What are your customers doing when your marketing or sales messages show up in their lives? Sitting there waiting, minds clear, all prepared to devote their full attention to what you have to say?
Of course not!
Any time your customers encounter your marketing or sales messages, you can be sure that they already have a deep, rich, personal narrative happening in their minds. Your challenge: Become part of that story without interrupting it. Have a look at today’s newsletter, Don’t Knock Her Story Out Of Her Hands.
Improvising sales conversations – ditching the pitch – isn’t difficult, if you form the right habits. In today’s newsletter, The Seven Ditch the Pitch Habits, I share an overview of those habits.
Like the rest of our lives, practice and continued use is the key to creating great habits. The best time to start practicing these habits? Now!
Imagine this … one of your customers is speaking with a friend, and suddenly notices that the friend should also be your customer. After witnessing this opportunity, what does he do? Recommend you, or let the opportunity pass by?
Please share your comments … are your customers witnesses for you? Do you ever serve as a witness for others, noticing business opportunities for them?
Do you ever have trouble transitioning a conversation into a sales conversation? Steve’s latest newsletter encourages you to practice “The Gentle Turn” when talking with prospective clients.
This solution is part empathy and part smart selling – if we want our customers to listen to us, we must first listen to them and learn what they care about. We know this as a general rule, but how many of us earn the right to be heard each and every time we talk with a customer or prospect?
Steve’s newsletter today, Sales Pitch? Sales Conversation, is a call-to-arms for real, human selling. Replace your sales pitches with sales conversations, and you will be a more successful salesperson (even if you don’t think you can sell).
Steve writes, “Any time you are giving a sales pitch, you will be better off with a sales conversation. Anytime. No exceptions.”
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention" - Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer." - Seth Godin
Steve is the author of Brand Harmony and the newly published We:
The Ideal Customer Relationship. Learn more and order direct from our Products
page, or from Amazon.
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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