Pringle and Field characterize hard sell as “persuasion-based rational arguments”; and soft sell as “campaigns that inspire strong emotional responses and create true engagement.”
Advertising Age is no namby-pamby, new age publication. It’s a bottom-line driven, let’s-find-what-works, no-nonsense magazine that is distributed world wide.
So their support of soft sell isn’t spiritual, it’s strictly business.
But now let’s look at the spiritual element, one that’s even more important.
Emotion and emotional connections can be abused as well, used to draw as much money out of people as possible. That is almost flagrantly the case on the Internet. And in Pringle and Field’s article, we were disappointed to see the word “exploit” used-”Apple …exploited the emotional power of their brands…”
That’s why the spirituality of marketing and sales is so important. Because it’s so easy to fall into the language and approach that’s been dominant in all commercial circles for so long—it’s viewed as though there is no other way.
Marketing with consciousness and conscience, which is the basis of how we approach and teach soft sell marketing, can prevent the unconscious (or conscious) manipulation of emotion and the connection that emotions can generate.
Building a long-term customer relationship almost entirely depends on the emotional connection between you and you customers. So that’s why we encourage you to be as aware as possible of the impact your sales and marketing messages have on your reader AND on the inter-connected world-psyche we all share.
Your business success and the respect you feel for emotional, human-to-human connections go hand in hand.
Your hand and your customer’s hand.