For most people the idea of “sales” comes with images of used car dealers pounding on a car hood during Saturday morning television, and even “getting robbed” and “taken to the cleaners.” Certainly not a pretty picture of one of life’s basic activities – selling.

We’ve talked with many of our colleagues and our Internet marketing students about the typical tone of online sales copy and they routinely say they feel put off, offended, and one woman even used the term “violated.”

They hate the ‘hype’ and the exaggerated claims, the sense of false urgency, and the in-your-face style. Some of them even feel they can’t really get out there and market their products and services without feeling like they’ve sold themselves to the devil.

But there is an alternative. We call it Soft Sell Internet marketing.

We characterize a soft sell marketer as anyone who cares about the integrity of the sales relationship equally with making the sale. It’s not ‘make the sale at any cost.’ It’s more about opening the relationship so that the commercial transaction, for both the seller ands the buyer, can be trusted, enjoyed, and continued.

Typically soft sell marketers are involved in self-improvement, health and healing, and lifestyle enhancement. While that’s a broad generalization, it’s true that the soft sell marketer is often motivated by their desire to help, heal, and even change the world. Hard sell marketers are inherently driven to make money, and too often that appears to be their only concern.

There’s nothing wrong with making money, but sales without soul are pretty empty transactions for both buyer and seller.

On a recent webcast interview we did with Janet Beckers in Australia, she noted the many times listeners wrote in to say “how refreshing” it was to hear about soft sell, heart-based marketing.

The voice of the hard sell Internet marketing is about to lose ground to the fast growing segment of Soft Sell Internet marketers who prefer building respectful and caring relationships with their prospects and customers.

Are you a soft sell marketer? Do you prefer a more inclusive, emotionally connected business relationship with your prospects and customers? Register for a Free series of 12 tele-calls with the top Internet marketers in the world. Just visit: http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 1:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.