The right words begin the building of trust

 In every culture, certain words have connotations the dictionary definition doesn’t cover. In America, there are many terms that have implied sexual meanings. Soft sell sales and marketing people will avoid using them as they undermine your efforts to develop trust. The chapter I enjoyed in this hard sell sales trainer’s book talked about words that have baggage attached to them. For instance, he said to ask people to "approve this agreement" instead of "sign here" because most Americans were told by their parents to never sign anything. Although this is not as big an issue when you have worked together to actually provide exactly what your prospect wants, it’s still important to think about your vocabulary and replace words that might be a turn off subconsciously.

 The following are a few terms to help you develop your soft sell sales and marketing sensitivity:

 I’d like to tell you that I always use the "better" phrases. Frankly, I have decades of conditioning from the old school approach to sales and marketing. Nineteen years after I first realized "I fear that …" was telling my subconscious to be afraid, I still hear myself using this phrase from my childhood. Now, though, I’ll catch myself and change what I’m saying on the fly.

 Make the effort to choose more powerfully attractive words in your soft sell marketing copy and in your soft sell sales meetings with prospects and customers. You will find that gradually your attitude starts to shift. You will be more open, more interested in your prospects because your terms tell your subconscious that is how you view your business. The rewards for soft sell sales and marketing go beyond mere commissions and profits to person-to-person connections. This elevates your business to a level that is fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding.

 Please comment and share expressions you have learned to change to uplift your business.

Having a lifestyle is about fulfilling your dreams. Travel is one of mine.

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 in his chapter “The Friday Night Solution” The Last Lecture, when he praises hard work, “As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interst in the bank. The rewards build faster.” (p. 156)

I got to hear an example of the rewards from years of hard work recently. I was listening to a client’s sales team as they practiced role playing. The “customer” said something that immediately flagged my attention. “What did he mean by that?” I wondered. The “sales rep,” who is actually very good, missed it. I was intrigued because until I observed their role playing, I had taken for granted my skill at listening. The “sales rep” reminded me of how far I have come in this particular ability. I can appreciate now that I have had years of training and years of practice to be able to automatically recognize something this “customer” revealed that needed to be probed deeper.

Experiencing sales as fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding is the gift you give yourself for persistence, for all the hard work to make handling sales calls flow smoothly. Find your passion because it makes the long hours invested to learn, to practice, and to visualize possible. The joy experienced from making a connection with your customers pays you back for the time and effort to develop the sense of curiosity necessary to build relationships. As the saying goes, hard work is its own reward — it is when it’s invested where your passion lies.

Mickey and Tinkerbell greet visitors to the Magic Kingdom.

Wow! Such a little change yet it has such a different feeling. The emphasis is on the positive viewpoint, “open.” This immediately reminded me of a Soft Sell Marketers Association weekly training I listened to recently in which Judith & Jim talked about guarantees.

As they said, many guarantees on the Internet say something to the effect of “If you’re unhappy with …, I’ll give you your money back.” The problem with that wording is that it creates a subconscious expectation of being unhappy. They prefer to set up a positive expectation by saying, “If you’re not completely satisfied and delighted with …, we’ll give you your money back.” In this case, the wording leaves you with the expectation of being completely satisfied and delighted.

So how does this being careful about word choice work for soft sell sales and soft sell marketing? It sets up a mindset that focuses us on our customers’ issues and concerns. Once we condition our subconscious with the use of positive, service oriented words, we will find using questions and listening closely to the answers happens naturally. We help customers buy — because our prospects trust our relationship to only advise them to buy when it is in their interest, not just because we have to make quota.

Our word choice has an impact on how we think about and treat people. I refer to initial sales calls as interviews because I want my emphasis on getting to know and understand my clients. The term client implies a professional role in which I am an advisor instead of just someone selling a product. Another soft sell sales expression is to “reach an agreement” instead of “closing the sale.” Jim Sniechowski in a Soft Sell Marketers Association session suggested “opening the relationship” instead of closing the sale. In another SSMA session, the members discussed the term “list” which is very impersonal. My favorite solution was “members’ list.”

Judith recently critiqued the title of one of my ebooks in which I said to “Hit the Heart of ….” I agreed and changed it to “Speak to the Heart of ….” I think the new title feels better and definitely is more in line with my soft sell marketing.

The point is to be selective in your choice of words. When you find yourself reverting to old, more aggressive and combative phrases, change them. Choose terms that give your subconscious the message that you want to provide spiritual service in your sales and marketing activities. Soft sell sales and marketing build trusting relationships with people enabling you to help customers buy. You will find that the resulting connections with them give you a business life that is fulfilling, fun, and mutually rewarding.

Please share your favorite soft sell phrases with me in the Comments section. Also, check out the Soft Sell Marketers Association Membership Site. The weekly sessions and library of audio and video training provide a great resource as does the forum.

There's time enough but no more -- if you manage it well

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.

Benefit Statements Answer the Question So What?

What an incredible demonstration of the power of WIIFM. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re in sales & marketing or management or just trying to convince your child to change her behavior, the key question is “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM)

So when you want people to seriously consider what you are proposing to them, speak to them in terms of their interests and concerns. In sales and marketing jargon, talk or write about the benefits. When I first got into selling as a profession, the trainers smart enough to talk about benefits used the example of nobody buys a drill to have a drill. People buy drills to make holes.

I propose that as a soft sell salesperson or soft sell marketer you can go a step further in discovering their motivation. I think they buy a drill to mount something, like the marlin in one client’s office, for a reason, such as pride of accomplishment or to show off his fishing skill at having caught one. They might also buy the drill to build cabinets so as to organize their kitchen or workshop or office because they are more comfortable in an uncluttered office or because they are tired of wasting time trying to find things.

Use your knowledge of your ideal customer profile to help you ask questions that will encourage your prospects to reveal what problems or desires, what wants and needs, have them looking for a solution. (See my 4/28/09 blog post, Trust by Your Customer Begins with Your Understanding, and my 5/3/09 post, Build Trust by Digging Deeper to Understand What Your Customer Wants, for more insight into this.)

While the potential reasons are numerous, discovering the specific reasons shows you care about them. You can then focus your presentation on the benefits your products and services provide that mean something to them. In some cases, getting better information from them will change the product you intended to suggest. Answering “What’s in it for me?” for your prospects and customers means that you can help customers buy. Moreover, you will find it leads to relationships that make sales fun, fulfilling and mutually rewarding.

Join me on Facebook. I’m building a community of friends who believe in soft sell sales and soft sell marketing as the way to a fulfilling, fun, and mutually rewarding business.

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. This is because the vast majority of the population over 40 did not feel they had a need to get rid of wrinkles. Furthermore, most of them did not have the finances to afford to even if they did want to. Changing his campaign to “I restore lost beauty!” and concentrating his advertising to where the best prospects lived, he appealed to those for whom their looks meant success or failure, people who also had the money to afford his services. In the example Thomas gave, the focused campaign was 13 times more effective.

In my experience, this is very realistic. That’s why I strongly encourage everyone in soft sell sales and soft sell marketing to determine your ideal customer profile. Prospects who match that have the greatest likelihood of wanting and feeling they need your products and services because such problems are common to people and companies like your best customers.

Beware the sensuous whisper of greed. It causes us to think we can appeal to everyone. Today, more than ever, the whole world is not your oyster when it comes to sales and marketing. Decide on the group of people who have the problems and desires, the needs and wants you address best. Help customers buy because it works for them. You’ll find your sales more fun and the results mutually rewarding.

Finally, if you’re looking for an excellent book on sales management, check out The Sales Manager’s Success Manual.

Even Chicago's immense business district is tiny compared to the Internet marketplace

For instance, in October 2008, Netcraft reported 182,226,259 sites from their web server survey. That number has surged to 235,890,526 sites in their May 2009 survey. Given that volume of competition for attention, I would say that the odds of being “found” by chance are slim to none. You need to actively market your business like you would any “brick and mortar” business, i.e. a company with a physical storefront or office space.

Avoid panicking at these numbers. Only a fraction of that number provides competition to you. Instead use this information to motivate yourself to actively market your business.

The great news is that at no time in history has it been easier for a small business to reach people looking specifically for the products and services it sells. Internet marketing makes niche sales incredibly effective. Additionally, the associated tools ideally suit a soft sell marketer and soft sell salesperson because they enable you to build a community of people interested in what you have to offer, people who can come to know, like, and trust you. Then, based on your relationship with them, they will come to buy from you or to buy from companies you recommend.

Here are some points to consider:
• Read my other blog posts first about identifying your ideal customer profile then figuring out their problems or desires and their wants and needs — as they see them. Write out your benefits based on your prospects’ concerns.
• Revise your website to speak to their interests.
o My favorite marketing cliché is that “nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
o In other words, stop bragging about how great you are. It’s irrelevant until they become interested in what you are saying to address their problems or desires.
• Develop an Internet marketing campaign with social networking.
o Be sure that your website has a place to sign up for your ezine (electronic newsletter) — provide a free bonus when someone opts-in, i.e. signs up for your mailing list.
o Post a comment on someone else’s blog when they write about a topic you can contribute to.
o Answer a question posted on a forum that you find relevant to your business.
o Create your own newsletter
o Create a blog of your own
o Submit articles to Ezine Articles or other article directories where people can reprint your articles in exchange for including your author’s resource box.
o Post videos to YouTube.com or other video sites
o Add them also to your website and/or blog
o Post audio to your website and/or blog too or to an audio directory like PodBean.com
• Use physical marketing to support your Internet marketing, like your business cards and postcards,.

No matter how gorgeous your website, it’s only an address on an overcrowded virtual marketplace. Proactive marketing like the ideas above enable you to attract people looking for what you offer. These soft sell sales & marketing activities enable you to develop trust by showing that you care about their challenges and dreams. You are giving them a taste for what you can do to help them. And when they are ready, you help customers buy through guiding them and by describing the benefits instead of manipulating and pressuring.

Sign up for my free article on soft sell sales techniques, “Easier Sales: 7 Steps to Winning Customers.” We care about your privacy so we will not sell or give out your email address to others.

It’s no wonder that most Americans don’t trust marketers. Label something properly and customers buy because no matter how often we’ve been lied to, we want to trust the words. We’ve been taught that words have certain meanings so the product marketing people can generate sales by picking the right product names, even when the labels are misleading. This hard sell approach of “Get-the-sale-however-you-can” works until the words have been abused and misused so long that they lose their power.

As soft sell marketers and soft sell salespeople, we have our work cut out for us. We have to win our customers’ trust. Yet we are up against our prospects’ cynical suspicions that we only care about getting their money out of their wallets and into ours. They suspect we will take their money leaving some useless junk behind while they still have the problem they had originally.

Fortunately, people do recover and trust again just like most of us recovered from our first broken heart to go on and find love. It seems to be human nature to want to trust if given enough reason to risk developing a new relationship.

The key to gaining the customer’s trust is to actually care about helping them. Ask questions that show you understand their basic situation. This requires understanding the problems or desires, the wants and needs enough to start a conversation. So, either you have been there yourself and found the solution that you are now selling; or you spoke to your customers who have been there.

When I first started selling microcomputers in 1981, I was enthusiastic because word processing was so much faster and more convenient than typewriters. I could catch the errors, correct them on-screen then print or find them, fix them and reprint. I spoke with prospects about the time and effort saved and the frustration avoided. I knew it first hand. I had enthusiasm and conviction.

The other choice is to learn from others by asking sincere questions and listening to the answers. What is it that your products and services can provide that is important enough to invest their money in your solution? Ask about how much of a hassle their present situation causes? What happens if it continues without fixing it? What is the benefit from getting a solution or gaining the dream result?

Don’t tell. Ask. If their answer leaves questions in your mind, train yourself not to rush to the next question. This isn’t a game to get the most answers. Soft sell sales means building relationshps so you want the deepest understanding you can get. Let your prospects and customers know they can trust you because you sincerely care about their issues. And be prepared to walk away from this sale or recommend your competition when your product won’t work for what they need.

Despite our national trait of skepticism towards marketing hype, you can help customers trust you by showing you genuinely care about aiding them. Trust comes from using relevant questions then listening — and responding — to their answers. Help customers buy when doing so either solves their problem or gets them their desired result. You’ll find that soft sell sales are more exciting and fulfilling than merely earning a commission because you have that emotional and spiritual connection as a bonus.

Think of times when you’ve been a customer. Which approach did you like better? Please share a memory in the Comments at the top of this article.

Fear of making sales calls can be as overwhelming as a water fall

I was going in feeling somewhat cocky because I had done my homework. When I’d reviewed their website, I made notes about what would improve it as part of the suggestions I would give to take their marketing efforts up a notch or two.

Imagine my shock when my clients showed me the screen of the new website. It was lovely. Then, because they are still developing it, I thought I would continue giving my feedback on what to change in the new one. Most of what I said, they’d already known and were changing. What do I do now?

Fortunately, several years ago I heard a spiritual leader advise the audience to always ask before a class, “What do I have to learn? What do I have to teach?” I’ve learned to apply this to any interaction. It’s a reminder that Life offers me opportunities to grow if I stay open to learning. This means, I have to listen to the other people in the meeting, not just talk.

If you apply this mindset to your sales calls, consulting sessions, and public speaking, it silences your mental self-talk about yourself by turning on your curiosity about your prospects, clients, and audiences. To get over your fears about prospect meetings, focus on their problems and desires, needs and wants. That’s what they care about. You’ll find yourself more comfortable in strange situations. Don’t tell them about what you know, ask first. Only then can you really learn what’s important to them.

This attitude and soft sell sales approach worked wonders because shortly I became involved in a discussion with my clients. We talked about their concerns and what they already knew so I could deepen their understanding and, in some cases, propose a different tack to the course of their sales material putting the emphasis on their customer’s concerns. My goal was to help them boost their sales and marketing up a notch.

The result was a really fun meeting. I had a ball! They seemed to enjoy it too because one of my clients commented on how much he enjoyed watching me because of my passion.

In my experience yesterday, I overcame the fear about conducting a consulting session when I put attention on them. I relaxed then and enjoyed the meeting. This is way to make your fear of making sales calls disappear too or at least of making it manageable. Prospects and clients have a reason for investing their time with you: they want help with their problems or desires, wants and needs. Focus on them and on what can you do to help make their lives a little better or more successful — you’ll be to busy to notice that you were afraid or nervous.

Mind you, there are degrees between hard sell and soft sell sales and marketing. Rarely do you find people anchored at the poles. Usually salespeople are moving in one direction or the other, being mostly hard or mostly soft sell. Nevertheless, the “All’s fair” mentality causes a tremendous amount of heart break in this world.

While many men probably would not describe a failed business trust or failed business relationship as causing a broken heart, it sure looks similar to me to a personal relationship where one person’s feeling got abused for the gratification of the con man or woman. Look at how many men are cynical about sales and marketing promises and salespeople in general. Doesn’t that look like someone swearing off love because the breakup or experience of being dumped is just too painful to risk again?

It’s time that the business world recognizes loving your customer means developing a long term relationship based on trust and mutual benefit. Business relationships are, frankly, relationships. Just like my personal experience where I’m happily married. Dorothy and I are about to celebrate our 18th anniversary. Because we’ve dealt with each other using honesty and trust, we’ve been able to work through the challenges of life.

My sales experience is similar. I can’t begin to describe how precious my memory is of working with a client in El Paso who finally realized that I was there to help him resolve a need he had for computer and printer service. When that recognition hit, I watched a significant change in our relationship. I had shown by my proposals that I was listening to what he wanted and needed for his Information Technology Department. Now we worked together with him coaching me as to what I still had to do for him to be able to get the purchase order approved.

If you want enduring relationships in business, or in your personal life, move away from the “All’s fair” viewpoint. And leave behind the images that sales or love are warfare. Sales become spiritual service when you make that connection with your customers. Building and maintaining a relationship of trust is so much more satisfying and fulfilling on many levels, more rewarding than just a quick commission from a sale slammed home. Help customers buy.

May your sales be fun and mutually rewarding.

P.S. For more on soft sell sales and soft sell marketing, check out Judith & Jim’s new book, The Heart of Marketing. As its subtitle says, “love your customers and they will love you back.”

Judith Sherven & Jim Sniechowski, authors of Bridging Heart & Marketing

But all of the good marketing efforts will fall flat if they are wasted on people who have no interest in what you are offering. The fact that The Heart of Marketing soared to the top in so many categories is reassuring because I long believed the way to sell and market was the soft sell approach. Still for years I felt insecure about my decision. After all, the top trainers in sales and marketing when I was starting out pushed the value of hard sell techniques: control, pressure, and manipulate the prospect until he or she buys.

When I used those techniques, I did not feel good about myself. I want to help customers buy. To feel right about a sale, it has to be what they want and need — unless I can share a vision, which they now choose, of an improved way to get what they really want.

While it took courage to go against the prevailing hard sell thought leaders who dominated sales and marketing training for decades, my other frustration was not getting constructive feedback on my ideas. I fumbled around for years trying to find a way that enabled me to sell while being true to my values.

What a relief to find a rapidly building community of like-minded people who love sales and marketing and making money, but for whom money wasn’t the “foremost objective.” (p. 1) The thrilling thing for me is that so many people share the desire to build trust and relationships, to help customers buy — when it really is helping them first rather than merely getting the sale.

The ground swell of interest in a book defining how to sell with heart and integrity — brilliantly inspired by soft sell Internet marketing thought leaders Judith & Jim — earned them the following numbers at Amazon on the book’s release date of May 14th:

#1 in Marketing
#1 in Marketing & Sales
#1 in Direct Marketing
#1 in eCommerce
#1 in Web Marketing

If you’ve been thinking that the world needs a changed approach to business, it’s time to get your copy of The Heart of Marketing like I did. Join a community of people who help customers buy when it is right for them and in exchange make a fair profit. “Money for the sake of money,” gave us Enron, Worldcom, the mortgage banking meltdown, and earlier, the Internet Bubble. Let’s work together to make self-centered greed into behavior our society won’t tolerate in businesses any longer.

Even though the opening day event is over, you can still get the 62 Free Bonus Gifts when you go to http://TheHeartofMarketing.com. Their total value is nearly $10,000 in Bonus Gifts when this book is purchased for less than $11.00. Join us in a community of people who actually care about the well being of their customers and clients, who want to build long term relationships instead of keeping score only of the numbers. When you Help customers buy, you get to have fun and enjoy mutually beneficial sales.

Soft Sell Sales and Marketing Create Relationships Not War

Ben’s point was that he’s had spammers ask about how they can do blasts on MailChimp. They’ve turned a lot of potential customers away for using that term because it shows they don’t understand permission based marketing. I left a comment asking what term he uses then for legitimate mailings of email newsletters and for mailings about events to everyone on your list at once. Ben’s reply was “@John – I’d call it an ‘event invitation’ or ‘weekly email newsletter.’”

He got me thinking about the term “blast” from a different angle than spammers. It’s a very hard sell expression with roots in the idea that sales and marketing is war. It’s for that reason my friends Judith & Jim, founders of the Soft Sell Marketers Association, suggest soft sell marketers use “invitation page” for the opt-in instead of “squeeze page.” I agree. I feel squeeze page has a very unfriendly, manipulative sound. Likewise, I agree with Ben about getting away from the term blast, but because it doesn’t fit the image of soft sell sales marketing which work to build trust and relationships instead of conquests. Nevertheless, his suggestion is too cumbersome.

The reason I liked using blast before to describe these two mailings is that it was one simple word. And my experience with people is that they want simple terms not two lengthy ones. So I’m going to propose the expression “simultaneous mailings” to replace “blasts.” Yet that’s not short enough so how about “sim-mails”?

What kind of user friendly term do you want to contribute to this discussion? What do you feel can catch the imagination of soft sell Internet marketers?

Ralph (not his real name) and I started out by going over some of the questions I sent him about his sales and marketing activity. I learned that Ralph had prior sales experience selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. He excelled at it for awhile. He was aggressive, and he was good at it but found he hated himself for what he was doing. He had one of those moments many in hard sell sales have. It was an experience where he knew he could get the sale, but his prospect had no need for the product. In danger of losing his self respect, he quit sales.

Interestingly, he’s a small manufacturer now and the only one in his company at the moment who is doing sales. But today, he sells in an entirely different way. He talks to people and asks them what they need and what problems they are having. He listens. And he sincerely cares. He also relates to the problems they have because he’s run a manufacturing line himself. His present approach to sales is soft sell sales.

We talked then about figuring out basing his actions on his ideal customer profile. Just as in my recent series of blog posts, I showed him how using that profile, you build outwards. You figure out what their problems or desires are then find out what they want and feel they need. Only after you have this knowledge about your prospect do you begin to talk benefits and solutions. By using this approach to writing copy, you become a soft sell marketer.

I love it when clients catch onto an idea, when I can see the light come on that they just realized something at a deeper level, that they had an “Ah ha” moment. When I asked what he got out of the session, he said that he appreciated how I conveyed a sincere interest I helping him. I did everything I was telling him to do with his customers: ask questions, listen, care about helping, and offer assistance. Ralph’s response confirmed that we made that person-to-person connection.

It’s that relationship with our prospects that takes soft sell sales and marketing beyond just the money. To get your self respect back – and grow it – focus on contributing to another’s life and helping make their road easier with your selling activities. These kinds of sales we feel good about. Moreover, the customer feels good about them. This is what it means to “help customers buy.”

Does this feel right to you? Join the discussion by adding a comment about your experience with hard sell versus soft sell.

And if you want to join a community of people dedicated to soft sell sales and soft sell marketing, check out the Soft Sell Marketers Association because “it’s in the connection.”

May your sales be fun and mutually rewarding,

John

Your Ideal Customer Profile Lies at the Heart of Your Benefits and Solutions

The key to soft sell sales and soft sell marketing is to only talk about the benefits your products and services offer that your ideal prospect cares about. Remember, everyone, consciously or unconsciously, is always wondering WIIFM — “What’s in it for me?”

At the pace the world moves today as well as at the rate information overwhelms us, people will tune you out if you don’t quickly give them a reason to think you actually have something that might improve their lives now. If they’re on the Internet, they’ve clicked off your site. If they’re talking to you in person, they’re just waiting for a convenient point to say goodbye or “We’ll see you later.” Mentally they already left.

My previous blog posts starting with the Ideal Customer Profile, “Soft Sell Marketers Naturally Focus on Prospects Matching Their Ideal Customer,” all lead up to making it easier for you to capture your prospects’ interest quickly. Because you identified the characteristics of your ideal customers, you know about their problems or desires. From this, you made a list from your customers’ viewpoints of wants and needs to fix their problems or to gain their desired results. Now you decide what benefits your products and services offer that speak to these issues. Write them out as solutions.

When you talk with a prospect about potential problems you’ve seen with other customers like them, you are more likely to hook their interest enough to talk a little bit further or to read another paragraph. As soon as they feel you understand them and what they feel their needs are, they have a vested interest in learning more.

Whatever you do, don’t rush into suggesting a solution until you are sure you know they have a problem that you can help with and that they want to fix it. If you push too soon, you merely confirm their suspicion that you are a hard sell salesperson. Soft sell sales and soft sell marketing are about the relationship first. If the need is there and they trust you and your solution will actually fix their problem or deliver what they desire, they will buy.

So get to know and understand your ideal customers. Use this to relate to prospects most like your best customers. Seek to develop that relationship. You need to really care about them first. When you help customers buy, sales and marketing become fun! The results are mutually rewarding. I assure you, the soft sell sales and soft sell marketing approach produce sales that are a real high. It’s definitely not just about the money. It’s about the connection!

To make this work for you, start now. Write out five benefits your products or services – pick just one – can produce for people or companies matching your ideal customers.

Soft sell sales and soft sell marketing look to understand the problems

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. Sure, doing so narrows down the list of prospects from billions worldwide to a manageable size. But just having names doesn’t open many doors these days. Any outside sales person knows how successful he’s going to be knocking on doors without an appointment to ask, “Would you like to buy my product?” Even Brownies and Girl Scouts get rejected these days if that’s their sole sale pitch.

Knowing your ideal customer means you can study why they bought from you or your company. What were the problems they needed a solution for that you provided?

Their challenges give you a meaningful opening with prospects, such as, “Ms. Jones, 40% of our customers came to us to help them resolve a problem with excessive failure rates on the milling of …. Are your production people dealing with that issue too?”

Success in soft sell marketing and soft sell sales requires developing relationships. Crucial to doing this is the prospect coming to know, like, and trust you. This happens naturally when you show you care by understanding their challenges and problems then showing up to work with them on developing a solution that’s best for them. Caring can’t be faked for long in a complex sale.

So before you go prospecting that list of companies matching your ideal customer profile, be sure you understand their problems. That’s your second step needed to help customers buy.