Category Archives for "heart-centered"

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

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

Silence Shows Respect after Asking a Question

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

In the early years of attending sales training seminars, one of the dramatic effects sales trainers, especially with a large audience would try for would be to tell us, “When you ask a question,” then they would pause for a moment and follow that by yelling, “SHUT UP!” They would continue with this cliché, “He who speaks first loses.”

If you’ve read any of my blog posts about heart-centered, soft sell sales, by now you should recognize that as a hard sell attitude. It’s all about control and a win-lose philosophy of sales. Nevertheless, today, I’m going to tell you something similar but from a different perspective.

Be quiet or shut up – what’s the difference?

When you ask a question, be quiet until your prospect or customer answers. So other than the fact that I chose to avoid saying, “shut up,” what’s the difference? The difference is respect.

It’s respectful to allow the other person time to think about what you asked. I know when someone asks me a question, I need to think about the answer for a few minutes. If you interrupt me while I’m thinking, obviously the question wasn’t important so I’ll pass on it. That meeting may then be over.

In this respect, you did lose, twice. Continue reading

Using "Yes But" for Objections Can Harm Your Relationships

By John Aberle | heart-centered , Objections , Sales Calls , Soft Sell

This habit of speech is one of the hardest I can think of to break. It’s natural when we feel attacked to defend ourselves. The problem is that we can harm a relationship we’ve worked hard to build. There’s something about saying “yes, but …” that undermines trust and liking someone.

Never Give a Compliment Followed by a But

Years ago I learned to never give a compliment then follow it with “but ….”  In the mind of the person receiving the compliment, the “but” cancels out everything positive you said before it. In sales and marketing, whether heart-centered, soft sell sales or hard sell, you can do the same thing, particularly when handling objections.

Learn to Separate Your Identity from Your Product or Service

For most salespeople, objections feel like an attack, like someone is saying there’s something wrong with you – even though it’s the product or service that seems to be falling short, it’s common to take them personally, to become defensive. As a result, we try a little empathy. That’s the “yes” part of our statement. We get in trouble with our person-to-person connections when we follow our statement of understanding with a ”but …” to show our prospects or customers that while they made a good point, they are still wrong.

If You React Defensively, You Lose

Continue reading

The Most Important Question on a Sales Call

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

There’s one question that has served me extremely well in over six years as a small business consultant. It’s the same question that heart-centered, soft sell salespeople and marketers need to ask their customers and prospective customers. The most important question is, “Why?”

Sales scripts seek to control the sales call.

I’ve had salespeople and small business owners ask me about writing a script. I have used them successfully 18 years ago when it was a required part of the job. I didn’t like them then, and I really dislike them now. Other than to memorize an opening question to get you started so you can avoid being tongue-tied, scripts are designed to control the flow of questions so as to control the prospect.

That’s a hard sell approach to sales because it only cares about one thing, getting the prospect’s money. While I did well, I only lasted a short time at the job because I began to really question whether our product did what we said it did — despite the stack of testimonial letters the company gave me from around the country.

Heart-centered salespeople seek to see their customers’ viewpoints.

Following that experience, I returned to talking with prospects. Heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing focus first on the customer’s needs and wants. While people may quickly tell you what they think they want, it’s very important to dig deeper to understand why. Nobody wants to look stupid so 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