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I love fairs and trying out new things like this two seat swing.
Yesterday, Dorothy and her sister Martha and I enjoyed Labor Day at the Los Angeles County Fair. I love fairs! I love the crowds and frenetic activity. I love the commercial booths with the salespeople demoing their products. And it brought home to me something I already know but don’t always think about when talking about soft sell sales and marketing.
Not every sales situation requires or even benefits from the investment of time and effort required for soft sell sales. Sometimes the customers qualify themselves. This is especially true in the typical retail sale where the customers are well informed and basically know what they want. And it works at county fairs. If you have an exciting gadget like the Shimono Stainless Steel Peeler & Slicer and graters that my wife decided she needed for salads and relish plates, you merely have to have a really good spiel, a skilled demonstration, pleasant personality, and the ability to read buying signs.
My observation is that sales which only care about making the sale, not about the how well the product or service fits the customers’ needs tend to work best for very simple sales or for one-time only sales. The Shimono sales woman earned her $20 sale just from the entertainment value of her skill. The fact that Dorothy and Martha will actually use these items is a bonus for us, and probably irrelevant to the demonstrator’s needs.
The other times that the hard sell approach works well are for one-time only-I-don’t-expect-to-ever-be-back-here sales and for those by people so highly competitive that winning is the only criteria of success.
I’ve meet a lot of former salespeople who were taught to use hard sell tactics to close. Many, if not most, of them finally quit because they did not like how they felt about the way they had to sell – vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, and magazines to name a few. I don’t recall ever meeting someone who regretted making a sale they worked with their prospect to design a solution around the prospect’s needs. In 30 years of sales, the only regrets I have are of sales where the sale was more important than the relationship. On the other hand, I have sold retail starting with newspapers at 12 years old – these were simple retail sales that I have no regrets about either.
As I was reminded at the LA County Fair, there really is a place for hard sell sales: primarily simple retail sales and products that can be easily demonstrated where the customers qualify themselves. However, when you want long term customer relationships and repeat purchases from you, invest the time and energy required by soft sell sales and marketing. Get to understand your customers or clients and what they need and want before you sell. If you help customers buy, you’ll find that selling is fun, fulfilling and mutually rewarding.
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