All Posts by John Aberle

Slater’s Website Creates that Critical First Impression

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , website

Do you remember the last time you met someone and took an instant like or dislike to them? Have you ever bought a book because your first impression was so strongly positive? Regardless of what decisions you’ve made based on first impressions, we all do it. In sales and marketing, it’s long been known that we make our first impression on a prospect in the first 20 seconds. If it’s not positive, we may never get to make a second impression.

First impressions are more critical in Internet marketing than they are in business because people can click off your site and onto another almost instantly. In fact, research shows that you have 1/20th of a second to make that first impression. Nobody makes a decision that fast on the content. The first impression your website makes depends all on the appearance, which includes pictures, white space, and graphics. I personally find examples help me understand concepts better so I’m going to analyze Slater’s 50/50’s website to show how this works. With his website, Scott Slater continues to demonstrate a good understanding of marketing. For my purposes, it’s instructive that he misses a few more subtle points, which I’ll mention as we go along. Overall, Slater’s 50/50’s is a good example of what a small business can do to promote itself.

Strong first impression graphically

Their landing page (the page where you first enter the site) comes before you get to their Home page. This is different from most websites. I find it is both positive and negative.Continue reading

Social Networking Gets Slater’s 50/50 off to a Strong Start

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , Sales and Marketing , Social Networking

The first time I heard about the concept of viral marketing was in Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book, The Tipping Point. He described the elements necessary for a product to take off and catch the public’s imagination like a virus. The impression I got was that while you can know what elements are necessary, you can’t guarantee that you can get the mix right when you deliberately try to make a product go viral.

The marketer’s dream is to have a product go viral.

This remains true about social networking. Some things are so well done that they capture the imagination of a few people who are influencers, and those people spread the word. If they’re respected and their followers or audience agrees, they too tell their friends. Suddenly your product or service goes viral. At least that is every marketer’s dream.
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Researching Facts Is So Much Easier – Thanks, Wikipedia

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

If you really care about building relationships with your customers and prospects, then you will frequently find yourself doing research to confirm your facts. Because trust is a fragile thing, I often look information up to double check things. I want my clients and potential clients to be able to count on me. Trust is core to heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing.

Wikipedia Needs Donations for the World’s Largest Free Encyclopedia

Recently, my favorite reference site put out a request for support. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, is asking for our help. You probably already use Wikipedia. If not, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to support this nonprofit organization that seeks to become the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia is already the “fifth most-read site in the world.” “More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected world.”

To Preserve My Relationships of Trust Requires Checking Facts

Ever since I was introduced to Wikipedia, it’s been my primary resource for information and checking my facts. Their information generally gives a detailed explanation as well as the history or background. For instance, I looked up Sears’ Craftsman Tools’ lifetime warranty because I couldn’t find the warranty on their website. Then today I inquired about the meaning of the term “whitelist.” On the Sears lifetime warranty, the writers explained which products Sears covers with a lifetime warranty and which have a more limited warranty. I am so incredibly grateful to the Wikipedia community for the gift of this free encyclopedia.

Wikimedia Will Appreciate Any Size Donations

Heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers, please join me in saying thank you to the Wikimedia Foundation for making it so much easier to research our facts. Any size donation will be welcome.

Slater’s 50/50 Uses Traditional Marketing Tools to Help Launch Restaurant

By John Aberle | advertising , Sales and Marketing , Unique Selling Proposition

If you think that Internet marketing and social networking have replaced traditional marketing, think again. By picking the right traditional marketing tools, you can reach many prospects that you won’t touch in any other way. As much as I believe in web-based marketing, it’s just one tool, though a multi-faceted one like the Swiss Army Knife. It actually works best when used to augment traditional marketing.

Like my last two articles, I’m going to continue to explore Scott Slater’s marketing efforts for his Slater’s 50/50 “Burgers by Design.” This post will look at his traditional marketing.

Nine Standard Marketing Elements Used by Slater’s 50/50

Slater has demonstrated strong marketing skills. The following are some of the things that Scott Slater does well in old fashioned promotional efforts:Continue reading

Can a Unique Selling Proposition Be Just a Simple Difference?

By John Aberle | Sales and Marketing , Unique Selling Proposition

Have you ever thought that for something to be a unique selling proposition it needed to be really significant, like the Craftsman Hand Tools Lifetime, Unlimited Warranty or owning a patent or having a guarantee like FedEx’s guaranteed next day delivery? I used to. Then I began to pay attention and discovered that unique selling propositions (USPs) only have to be distinctive and important to the prospect.

To give you an example of a business person doing a good job of developing his USP, I’m going to continue my analysis of restaurateur Scott Slater and Slater’s 50/50.

Using branding to set yourself apart

If your uniqueness appeals to your target market, then you may have a unique selling proposition. The goal is to have some distinction that sets you apart from others so that patrons have a reason to come. Almost any branding campaign can create a unique selling proposition just by heavy and constant repetition of their brand name and tagline, like Cadillac’s “The all new 2010 SRX – The Cadillac of Crossovers.” The problem with a campaign like Cadillac’s SRX is that small and mid-sized businesses lack the advertising budget to build a brand just on the repeating an advertising slogan over and over on TV. This particular slogan gets extra impact by relying on the established brand to imply that this is the best of crossovers because it’s a Cadillac.

Slater’s 50/50 shows how a small business can build a unique selling proposition

Scott Slater, on the other hand, takes the path of most small businesses.Continue reading

Slater’s 50/50 Restaurant Demonstrates the Power of Soft Sell Marketing

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

How would you like to launch a new restaurant and by the first weekend have a waiting line of patrons? That’s what Scott Slater did. Recently I had the pleasure of dining at a Slater’s 50/50. I was there to do a review based on a really strong recommendation. Not only did the food win Dorothy and me over, I was impressed with how successfully Scott Slater launched this business and how well it appears to be doing in only 90 days. So I wrote two additional articles for Examiner.com, an interview and an analysis of his marketing efforts, especially his social networking in “Anaheim restaurant Slater’s 50/50 uses social media to generate traffic and reviews.” In my brief discussion of why I believe his marketing is so effective, I covered the following seven areas.

1.    Ideal customer profile
2.    Unique selling proposition
3.    Traditional marketing
4.    Social networking and Internet marketing
5.    Website
6.    Blog
7.    Customer service

Begin your marketing with your appeal to your ideal customers.

In today’s article, I cover the first of the seven points, the ideal customer profile. In subsequent articles, I’ll go into more detail on each of the remaining points.Continue reading

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