Category Archives for "sales"

Email Marketing Terminology Tripped Me Up

By John Aberle | Internet Marketing , sales , Sales Calls

It seems with Internet marketing there is always something to learn. Earlier this week I got another of those lessons. I was feeling really good about finishing my 8th lesson of the 9 lessons I’m giving people who join my community by opting onto mailing list. Then I noticed that not everyone on my list had received all of the lessons. And some lessons seemed to be missing – bummer.

So I started to make up the missing lessons. In the course of trying to create an autoresponder campaign to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, I discovered my error. I forgot that MailChimp sets up campaigns and autoresponder emails under separate tabs. Other than when the get sent, everything about setting up an autoresponder email and a campaign email is the same. I found that most of my lessons I had, in fact, already set up on the autoresponder, having only missed #7.

The lesson – double check your terminology

So what was the lesson here? It was a reminder of the problem with communications Continue reading

How to Fit in with Your Prospects

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

Reading my friend Bob Poole’s book, Listen First – Sell Later, he reminded me about the value of getting to know your customers’ industries. This is important to all salespeople and marketers, not just to soft sell sales and marketing people.

The First Step Is to Decide Who Your Ideal Prospects Are

To really help yourself get established in your sales and marketing efforts, study up on your ideal customers’ market or industry.  While you may have several different ideal customer profiles, pick one that you are most interested in, one which has a sizable potential for sales. Becoming an expert in an industry takes time and effort so be smart about your choice. Remember, your ideal prospects are companies like your best customers because they are most likely to have needs like those you are solving already.

Next, Learn about Their Industry or Market

Once you choose where you want to initially focus, start reading up as much as you can about it. Naturally, the Internet has a wealth of information on almost everything imaginable. The problem is that not all of it is accurate or true so you need to read broadly. A great source of information is to get a subscription to industry publications, most of which are free to people in that industry, including vendors. Also, get involved in one of the trade associations – one to which the people you want to contact actually attend.

Your Goals for this Research

There are at least three purposes to your doing this research and getting involved in a low key way: Continue reading

Sales Myths – You Must Get Past the Gatekeeper

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

You’re wasting energy trying to get past the gatekeeper. For as long as I have been in sales and marketing, I’ve heard sales trainers teach techniques to get past the gatekeeper. Frankly, that’s a waste of energy and bound to tick someone off. Anyone who leans towards soft sell sales and marketing should instinctively appreciate this fact.

You Choose, Sales Myth or Sales Fact

Believing that you must get past the gatekeeper is a sales myth. If you change your attitude and approach, the gatekeeper can actually be your ally. Business owners and executives would be overwhelmed if everyone wanting a slice of their time got it. So I prefer to think of the gatekeeper as a screen.

A Screen Serves Two Purposes at Once

If you’ve ever been anywhere where homes have screen doors, you recognize this image. What is the purpose of a screen? Continue reading

In Soft Sell Sales, Questions Are to Understand

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

About twenty years ago, I attended a sales training class that has ever since stood out as the classic example of hard sell. This former vacuum cleaner salesman taught us how he sold 90% of the homes in this small town in Nevada or Arizona. He told us to just develop a series of questions that everybody would answer yes to. Each yes was like a degree on a thermometer. Eventually you had so many yeses that the temperature reached a point where — that’s right — where they couldn’t say no. Degree by degree he built his closing momentum.

I left that training really disappointed that I’d wasted my money. Talk about manipulation. Long before I heard Judith & Jim talk about soft sell marketing and their Soft Sell Marketers Association, I was a soft sell salesperson and soft sell marketer. My spiritual convictions are such that I’m responsible for my actions. If I control people subconsciously so as to take away their freedom to choose, I will eventually find my actions come back on me.

The irony is that when you use the soft sell approach and ask questions to better understand your prospects’ situation, Continue reading

The Passionate Road to a Sales Career that Is Fun, Fulfilling, and Mutually Rewarding

By John Aberle | sales career , soft sell sales

When I’m consulting with clients on soft sell sales and marketing, I come alive. I absolutely love training people on how to improve their sales and marketing effectiveness. I really think that a career in sales is fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding when you help customers buy.

At the same time, it is work, lots of work. Nor is it a get-rich-quick scheme. A career in soft sell sales offers a lifestyle of hard work rewarding success with much more than money.

Identifying your ideal customer profile takes digging into your records and analyzing them. Developing the understanding of your customers so that you can relate to prospects’ concerns honestly takes research, thinking, and listening. A life worth living in sales takes time and effort, study and practice. It’s my passion that makes it enjoyable.

I really agree with Randy Pausch Continue reading

It's Not about Controlling with Questions

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing , Soft Sell

When I first experienced sales training, the trainers sometimes gave me the feeling that questions were a form of cattle prod designed to guide prospects down the chute to the slaughter house. For any soft sell salesperson, that is an unacceptable approach.

In soft sell sales and marketing, the role is that of a trusted advisor or consultant. We use questions to understand, not to control. One of my clients, Scott, shared with me yesterday his excitement about how well open-ended questions worked for him last week. (Note: Open-ended questions ask who, what, when, where, why, how — they invite the other person to talk more and explain her meaning.)

Looking back, Scott realized Continue reading

Time Enough But No More — If

By John Aberle | Prospecting , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

No matter how noble your efforts and how much you want to help people, each of us only has 24 hours in a day. For most business purposes, the time to work with prospects and customers tends to be significantly less. After too many hours, I lose enthusiasm and energy so eight to ten hours is my practical limit normally. I find too that as much as I love my work, I need downtime to refresh and recharge. Still there is time enough but no more, if I manage my time well, to reach the prospects and customers I need to.

The point here is that none of us has an unlimited supply of time. If we’re sales managers, we can multiply it by hiring more people but then we usually get limited by money — or the time needed to help them and to manage them. So how do we grow our businesses then?

We do it by identifying our Ideal Customer Profile, determining which of their problems or desires we can help with, and understanding what they really want or feel they need to do about their situation.

That’s the first step: narrow down the suspects, which includes everyone in the world or in your community, to only those who are likely to benefit from your products and services. You’ll not only save time by being focused on the people or accounts that make for the most productive use of your time, you’ll find that you don’t need hard sell techniques of pressure, control, and manipulation. This approach is ideal for soft sell sales and soft sell marketing.

Just as understanding your customer is key to building a relationship of trust, it is essential for soft sell salespeople who want to find sales fulfilling, fun, and mutually rewarding. There is time enough, but no more — if you learn who your best prospects are and focus on them and if you show you care because you understand their situation enough to ask the right questions, and then you listen fully before you try to help the customer buy.

The World Is Not Your Oyster When It Comes to Sales

By John Aberle | Prospecting , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

Stop wasting your time, effort, and money trying to sell to the whole world. It takes discipline to train yourself to narrow your efforts to your best effect. I too have to discipline myself: soft sell sales and soft sell marketing appeal mostly to small business owners and people who care about developing long term relationships. Yet we find it tempting to be available to anyone and everyone who might want to buy our products. We don’t want to miss out on any sale. The whole world is our oyster. Not so.

The people who thrive are those who identify their niche and tightly focus on what they do that appeals to that specific group. Last year I read a great example of this by Wayne M. Thomas in his book, The Sales Manager’s Success Manual. He described a plastic surgeon in Southern California who invested heavily in a state-of-the-art laser system capable of removing wrinkles and blemishes.

When he initially identified his potential patient base, he included everyone over 40 in Southern California. His advertising produced disappointing results. Continue reading

Trust by Your Customer Begins with Your Understanding

By John Aberle | Prospecting , soft sell marketing , soft sell sales

One of my favorite American Humorists is Will Rogers. Although he died in a plane crash in 1935, he is long remembered for his famous line, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Actually, the full line was “I never met a man I didn’t like once I got to know him.” It’s the getting to know him that makes all the difference in the world, especially in sales situations.

There’s another cliché in sales and marketing that says, “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” And for me, caring becomes immensely easier when I understand something about what my prospect is dealing with. It makes them human, not numbers, people with problems I can relate to.

This is why I stress the importance of defining your ideal customer. Continue reading

Soft Sell Marketers Naturally Focus on Prospects Matching Their Ideal Customer

By John Aberle | Prospecting , Sales and Marketing

I had fun Thursday consulting with a husband and wife team, small business owners, on sales and marketing for their flow control manufacturing company. This is one of the few times, if not the first, that my CMTC (California Manufacturing Technology Consultants) client was already gathering information on the profile for their target prospects.

Ideal customers typically consist of the 20% who are responsible for 80% of your profits. Don’t get hung up over sales figures. You can go broke trying to get high sales numbers if you aren’t controlling your profits so why not just track profits to start with.

Look for whatever characteristics they have in common. You might have more than one industry. In that case, do two or more of these studies. Knowing these sketches enables you to know which types of companies — or if you work with individuals, what types of people — to really focus on. The more they are like your ideal prospect, the more likely it is that they will have similar problems to the one you are solving for your core customers.Continue reading