Archive for soft sell
Your Online Business As Spiritual Therapy
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No business runs without challenges.
And certainly an online business offers even more than its share – both internal and external. But an emotionally and financially rewarding shift takes place when you change your mindset to see your business online as a form of spiritual therapy.
The internal challenges — everything that rattles and challenges who you’ve been and how you experience and understand yourself.
Even if you’re fairly savvy in the world of business, due to the volatile nature of doing business online there can be even more radical
- wake-up calls
- major melt-downs
- leaps to success
just to name a few of the “adventures” that can leave you dazed and sleepless.
The external challenges — everything that comes at you from the outside world like all that Internet technology to manage and master.
There are those affiliates and joint venture partners who
- let you down
- don’t send out for you,
- may even refuse to pay you the affiliate commissions due to you for your good efforts on their behalf.
As a Heart-based, Soft Sell Marketer, have you tried to avoid developing the thick skin that allows Hard Sell marketers to disregard their conscience as you watch them make huge deposits generated from their online business accounts?
Instead, if anything, you may think you’re too thin skinned, and maybe you’ve even been told that “You’re kind of sensitivity wont’ work in business.” We have.
Well, you’re NOT too sensitive.
You are a wonderfully feeling-filled human who knows you are connected to all of life, and you ARE sensitive to what happens to your customers and to yourself.
That’s why it’s extremely powerful to understand your online business as a kind of spiritual therapy. Because that helps you respect and learn from every disorienting and disheartening experience you have — and this is not always easy.
We have, and more and more we feel those dark times as blessings for our spiritual growth and awakening. It takes practice, but you can too.
That way you build your business while you grow your Self, because your business and your Self are reflections of each other.
Because It’s All in the Connections,
Judith & Jim
So in the middle of those maddening moments, listen for Your Soul’s Calling. That’s the voice to rely on.
Soft Sell = Compassion: A Commercial Paradigm Shift
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Compassion and commerce may seem self-contradictory like an oxymoron: for example, 
“deafening silence” or “poor little rich girl.” Compassionate commerce seems to be a self-nullifying idea, at least in the way compassion and commerce have been understood and experienced.
So how can marketing and selling and compassion be a perfect self-supporting way to do business?
The definition of compassion that most people would agree with is:
A deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
And that understanding suggests feelings like pity, charity, condolence, mercy, or sorrow.
From this point of view putting compassion and commerce in the same sentence subverts if not destroys the intention of each.
However, is there a way that compassion and commerce can be mutually supportive so that the marketplace can evolve in a more humane and loving direction? Read More→
Hard Sell Swerve: Dead End
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Recently I read a blog post comparing soft sell with hard sell and I thought the writer’s conclusion, although well intentioned, swerved off into a dead end.
The writer wrote: “Initially along with foremost, [sic] attempt to attract readers with a soft sell approach that offers useful, fascinating [sic] coupled with timely details. Eventually, it could lead them towards a buy decision.”
This was my response:
Your conclusion that “soft sell” leads to “eventually” takes you into a dead end.
Soft sell doesn’t mean wait forever. It means connecting emotionally with your customer, even through online marketing, and working to achieve the customer’s well-being as well as yours.
Otherwise you become the customer’s lackey which is not good for either of you.
Soft sell is a different mindset not a different strategy.
The idea that soft sell is a strategy or tactic comes from traditional hard sell marketers whose sole intention is the bottom line. A sincere desire to create a relationship as part of the sales process is incidental if not an irritation to someone whose focus is wallet-based.
But connecting with your customer or prospect in a way they can feel allows for trust and emotional safety to be created. So your focus must expand from the bottom line as your primary measure of success to include leading the customer to see the truth — which is whether or not your product or service is truly right for him/her.
This is not an “eventually” proposition. It is right here and right now. It is neither desperate nor is it surrendering the process entirely to the customer.
Your customer came to you because they needed something they could not provide for themselves alone. So you are the authority. Lead them to see what’s right for them. Sometimes it’s what you have to offer. Sometimes it’s not. But the connection you create will pay off because of your credibility and trustworthiness.
For more on Soft Sell, heart-based marketing and selling check out our #1 bestseller — The Heart of Marketing.
Because It’s all in the Connection,
Jim Sniechowski
Hard Sell or Soft Sell – What’s the Difference?
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I came across this post today by Michel Fortin and wrote the following. You can see the original post at http://www.marketersboard.com/fry-customers-tactic/
Jim
======================================
Michel,
Ed Dale’s example misses the point entirely. There’s no conflict between Soft Sell and Upsell. As a Soft Sell marketer my wife, Judith, and I use upsells all the time. So it’s not the technique that is hard sell. It’s how you approach the customer that makes the difference.
In your piece you use words and phrases such as:
“Leaving an insane load of cash on the table.” What is insane about money? This is a term a lot of Internet marketers use as though it somehow describes some reality.
Yes it’s an image, but it’s also very hard in it’s point of view, to say nothing of a dreary cliche.
“Force a customer.” This has nothing to do with the technique of upselling. It has everything to do with the marketer’s dominant/submissive relation to the buyer. Any technique used with that relationship at its base is going to be hard. Instead of pointing to the technique, rather point to the marketer’s cynicism and lack or respect for human beings who happen, in this case, to be customers.
Several other example are — “churn and burn,” “hit them over the head,” “almost taunting you.” Why would anyone want to do business with someone who shows so little care and connection.
You also that you “believe that (the marketer) must ask for the order,” implying that asking for the order is somehow aggressive. That’s just plain wrong-headed. Asking for the order with respect and a sense of the emotional connection between you and the buyer is not aggressive, it is respectful of the human relation as fundamental to the transaction and that is NOT soft, but conscious and discerning.
How Does Soft Sell Differ from Hard Sell?
Hard Sell and Tyrannosaurus Rex
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Evolution is a very demanding task master. Either adapt to changing circumstances or follow in the footsteps of the Tyrannosaurus Rex – i.e. extinction.
The same process holds in every area of our lives. We either adapt and adopt or die — literally or effectively.
Evolution’s rule is now being felt in the area of Internet commerce.
—>>> Because customers have so much more access to information regarding the products they’re looking to purchase, and—>>> Because they can shop the worldwide Internet and have so many more outlets where they can buythe Internet has become a buyers-driven marketplace so that sellers have to be much more aware of the buyer’s needs.But it’s not just the buyer’s needs that have become prominent, but how the seller views the buyer and, as a result, how the seller treats the customer.Here’s what we mean. Read More→
No Mistreatment for Soft Sell Marketers
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday we were asked if we would consider having a speaker at our conference – “Bridging Heart and Marketing III” October 9-11 – who had a good training program to offer but was an abusive hard sell speaker – provided the speaker agreed to calm down the hard sell style.
We didn’t even let the question be completed before we both said, “Never.”
We will never allow our soft sell marketers to be mistreated – no matter what a good program someone may have. Never.
Will we make less money from our conferences than some of the big hard sell producers – sure.
Because our events will always be intimate, caring and spiritually safe events (as safe as we can make them for you).
And, at the same time, we are committed to helping you make as much money as you want from your business!
Soft sell marketing never means sacrificing your earning potential. Never. It DOES mean making the wealth you want from within your own integrity.
That’s why one of the books we are committed to writing is “Your Millionaire Self!” (We’ve got the domain already!)
So what does Your Soft Sell Millionaire Self need you to do today!?
Because Its’ All in the Connection
Judith & Jim
The Heart of Marketing – A Best Seller Again
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The Heart of Marketing : Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back
has again landed a Best Seller position . . .
Coming in #3 on the Best Seller List at Morgan James Publishing for the month of May!
That’s just one of the reasons that we extended the availability of the 62 Bonus Gifts (worth more than $8500) donated by marketers from around the world to support our book launch.
You and/or your friends can still get them when you get our book through the Amazon button (for less than $15 including shipping) at
The Heart Of Marketing
So, if you’ve not yet ordered your own copy – be sure to do so. This book is not just changing attitudes about marketing and selling, it’s already changing people’s lives.
And please tell everyone you know to be sure to get our book if they need to grow their business — whether online or offline — with spiritually grounded support for soft marketing and selling that will build their future with heart and integrity.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim
Five Keys to Selling As Spiritual Service
Posted by: | Comments There are lots of ways to understand your own personal success factors. But one way that will hold steady over time comes with your commitment to selling as spiritual service.
Your success through selling as spiritual service depends on five keys:
1) Care deeply about the well-being of your potential customer or client. If you view your buyer as just another wallet or credit card, they will feel it and go where they feel valued.
2) Show your care and concern and love for your potential buyer in your sales copy, phone and/or personal contact. If you cannot find sincere caring, curiosity and concern for your potential buyer, you’re left to hammer away at your sales message hoping to push and pressure your would-be interested party into capitulating and surrendering their money.
3) Sincerely believe in and love your service or product. Without a passionate investment in what you are selling you can never ever understand that selling is spiritual service when you truly serve the needs of your buyer with your valuable product or service.
4) Know that what you offer helps your customers or clients improve their life experience – moving them to live their lives with greater joy and freedom, more appreciation and grace – however that comes to be. Only then can you know that you are in service, and not just going after the sale for the money.
5) Enjoy asking for and receiving appropriate and grace-filled monetary reward for your efforts and wisdom (even if you’ve chosen to promote someone else’s product). Your personal success factors are governed more by your internal relationship with selling than they are with any techniques you may learn. That’s why selling as spiritual service is so invaluable to your inner game of selling.
Marketing as spiritual service is inherently moral and offers deep benefits to your customers and to the planet at large.
These concepts are at the center of The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back, our #1 best-seller at amazon.com. Go to:
Where you can get our book for under $15.00 including shipping and then return to the page and you can choose form any of the 62 free gitfts we’ve gathered from marketers all over the world.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim
Help Clients Overcome Fear? A Soft Sell Analysis
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We’ve been asked: How do you help clients in overcoming their fear of a new venture?
This is a question all healers and care-givers must address.
When we see our clients struggling with worry, depression, frustrated ambition, confusion . . . tied up in the knot of their fear of failure, their fear of the unknown, fear of a new venture, of growing bigger, of making money—more money than they had ever been able to imagine—our first impulse is to help.
The question is—help with what?
Our first answer is help clients overcome fear, because we believe overcoming fear is the doorway to what they say they want.
But is this really the best approach to help with overcoming fear?
When Nobody Buys: The Unconfessed Truth of All Internet Marketers
Posted by: | CommentsYou’re involved in the Internet because you want to generate online money.
You’ve created your new product or service to market and sell to people who you believe will be thrilled to have your help and support.
You get a terrific sales page, write your sales copy, and you get it all ready to go.
Then you send an enthusiastic message out to your list members inviting them to improve their lives with what you’re offering.
And you wait to get your first sale.
And you wait to get your first sale.
And you wait to get your first sale.
And you wait to get your first sale.
And you wait to get your first sale.
And it never comes.
