammer?

How to spot spam comments

Interestingly, it’s easy. First, look at what spammers who put comments on blogs do. While some are obvious, the challenging calls about whether or not it’s spam come from the spammers who play to our egos by telling us how great we are and how much they love our posts.

Typical tactics are to say something like, Continue reading

Losing Customer Loyalty Is Often from Little Things Adding Up

By John Aberle | customer service , heart-centered

If you think customers don’t care about how you treat them and your employees, think again. Yesterday, as I went on my walk, I came to the point where I normally stop for iced tea. For the maybe the sixth time in 15 years, I went to Burger King. I stopped going to Burger King because they used the concentrated iced tea instead of fresh brewed. Several months ago, I heard that the one near us now uses fresh brewed. I hadn’t tried them until today. And I changed because my favorite stop for iced tea, and sometimes breakfast, finally lost my loyalty.

As I have bought $6 to $10 per week, and I’ve been a loyal customer for a minimum of three years, that’s $312 to $520 per year or a lifetime value of at least $1,500.

Destroying a customer’s loyalty is often due to a lot of little things

So what finally broke my feeling of customer loyalty? Actually, there have been a lot of things that all added up over time. For instance, this restaurant didn’t heat the facility on cold days. As most of the time when I stopped, I used the drive through, it didn’t affect me often. However, I would watch the employees, who became friends because of how well they treated me, shiver and complain about how cold it was in there. I too hated it on the occasions I did go inside, like for breakfast, and had to bundle up in order to stand the humid cold.

I watched the franchisee blow off one manager who’d worked her heart out for them a year or so ago. I cringed at this cavalier treatment of someone who was good with her employees and who demonstrably cared about her customers.

Then recently I learned that the second manager I’d come to really like after a series of short term ones, was demoted. She got fed up shortly after that because of how the new manager treated her and left. Morale with the other employees has dropped too. It’s hard to get a willing smile out of them. Interestingly, the reason for the demotion is that the franchise requires the manager to have gone through training so the owner hired a man who has the certification.

As a small business consultant, I’m a big believer in training and certifications. So on the surface, you would expect me to agree with this policy. Continue reading

Marketing a Best Seller with Soft Sell

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

Decades before I heard the term “soft sell,” at a time when I was still floundering at figuring out how to sell in a way that allowed me to sell with integrity, being true to my values, I came across Harvey Mackay’s first book, How to Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive. I immediately became a fan!

I loved the image he came up with because I’d used a similar one. I choose to avoid sales organizations I call shark tanks. I do poorly in companies that believe they need to create a feeding frenzy within their sales pool. Yet I swim in the same ocean. So I chose the orca as my totem because I see orcas as having fun, being social creatures, and being fearless when they need to attack sharks.

Once I read How to Swim with the Sharks … I knew I had a mentor. I’ve read every book of his up to the newest one, which I heard about today. Again, Harvey Mackay has impressed me with his soft sell approach, this time with promoting his newest bestselling book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You.

Heart-centered book promotion video

Once you sign up for his mailing list in order to get his bonus gifts, his autoresponder takes you to a thank you page. Here Mackay speaks to you on another video. My favorite line is, “Now, the book includes a 100% money back guarantee, so you can’t go wrong. If you decide you don’t want to invest in yourself and the book, that’s okay. Just enjoy my free gifts from me to you. But when you do take action, I can tell you that this will be one of the best book investments you’ll ever make in yourself ….”

This is one of the best illustrations I’ve seen of marketing a best seller with a heart-centered, soft sell approach. Mr. Mackay confirms the email has been sent with your bonuses. Now he makes a presentation for the value of his book. The fabulous part is that he promotes the value of his book while allowing you the freedom to decide not to invest. His interest is in building a long term relationship first and the sale when it’s right for you.

If you would like to learn more about Harvey Mackay’s newest book, go to Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door.

Heart-centered, Soft Sell Seminar Companies Do Exist

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

Some days you get pleasant surprises. This past week that happened to Dorothy and me. We attended a two day seminar to learn about how to invest in any market, i.e. whether the stock market goes up, down or sideways. It was put on by Wealth Magazine and Investools Investor Education, TD Ameritrade companies. While we learned a lot at this seminar, the most significant part for me was that I got to witness a presentation by a heart-centered, soft sell seminar company firsthand – they do exist!

Mark Broberg, the primary presenter, was dynamic and informative, at the same time he used every opportunity to make sure we understood the value of continued education. He stressed the fact that people who didn’t choose to continue the programs were historically unlikely to continue improving their investing skills or even to do their own investing despite attending this two day seminar. In other words, he was selling their additional investor education courses. Where Mark Broberg and the other event directors, especially Tim Walter, impressed us was that they demonstrated a soft sell approach to promoting their seminars.Continue reading

Love in Sales – It’s not that kind of love

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

I’ve had a dream of speaking about love in sales for a couple of years now, but frankly the topic scares me a little. I mean we’ve seen Presidents of the United States and U.S. Congressmen brought to task for love in the workplace. Most recently the golf icon, Tiger Woods felt compelled to apologize for love outside his home. So while I whole heartedly believe in the importance of love in sales, it’s not that kind of love.

The problem with English is that many words like love had radically different meanings. Latin had many words for love, but two relevant here:
• Amor for love, passion, fondness, desire or an object of love, darling – from the University of Notre Dame’s translation site.
• Caritas for dearness, high price, affection, love, and esteem from the same
The point is that amor relates to a more physical or sexual love while caritas is the root for our English word charity and so ties in to spiritual love or an unselfish love for others.

Love in sales means caring for their concerns first

So when I talk about love in sales, I mean that heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing requires a base of caring for others enough to put their interests ahead of your personal gain long enough to find out what they need and want, what their problems and desires are, what they expect the outcome to be. Provided you can help them, then you do so. This kind of love is related to the expression often associated with the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm.”Continue reading

The idea that soft sell sales is all about personality is wrong

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

I had forgotten that people may interpret soft sell sales as an effort to succeed simply on the power of one’s great personality. Jim Sniechowski in his recent blog post, Soft Sell Marketing Misconceptions – A Dime a Dozen, mentioned misconceptions about soft sell. The idea that soft sell sales is all about personality is wrong. This false image produces the erroneous idea that soft sell salespeople are limited to sales to prospects who already know they wanted to buy that product or service.

Sales success takes proactive work, not just a great personality.

I can appreciate how someone might think that soft sell means personality. In fact, from over 30 years in sales and marketing, mostly in soft sell despite extensive hard sell training, I believe this problem is common to newbies in the field. Most people want to be liked. Unfortunately, regardless of your approach, whether traditional, hard sell or the rising in popularity heart-centered, soft sell one, sales success takes proactive work.

I’m not going to tell you that having a good personality has no impact on how easily likable you are any more than I’ll tell you that an attractive woman can’t get most men’s attention just by entering a room. In both cases, though, the initial appeal may undermine their ability to be taken seriously. In my experience, true heart-centered, soft sell sales success has little or nothing to do with having a likable personality.Continue reading