Today I’m going to show you how to sell without being too salesy.
Of course nobody likes being over the top salesy.
If you’re a blogger, email marketer, or content creator then you probably just want to focus on creating the awesome content, writing effective emails or delivering maximum value to your audience, right?
And when it comes to the selling side of things, well that can sometimes feel a little bit weird at times.
For me, it used to feel a bit seedy and sleazy when I followed marketing advice from guru’s.
And I’ve got a hunch that you probably don’t want to use any of those manipulative tricks just to make a sale from a website visitor or email subscriber.
Nobody likes to be that type of person and nobody likes to think of themselves as that type of person either.
Today I’m going to show you how you can sell without being salesy.
You can use this in your sales copy, in videos, in email sequences, in blog posts, and in person if you want to.
There’s no restriction or limit on how you choose to use this.
Table of Contents:
A Negative Sales Experience
So let me give you an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about.
I was out shopping for a new jacket, found a store went inside.
Immediately the sales guy came over and almost pounced on me – he was right up in my face and I felt a bit invaded.
He was being way too salesy, and started asking me questions (which he was probably trained to do).
Next he grabbed a random jacket of the rail and asked me if I like it.
The jacket was fine, but I didn’t like the pushy attitude and I felt like I was being forced into making a decision – I felt like I was being pressured to buy from him.
It was an uncomfortable experience – so what did I do? I left the store of course.
I continued looking for a shop I found a really nice store that I went into and I had a completely different experience.
A Positive Sales Experience
There was no fake enthusiasm, instead there was a welcoming smile and a little nod, and absolutely no pressure.
Instead of being followed around the store I was just left to look around in my own time, and allowed to take as long as I needed.
When I found the section that I was looking for a voice from behind the counter said “excuse me sir, we have more items in the back if you don’t like anything that you see there”.
I thought was a pretty helpful suggestion because it was low pressure.
Again a few minutes later he asked me if there was anything in particular that I had in mind, he listened, and did his best to help me find what I was looking for.
I felt that this was a very helpful sales experience – it was a good approach where I didn’t feel invaded or pressurised to make a purchase.
And the next time I need something, I’m gonna go back to that store because I like the way that they dealt with me and I like their low pressure approach to sales.
The Problem With Selling
Nobody likes being sold to.
You probably hate being sold to as well? Especially when you didn’t initiate it.
And on the flip side, most people don’t like to do the selling either.
It’s completely normal to dislike putting pressure on people.
We don’t like to make people feel uncomfortable.
And as content creators we certainly don’t want to do it to our audience – the people that we really like, and the people we spend a lot of our time trying to help.
So we don’t want to make those guys feel crap about dealing with us, right?
And we all have this kind of mental image of a salesperson – and it’s a pretty unpleasant picture.
It’s of a pushy guy, a bit manipulative who’s using high-pressure sales tactics, and nobody wants to think of themselves in that way, or to be seen as someone like that.
But in reality a good sales technique will avoid all of that awful stuff.
Shift Your Sales Mindset
When it’s done right it doesn’t even feel like selling at all.
That’s because a good sales experience informs, educates, maybe even entertains a little, but most of all it’s helpful and it solves problems.
So instead of thinking of ‘selling’ try to think of it as ‘problem solving’.
This way you’re not trying to sell somebody a product or persuade them to do something they don’t want to do.
Now you’re trying to find the best solution for their needs.
You’re trying to help them.
And this makes the experience all about them and their needs. I’ll get into this more in a second.
You actually help someone to improve a situation and it’s a really positive thing, when it’s done right.
It’s just a shame that we have so many people who do it backwards, they make it about what they can get – instead of making it about what they can give.
So when you flip it, the sales experience becomes entirely different.
Because you’re helping someone you’re making their situation a little bit better.
So how do you sell without being too salesy on the Internet?
Well, the best way that we can do it is through storytelling.
Replace Sales Pitches With Storytelling
The first tip I’ve got for you when it comes to selling on the Internet, without being too salesy is to tell stories.
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to grab and hold the attention of your audience, while making them feel engaged with your content or message.
But you have to make it about your customer and not about you.
It’s not an opportunity to brag – people are really only interested in themselves and their needs.
They’re not too interested in you or how great you are.
So your focus should be on them and their needs.
Because it’s about them, you should weave in their pain points into the story, it shows that you empathise with them and their needs.
And when you empathise with your customer you demonstrate that you are worth listening to and you are the right person to help them.
You show them that you understand their problems – and their needs.
Storytelling also allows you to describe scenarios that they’ve probably experienced.
Draw on your own real life experiences and try to find the situations that we’ve all found ourselves in at one point or another.
And then finally, as the story comes to a close begin to offer a solution, provide a resolution – or a desired outcome that relates to your customers needs.
This way they can imagine a potential outcome for themselves – they’ll place themselves inside your story and visualise themselves overcoming the problem.
Easy, right?
Hopefully you can see how effective story telling is
And the stories you choose can be one sentence long, or they can be multiple pages long – it doesn’t really matter.
But the more you do this, the better you become so practice makes perfect.
Practice your storytelling and practice writing stories, keep a memory bank of stories to draw from and make sure that each story to share covers all the points that I’ve just given you.