I was at Starbucks today having a coffee.

The company has done an amazing job in Shanghai over the past few years.  I remember, only a few short years ago, almost no one was in there.  Chinese people didn’t drink that much coffee in those days.  Now, there are more Starbucks stores than ever and they are “packed”.  If a place is “packed” it means that it’s really crowded and no room for more people.

I noticed today that they did something interesting.  They changed their famous logo.  It isn’t a huge change but it doesn’t say “Starbucks Coffee” anymore.  It actually doesn’t say anything.  It’s just a picture.  I’m very curious to see how it will do in the future because the “brand” is so much a part of the company.  Most people don’t know the difference between good coffee and bad coffee.  They do know that “Starbucks” is somehow “cool” and it’s good enough to make people want it.  I read that the logo change was so that the company can “diversify”.  That means they can start to sell more than just coffee.  They already sell tea and some snacks.  Some investors think it is a good idea for this change and other investors think that it’s too risky and question, “why would someone want to mess with a good thing?”  I don’t know enough about it so I’ll just wait and see what happens.

I hope you come here often to learn about business.  I’ll make as many, hopefully useful, posts as I can to help you learn business English.

I’m also starting another blog for improving spoken English.

Check it out.  I really think it will help you improve.

I just wanted to talk about an interesting difference between a “hard sale” and a “soft sale“.  These are important business terms and useful strategies to know and understand.

A hard sale is very aggressive and “in your face”.  The whole point is trying to sell something.  You just keep explaining why your product is good and why the person should buy it now.

A soft sale technique is quite different.  You try to build trust and build a relationship with a person.  You don’t put pressure on them to buy something and you just recommend a product and let the person make their own decisions.

Both of these can work.  I personally prefer using soft sale strategies.  I like it because it seems friendlier and I like to let people make up their own minds.  If you have a good product and can build trust, a soft sale technique should work well.  Friends recommending products to other friends is a little bit like doing soft selling.  The friend doesn’t really care if someone else buys the product.  They are just giving their honest opinions and trying to be helpful.

I sell a product that does really well online.  I have used both hard and soft sales strategies.  The soft strategies work better and make for happier customers.  But that is just my experience.  I think it depends on the type of customer and the type of product.

I make an online spoken English course that sells very well.  I’ve sold over 8000 of these last year.  Some people buy immediately after looking at the site but I truly believe that you should try out the free PDF ebook and make a decision later.  You can see some examples of both hard and soft selling together on the website.  The reason it looks a little fake (hard selling) is because Google finds that type of writing style more easily.  I’d prefer to use a different writing style on the website but I have no choice or no one would find it.  Anyway, it should be interesting to take a look at my website for my spoken English course to understand some of these sales strategies.