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What is Successful Marketing Without the Push?

Guest post by: Terri Levine

Article Overview: The new Marketing 101 teaches the art of the soft sell, or rather, serving and not selling.

What is Successful Marketing Without the Push?

Marketing is the communication between a potential customer or client and a professional/business. It fills the gap between simply having great products or services and letting people know they are available and how to access them. Through marketing, potential customers learn of your services. The focus of marketing is usually customer satisfaction combined with communication of services or products. Marketing is typically based around meeting potential and current customer needs. The communication of how you fill the needs is the marketing strategy or message.

Often our services are promoted by word of mouth. This is certainly a great approach because of the power of a personal referral, however, we cannot rely on this concept nor can we rely on the belief that if we give great service we will get customers.

We can never be so wrapped up in providing our services that we think people need it and want it and will come knocking down our door. We have to determine what proportion of the population needs our services or may be attracted to our services or products. Going beyond this purely service approach means we need to educate potential customers about our benefits. We have to know what the pubic wants, needs and what they value. Once this is established we can then communicate our message to the target population through promotional efforts.

Many professionals who are providing a service have trouble realizing that selling is a positive word. Selling is beneficial in bringing clients in the door. Selling is an honest and ethical profession and can improve the bottom line. Let's begin our marketing success with a discussion of person to person selling.

By person to person selling, I am speaking of the interaction between a representative of a company with a product or service to sell and a potential customer with a need that the product or service can fill. Person to person, face to face interaction is the most powerful way to get your message across. This type of selling comes naturally to all of us. We are simply meeting with another person, hearing their needs and describing our services.

As we engage in active listening we then tell the customer how our services meet their needs and let our enthusiasm about our service come across. Great products and services sell themselves - there is no need for any pushiness on our part. During this interaction the potential client should realize how much we care about our clients and they should hear how our services have benefited our clients in the past. Combine this with a total lack of commitment to the outcome of our "presentation" and a pure desire to share and serve and you have a customer who is curious and willing to know more.

Nobody likes a pushy sales person and nobody puts the hard sell on a customer anymore unless they want to get rid of the person!

That is a successful marketing strategy without the push. Even if the customer doesn't buy today, there is always tomorrow and because they trust you and know you won't "push", they will be back.

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Article Tags: hard sell, marketing, sales, sell, selling, soft sell



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