6 steps to making sales without selling
So you were lured by a shiny new course that would solve all your problems.
You told yourself, “This time this is different.”
You studied the creators making sure you had similar values, talked to past participants, and made an informed decision.
You came in with the expectation that this won’t change your life, but will enhance it–if you let it.
And you came out of it actually learning more about yourself
Like the fact that you (yes, you) have enough experience
People do WANT to hear from you
And that you've known what you were doing all along
The problem?
You’ve been hiding.
That’s because you’ve associated sales with being pushy instead of seeing the opportunity to tell a story and serve others. So you have got to start with…
Change your sales mindset to a service mindset
So you're used to avoiding attention. Honestly, as an introvert, I get it.
Sales and selling hold a lot of people back from promoting and marketing their offers.
It feels risky. You do not want to seem greedy or pushy. Not only that you have to understand the psychology of selling and why people buy.
But here's the thing: it’s getting costly to not promote and sell
Your losing time
Your losing money
And you're losing you sanity
All because you aren’t sure HOW to sell
What if there was a way that you sell without being salesy (i.e. pushy, inauthentic, feeling like you tricked someone into buying something they don’t need)
The first thing you have to do is change your mindset on selling and seeing it as a service through storytelling.
Ugh here she goes talking about mindset again
But it’s true. Ask yourself this:
Do you believe your offers can help people?
If you said, yes, then you aren’t selling as you know it, but you are serving. By presenting your offer as the guide that every hero (aka your right-fit client) needs to get to the next step.
And if you take anything from this blog, is that your offers and products can make a difference in someone’s world, but you have to…
Get attention
If you aren’t capturing people's attention then they won’t know about you
If they don’t know about you then you can’t help them solve their problems
And if you can’t help solve their problems then you don’t have a business and that’s kind of why you're here, right?
Getting attention doesn’t have to feel like a super scary thing. You don’t have to be bold and lose yourself in the prrocess. You can grab attention by:
Using a quote to make an illustration
Asking a question (in a headline or subject line for example)
Challenging a commonly held attitude
Using a shocking statistic that your audience would care about
You can increase conversions by drawing people to your message, but it doesn’t stop there. You have to talk about what your audience is struggling with.
Specifically, by talking about ways to have more ease, have more pleasure, and avoid pain.
ex) Make your brand unforgettable and unique without getting overwhelmed by all the website templates out there
ex) Go from struggling to find leads to “I found you through your Instagram!”
ex) Never worry about losing money over clients who don’t pay because you’ve got qualified right fit clients filling out your inquiry form
Ask Questions
Let’s be honest, people don’t buy your offer/product. They buy what your offer/product can do for them.
To really understand them, you must know their “why”, as in why is this important to them?
And that can look like actually talking to people hiding behind Facebook groups (or you can always hire a copywriter to do it for you).
So what do you ask them:
Open-ended questions to get people to keep talking
Clarifying questions to get a better understanding of their expectations
Questions to get to the deeper intention and what they really want? This brings us to...
Show them why they should care
Humans are always asking “What’s in it for me?” If you aren’t telling them why they should care, then you’ve lost them…
1) Focus on what could be by working with you
“You won’t be stressed over how to even teach your kids from home” → “Your mornings will be calm with a ready-to-go, child-led curriculum”
2) Talk about the want and desire (not what they need to do to get there)
People need to go train for a marathon, but no one wants to train for a marathon they just want the result of finishing the line, i.e. speak to that desired result
3) Show the benefits > features another example from the fabulous Sydney
Benefits= When you work with a wedding photographer, you can show up feeling confident on the most important day of your life
Features= You get 100 pictures, 6 hours of coverage, an engraved photo album, etc
4) Speak to an even deeper emotional → You won’t always be there to tell the story…but your photos will
Sell the transformation
There comes a point where you need more than social proof like testimonials and reviews. Let’s take another look at how I did this with my client Sydney
Sydney's desired transformation
More sales through SEO instead of social media
Solution/How
Wedding Photography for couples who want to embrace who they are in front of the camera
Product/What
Sydney Kerbyson Photography (the wedding chameleon you never knew you needed).
If I had written all about couples who are uncomfortable with taking photos, well, every photographer hears that...how do you show that difference in working with you?
But by talking about the deep desire, with empathy then it starts to feel like mind-reading.
Present a story that puts the reader as the hero→Taking them from the journey of feeling awkward in front of the camera →to not realizing that the camera is even there–and sprinkling it throughout.
Give them an invitation
Have you ever gotten an invitation to a party or event?
You don’t think you want to go or may have a conflict that day, but you still appreciate being invited in the first place.
That's the gist of your marketing: You want to make your right-fit client feel like they are invited:
By helping them make the choice to change a part of their life that they have been struggling with
Reminding them of what they are looking for
Showing what they can do after working with you:
Weighing the options of working with you vs not working with you (in an understanding way)
Picture this: You can spend your CEO day figuring out what went wrong in the backend of your CRM (again) or you can leave your desk at 3(!) knowing that your operations are covered so you can spend time with your kids.
Reiterating the benefits
Be assumptive
Use language such as, “When you are my client…” or “Can’t wait to work with you on building your brand” →Re-affirms confidence in your reader and belief that you can help them
So sell your little heart out by serving your current and future clients well and taking them through a story of a hero (aka them) doing what they’ve always desired with the help of guide.
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