Posts Tagged ‘sales’

Passion is the Best Persuasion

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012 by Stefanie Malzone

In the world of marketing and in life, we all acquire persuasive moxie, it’s a survival skill.  People view persuasion in different ways – for example, a salesman making cold calls verses a creative director presenting a new campaign or idea.  However you choose to use your powers of persuasion there is one steadfast approach I’ve always based my presentations around – passion.

Passion allows you the opportunity to speak freely and earnestly about how you feel on a particular topic or subject.  I’ve found that it provides you the ability to showcase and leverage the following critical emotions of any presentation.

Disarming

What’s most important is not to lose site of the fact that we are all human and as a result emotional beings.  We tend to have our guard up when we feel that someone is trying to “sell us” on something.  Passion has the great ability to disarm and bring a group together based on a common enthusiasm.

Authenticity

When you speak passionately and from the heart your words are more authentic.  This authenticity enables you to advance your message without generating doubt.

Trust

In order to persuade anyone, you must first gain their trust.  Showing true passion for what you have to say will enable the audience to see your authenticity and as a result, begin to trust both you and what you have to say.

Enthusiasm

People want to be excited by ideas and prospects.  Speaking with passion allows you to generate that enthusiasm needed to get people excited about your idea.  Passion and enthusiasm are contagious. Present passionately and the room will follow your energy.

Above all, passion can’t be faked – you need to be genuinely passionate about what you provide to others.  If you’re having difficulty getting behind an idea, product, or concept – perhaps you need to take a step back and decided if what you are selling truly provides others with genuine solutions to their problems.

What are you most passionate about in marketing and how do you use that passion to provide benefits to others?

Online Marketing Begins with Listening

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 by Louis Gudema

Contrary to the Alec Baldwin, TV/movie stereotype of sales people, the number one skill of successful sales people is listening. Only by listening can you find out what the prospect wants (in addition to their needs), shape a solution and overcome their objections. We’ve all experienced clueless sales people who just launch into their pitch and know how offensive and ineffective that is.

So what does this have to do with online marketing?

Online marketing, in virtually all of its forms, is the perfect way to listen to, and learn from, your market and customers.

Of course, social media marketing involves listening, because people are going to comment on and Like (or dislike) your posts.  Central to social media marketing is responding to those comments and carrying on a conversation (“conversation” itself is a term that you did not hear used in marketing 10 years ago). Wise organizations can shape their future messages based on that feedback, and even carry those insights into their offline communications.  And using social media monitoring tools, you can research the social media universe to see what people are saying about you outside of your social media channels on other blogs, etc., and see what people are saying about your industry and competitors, too.

All other online channels provide real-time opportunities to listen to your market, too.

  • Launch a PPC campaign and in a very short time you’ll find out what keywords people are searching for your products and services with, which ad messages compel them to click and what offers get them to take an action.
  • Online advertising, email marketing, marketing automation – they all provide more opportunities to get rapid feedback that you can use to shape your messages and programs.
  • SEO may take a bit longer to develop, but the lead generation results can be even more valuable, so be sure to apply the learnings from listening in the other online channels when creating your SEO program

In his book, Direct from Dell, Michael Dell talked about how the Internet is the perfect pricing machine: Dell can put a new computer on its website for sale at several different price points, and within just a few hours they can see which price will generate the most profit for them.

The usual industry term for all of this is “optimization”. But you can think of it as just good old listening and responding.