Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I was recently re-reading Harry Beckwith’s What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Businessin which he talks about how we should sell soft, not hard. (Hard selling actually loses customers, duh-oh.)

His book is about the service business, but here’s the thing: We’re ALL in the service business. And, service isn’t about beating a deal person to submission and signature - it’s about delivering value (and that value is defined by your customer or client, NOT you.)

Certainly, we all need to sell something. But, if we want to do it more than once, we’d better be more focused on helping the other person.

It should be:
Always
Be
Caring

P.S. I do thoroughly enjoy it when I run into one of the dinosaurs in tassled loafers hard sales guys. Yes, there are some “gals” but the guys are particularly entertaining since they act like it’s 1955 and I’m the little fluff-head blonde, who has a man footing the bills. I know what they’re going to say, and in what order. (“Wait here Mrs. Schmidt, while I go talk to my sales manager.”) It’s fun watching those tiny little brains whir through their program. (It’s even more fun when I get up and follow them to the sales manager’s office. Blows their program.) Then I go buy elsewhere.

P.P.S. You can be both ABClosing and ABCaring with the right ecommerce strategy and follow-through. Read more: Bryan Eisenberg, 3 Steps to Recession-Proof Your Online Marketing.

More Reading Recommendations (both by Beckwith):
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing

Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, sales, selling services marketing