The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back

by Judith Sherven, Jim Sniechowski

Overview

This book is about marketing. But more important, this is a book about you, the soft sell marketer—your desire, as a service provider or care-giver, to market and sell your products and services online or off without compromising your personal or professional values. In short, it's about putting your heart into marketing.

This book:

Validates the power of heart-to-heart connections that lead to emotional authenticity and marketing believability, taking sales beyond mere commercial transactions into long-term customer relationships;

Presents the principle that Selling Is Spiritual Service, healing the split soft sell marketers often feel between spirituality and sales;

Sheds light on the internal aspects of marketing beginning with integrity and ending with a balance between commerce and conscience.

Will open and inspire your soft sell imagination, setting the foundation for you to understand and profit from the practice of soft sell marketing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781600375590
Publisher:	Morgan James Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Judith Sherven, Ph.D. and James Sniechowski, Ph.D. are best known for their work in the study and understanding of differences in relationships. Judith is a clinical psychologist and Jim is the founder of the Menswork Center in Santa Monica, California. They have appeared on over 250 television and radio shows as guest experts and provide relationship training nationally and internationally for both couples and singles.


Judith Sherven, PhD and Jim Sniechowski, PhD are a husband and wife psychology team and the best selling authors of 5 books. They've been marketing online for little more than three years and are best known for producing the only Internet marketing conference for the soft sell community which they call "Bridging Heart and Marketing" (http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com).

They also provide their popular course, Soft Topic Copywriting Secrets (http://www.softtopiccopywritingsecrets.com). And with their partner Tom Justin they've developed the only course for the true entry level Internet marketer - First Step Internet Marketing (http://www.firststepinternetmarketing.com). As guest experts they've been on over 1500 television and radio shows including Oprah, The View, 48 Hours, CNN, Canada AM, and The Daily Buzz.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

This may sound way too simple, but what is marketing?

This question is not at all too simple. In fact it's the very question that must be answered to create a solid foundation for your business.

We've been involved in Internet marketing for four years and to date no one has ever given us a solid definition of what marketing actually is.

Typically people describe marketing as "making yourself known in the marketplace" or "occupying space in the consumer's mind." These descriptions are correct but they don't provide a solid framework that takes you from the beginning to the end of a marketing campaign and leads to successful sales. Why? Because they don't tell you what to do once you are known in the marketplace or when you occupy a space in the consumer's mind.

So, to be clear about the actions you take when designing your marketing campaigns and the specific purpose of those actions, as well as all the details within each campaign, here's a perspective that will help ensure your efforts will be productive.

Preparing Your Customer to Buy

The essence of selling is converting your prospective customer into an actual customer. And the essence of marketing is — preparing your prospective customer to buy.

When you post something on your blog, or comment on someone else's blog, what's your purpose? When you hand out a business card, what's your purpose? When you enter a tweet on Twitter, or put up a page on Facebook, what's your purpose?

To make yourself known in the marketplace? Sure. To burrow your way into the customer's mind? Perhaps. But once you're in the marketplace or have a spot in the reader's mind what's your purpose for being there? Once you look at it this way it becomes obvious. You're there because you want your prospective customer to buy from you.

We are not saying that all you do is send out an endless array of sales pitches. That would be understanding our definition of marketing — preparing your customer to buy — as a tactic. No. "Preparing your customer to buy" is an underlying principle and needs to be your intention — present at all times — in everything you do as a marketer.

For example, the purpose of one of your blog posts may be to simply present an idea. But aren't you putting forward your message to seek a response from your readers? By seeking their response aren't you asking your readers to take an action with regard to what you say — either agreeing or not? That's not a cash sale, but it certainly is "I'll give you this if you'll give me that."

The same applies the first time you give someone your business card. Why bother if you don't eventually want to do something with that person? So you introduce yourself. And you announce, through your card, who you are and what you do as a way of preparing the other person to buy into the possibility of some future involvement with you.

During one of our weekly training calls for the members of our Soft Sell Marketers Association we focused on the idea of preparing your customer to buy. We noticed that one of the men was interpreting the word "buy" in an immediate sense — meaning an exchange of money. But that makes marketing a very driven, everything-on-the-lineright-now process, and that's not what we mean.

Know, Like, and Trust You

Instead, marketing is the process of taking your customer along a particular path at the end of which is an anticipated sale. But that sale is usually not immediate. It takes between three to nine impressions before someone does buy, so all you can do is prepare the way so that your potential customer grows to know you, like you, and trust you. That's what you're doing when you're making yourself known in the marketplace and when you're occupying a space in your customer's mind. Preparing them to buy your product or service when they are ready.

In other words, you are creating a relationship. The ultimate sale is your intention, and that's why your efforts, however subtle, are aimed at preparing your potential customer to buy. It's the relationship you've created and sustained that supports and advances the path to the sale.

So you are doing both. You are creating the relationship as you prepare your prospective customer to buy. And you do that for the well-being of both you and your customer — as we will show you throughout the rest of this book.

Without understanding this essential point your marketing efforts will likely be very frustrating. Why? Because you won't specifically know what you are doing and won't be able to communicate clearly and effectively. No matter how much effort you put out, your intentions will be misdirected.

A Perfect Example

When we lived in Los Angeles we produced a weekend seminar called "The Magic of Differences: The Source of the Deepest Intimacy Your Relationship Has to Offer."

Two friends suggested that we do a free evening presentation as a marketing strategy to generate attendees for our next seminar. So we booked a hotel room, advertised, and drew 28 people to attend for the evening.

We gave our presentation, but only one person registered for the weekend seminar.

Jim: I was very disappointed. We gave an excellent presentation with so small a result.

We asked our friends, who happened to be marketers, what happened. Why didn't we get more registrations?

They said we didn't sell.

What?

They told us we didn't paint a picture of what someone would experience if they attended; we didn't tell them about others who had benefitted from having attended; we didn't excite them and persuade them to sign right up.

Judith: I was devastated. It sounded like they were telling us to do all the things I hated about selling. Create phony emotions, get all fake excited, exaggerate. I cried all the way home.

Our friends were not particularly helpful. They talked in results. What they never told us was that we had to educate, inspire, and love what we had to offer. In other words, we had to prepare our audience members to buy.

We had no idea. We were therapists, after all. Had we understood this basic principle, we would have:

• Experienced a visceral connection to what our friends were telling us; • Understood that, when done well, marketing is all about preparing your prospective customers so they can make the decision to buy;

• Made the benefits of buying clear to our audience members, so they would have a solid ground upon which to confidently take the action they wanted to take; and

• Assured them that what we offered would produce the results they were looking for.

But we didn't. We were a perfect example of not knowing what we were doing as marketers.

So we say it again — the essence of marketing is Preparing Your Customer to Buy. If you don't you are shortchanging your customers, yourself, and the success of your business.

So What About You?

You're reading this book because, more than likely, you are a soft sell marketer. You want to get your message into the world and make a living commensurate with your value, and the value of your products and services. We want that for you as well.

So, to say it again, as a marketer you are Preparing Your Customer to Buy, whether in the long term — with an introductory blog post or tweet — or in the immediate moment — on your sales page, over the phone, or in your office or store. Understanding what the job entails, what marketing is really all about, will save you no end of frustration to say nothing of unnecessary expense. When you open to this essential fact you open a larger possibility that you will succeed far beyond where your current desire will take you.

CHAPTER 2

Who are soft sell marketers?

To understand whether or not you're likely to be a soft sell marketer — think of it this way. It's all about the difference between ROI and ROE.

ROI

If someone buys your product or service and they expect that the amount of money they pay you will return to them plus a profit, that's a Return on Investment or ROI transaction.

The intent on both sides — the seller and buyer — is an increase in money. So it's fundamentally a money-for-money exchange.

The sole purpose of this exchange is the accumulation and increase in the amount of money over and above that with which both buyer and seller entered into the transaction.

ROE

Now imagine that you are a parenting counselor and a young couple brings you their 5-year old. She's having difficulty adjusting to school. You give them guidance and it works. The child begins to enjoy school.

When they hand you their check, do they expect the amount of the check to return to them plus a profit? Of course not. That's not the nature of the exchange.

What you've done is facilitate a change in their life experience. The young couple wanted the quality of their life to be different and you helped them make that happen. That's why they're paying you.

For that kind of life-change transaction we use the term Return of Experience or ROE. Soft sell marketers, for the most part, specialize in ROE transactions.

ROE marketers include all health providers from MDs to energy healers, every kind of therapist, coach and counselor, life enhancement specialists like interior designers, wedding consultants, home school experts, recreation and travel professionals, musicians, artists, and a nearly endless list of specialists devoted to improving people's lives.

Soft Sell ROI

It's important to note that some ROE marketers also conduct soft sell ROI transactions.

They offer products and services that support ROE marketers including info-product creation, business development, blog and commercial website design, article writing for marketing purposes, softsell/softtopic copywriting, soft sell branding, teleseminar training, first step Internet marketing, and the like. Their intent is to help ROE marketers develop and grow their businesses.

These soft sell ROI marketers focus on the internal as well as the external elements of marketing, because they know marketing is not an exclusively external endeavor.

In our current role, we are soft sell ROI marketers.

We provide the emotional, psychological, and spiritual permission soft sell marketers need to grow themselves and their businesses far beyond what they imagine. So in our blog we use the slogan — "Marketing with Consciousness and Conscience" — aligning soft sell marketers' personal integrity with their best business practices.

(http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com/blog)

CHAPTER 3

What is the primary benefit of soft sell marketing?

When traditional marketers think or talk about marketing they focus on the externals — price, packaging, discounts, refund policies, conversion rates, sales charting, bonuses, and, of course, the guarantee. Online, these marketers also concentrate on tracking, split-testing, email delivery rates, and, of course, list building.

Marketers, online and off, see the benefits of their marketing efforts in dollars-and-cents. That's how business has been defined. And every one of those external elements is vitally important.

However, there is an internal side to marketing that is much more rewarding than just the excitement of making more money or the vanity of dominating the competition. For the soft sell marketer and the soft sell marketplace the internals are of equal if not more importance.

Your Integrity

Integrity is the primary internal benefit you enjoy as a soft sell marketer — personal and professional integrity. You don't have to split off your desire to create and sustain a substantial income from your equal desire to treat your customers and potential customers with dignity, respect, and care.

Integrity is about being whole — living within a unity between what you believe and what you do, who you are and what you want, how you treat your customers and how you expect to be treated.

Doing business with integrity goes a long way to eliminate conflicting intentions. For example:

• You will create clear and coherent messages. Being out of integrity often leads to mixed and confusing messages because you are in conflict with yourself;

• Your prospective customer will not have to struggle to recognize and understand who you are and what you provide. Being out of integrity often makes it virtually impossible for your customers to easily identify with you; and

• Conflicting intentions create confusion and cause no end of frustration. They can lead to discouragement, disenchantment, and the downfall of your business.

Whereas clarity and sincerity are the hallmarks of marketing with integrity, leaving your customers with a sense of:

• security — you can be believed;

• promise — your product or service will deliver what you say it will;

• connection — you truly do know and understand them; and

• loyalty — you've proven to be trustworthy and they will return to buy again.

That's why soft sell marketers are just as influenced by the internal elements of marketing as they are by the externals. With harmony between both, you can confidently enjoy moving forward in the marketplace, providing the needed value you have to offer.

At an Arm's Length

The traditional protocol of emotionally keeping an arm's length between you, the seller, and your buyer — as a way of objectifying the sales process — reduces the experience of human connection in the exchange.

It's accepted as gospel that injecting anything personal, especially emotion, into the transaction will only muddy the outcome at best, or create a legal nightmare at worst. So selling and buying become an abstraction, with neither party responsible for the well-being of the other except in as much as that sentiment is required to consummate the sale.

But we've spoken to hundreds of care-givers, ROE life-enhancement artists, who market (or want to market) online, and they've told us that the typical, arm's length transaction doesn't work for them. It goes against their experience of and their need for the fundamental connectedness between people. Conducting business at an arm's length breaks the interpersonal wholeness at the center of their experience of being alive.

The connection, even on the Internet where the buyer and seller may never know each other, is based on a sense of person-to-person closeness and the intention of creating a long term relationship.

Accumulation Not Connection

Now, typical ROI hard sell marketing stands on its own fundamental integrity. It's an integrity based on accumulation not connection — except, as we said, inasmuch as some degree of connection is necessary to make the sale.

We know of a man whose companies make multi-millions every year. He's the envy of the Internet marketplace. His product? He dispenses advice to men on how to make their way with women by keeping the woman off-balance.

As former therapists, who for years worked to repair the damage between men and women due to the "counsel" they received on the "street," we see the consequences of this type of advice as deeply damaging to the relationship between the genders.

From all that we know of the man, there is no evidence that he suffers any internal conflict between what he does and the money it makes for him. Quite the contrary. He is an accumulation artist and a very successful one. Money is the signal measure of his authority and success. He doesn't suffer conflicting intentions because he operates his business from only one dimension of consequence — profit. So, within that one dimension, he is in integrity.

But the dissociation, the fracture between money earned and the emotional impact delivered, is what soft sell marketers cannot live with. It tears at the alignment between personal and professional integrity. It creates a psychic split that is ultimately self-destructive.

A Balance Between Commerce and Conscience

When someone buys a product or makes use of a service there are always residual emotional, psychological, and spiritual effects that endure long-term, well after the transaction is complete.

For example, as we write this passage we are at the automobile dealership waiting for our 7500-mile servicing to be completed. This transaction doesn't end when we drive off the lot. It carries forward as we drive with a sense of protection — trusting that we received expert care — and a sense of safety — that the car is in reliable mechanical condition.

As a result we drive with a sense of ease, allowing us, as we're driving, to focus on our conversation, the radio or CD entertainment, or the scenery if we're in the country, rather than needing to think about the car. Of course our sense of security and safety is not in the forefront of our consciousness. We take it for granted. But it's there nonetheless.

And it's these long-term internal effects that bring us back to the same dealership. They form the basis of our relationship and why we drive across town when, in fact, we could have the work done at a similar dealership nearby.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Heart of Marketing"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Judith Sherven, PhD & Jim Sniechowski, PhD.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction,
From Therapists To Marketers,
Why Does Selling Have Such A Bad Reputation,
45 Questions Answered,
#1. This may sound way too simple, but what is marketing?,
#2. Who are soft sell marketers?,
#3. What is the primary benefit of soft sell marketing?,
#4. How has your business changed since you started soft sell marketing?,
#5. How did you come across the name soft sell marketing?,
#6. How does soft sell marketing differ from hard sell?,
#7. Is technique necessary in writing soft sell sales copy?,
#8. How can you say that selling is spiritual service?,
#9. I've heard you use the term "soul-based business." What is a soul-based business?,
#10. Why Do You Say That A Soul-Based Business Is A Spiritual Teacher?,
#11. What are the bottom line principles of soft sell marketing?,
#12. People say to succeed you have to get your ego out of the way. What does that mean?,
#13. I believe I have a great service to offer people but I have a very difficult time not wanting to ask "Are you nuts?" when they say they don't want to even look at the benefits.,
#14. When creating soft sell marketing messages, which words reassure and establish relationship quickly? Which words push people away?,
#15. I'm a psychotherapist and counselor and soft sell marketing is definitely aligned with my practice. How can I effectively market my business to stand out to potential clients, draw them to my practice, and develop an initial rapport with them through my marketing?,
#16. What gives me happiness is providing service with heart and integrity and my new site is based on that. However, it's not translating into the income I need and desire. How do I stay about service and stop the fear conversation in my head?,
#17. How can I let go of my guilt about having radiant prosperity when others are suffering and I know they can't afford my fees?,
#18. Could you talk more about the conflict that many feel around spirituality and money and how we can allow ourselves to receive abundance for the healing work we do in the world?,
#19. I'm a professional life coach. My vision is to be a support to my clients by asking the right questions and providing introspective tools to help them find their life's purpose. This is not a tangible product. How do I market it so it will motivate prospective clients to seek my services?,
#20. How do you show your passion and spirituality without appearing phoney or frightening to customers?,
#21. What is the one thing I can do that will have my business stand out from my competition when my product is the same as my competitors?,
#22. How do I reconcile hype with my ethics and pursuit of wholeness. What do folks in this position do to overcome our dilemma?,
#23. Is curiosity a useful tactic for relationship selling?,
#24. Do you make use of "urgency" or "scarcity" in soft sell marketing?,
#25. How do you "sell" healing when you don't want to falsely raise hopes?,
#26. How do I overcome my fear of being rejected when people don't buy my products?,
#27. How do I sell without making a nuisance of myself?,
#28. What is the biggest stumbling block in reaching customers when you are trying to "get the message out" with a spiritually-based soft sell topic?,
#29. How can speaking my truth from my heart allow me to make megabucks?,
#30. How can you close a sale without pushing too far?,
#31. How do I train my brain to realize it's ok to ask for the sale because what I am offering is of value to them, and not just money to me?,
#32. What is your view on how to attract customers via the internet vs. "getting" customers? Seems like there is a fine line there, especially when you cannot meet people in person.,
#33. What is the best way to accurately determine what my ideal client's real perceived needs and wants are without doing an extensive survey?,
#34. Will people who are used to hard sell marketing actually buy from soft sell marketers or will they not even notice the "buy" possibility because it's too "soft"?,
#35. What resources for copywriters do you have that can assist with heart-based web copy?,
#36. What resources for copywriters do you have that can assist with heart-based web copy?,
#37. If there was one key thought to maintain while preparing soft sell marketing, what would you suggest that be?,
#38. What is the best way to market a spiritually motivated product?,
#39. What are the pitfalls of soft sell marketing?,
#40. What information is the most important about myself and my services that I need to share with my potential customers when I promote my services?,
#41. How do you measure the success of soft sell marketing?,
#42. What are the key understandings for staying in "both and" balance?,
#43. Is customer follow-up important in making long lasting relationships?,
#44. What's one thing I definitely need to do to successfully sell in a soft sell manner?,
#45. Do you see soft sell marketing as the future trend in developing customer relationships?,
Invitation to the Soft Sell Marketers Association,
Soft Sell Resources Page,
(All URLs mentioned in the Book can be found on this page),
Free Bonus: Selling Is Spiritual Service,
Soft Sell Marketing Survey,
Other Books By Judith & Jim,
Relationship Resources from Judith & Jim,
Acknowledgments,
About Judith & Jim,