I have found in my years of running my own business and working with many like-minded people that, as creatives, it can be really hard for us to sell – especially when it comes to selling with our words.
If you’re anything like me, you can’t stand a salesperson. I instantly tense up when I feel like someone is trying to sell to me and I believe that this instinctual reaction is because I’m not open to what they’re selling and they didn’t do their part to get me there mentally. But what if I told you there was a way to sell without actually feeling like you’re selling anything? By removing the idea of selling from the table completely, it will change the game for you when it comes to the idea of marketing your business offers.
It all comes down to creating genuine connections and just relating to somebody else in a really authentic way.
It All Starts with a Mindset Shift
I honestly believe that many of us creatives have a mindset block when it comes to selling. I know when I’m trying to sell myself, I will often have a sense of uncomfortableness, as if I’m being sleazy like a stereotypical used car salesperson. This mindset block is founded on the idea that what we’re selling isn’t good enough or, if we zoom out further, that we – as the individual who is selling – are not good enough.
These feelings of “not good enough” tie in closely with impostor syndrome. They can keep us from doing the things that we’re meant to do and prevent us from getting our offer into the hands of the people that it was meant for. We have to stop that line of thinking before it even starts or at least be able to identify it when those thoughts inevitably bubble up.
To start, we need to undergo a mindset shift and give ourselves permission. You owe it to yourself to be able to share what you’ve created with the world. We have the ability to change the world with what we have created and when we stop ourselves from doing that, we’re preventing ourselves from creating the change that we’ve always envisioned.
So, acknowledge those feelings of not enoughness and move on. Give yourself permission and step into this magic that you inherently have as the master that you are.
Aim to Connect and Listen Rather Than Sell
Selling authentically and selling with soul begins by simply being a good person. Aim to be a person with integrity instead of being someone whose goal is simply to peddle something. Come from a place of offering and genuinely connect with the person that you’re working with. This is a person that you are serving with your offer – not selling to.
Go back to the idea of the used car salesperson. You’re probably visualizing a person with slicked back hair and a cheap suit trying to get you to test drive a car that you don’t need. They’ll probably try to start a conversation by asking about your favorite sports team or where you went to college. However, their tactic makes you feel bad inside because their purpose is only to get you into a car to test drive it. I want you to connect with people not in the hollow way of used car salespeople but in a way that is driven by fascination, by possibility of the person that’s in front of you.
Always be open to possibility when it comes to other people. There are always genuine connections to make so long as we’re open to them. That means tapping into our intuition to fully engage with a person in order to figure out what to ask them that will lead to creating those genuine connections.
Start by being endlessly curious about the people you’re with. Wonder about them. Ask them what it is that has made them the person that they are. Listen to what they say. That is where the magic happens.
When you approach a relationship with a heart of service, you will ultimately begin to learn about what the needs of that person are. From there, you’ll be able to determine whether or not you have an offer that would serve them well. If it turns out that you don’t, don’t push it; it wasn’t meant to be. When you sell with integrity, people will remember but, more importantly, they will remember how you made them feel. You’re not trying to shove your product down their throat. Rather, you’re actually getting to know people and organically offering them something that could actually benefit them.
Your Personality is Your Own Brand of Magic
Your personality is a promise and I believe that the best way to write sales copy with soul is by infusing as much of your personality into it as you can.
By infusing personality into your copy, the more effectively you’ll communicate to whoever is reading it. You will begin to create a foundation of trust and geniality when it comes to building your brand that you hope somebody will eventually purchase from. Marketing expert, Seth Godin, describes this a way to build tribal marketing as in “People like us do things like this.”
For example, I use my Instagram stories as a way to infuse my personality into my brand even if that’s sharing a picture of myself at the Renaissance Faire dressed as an elf. That’s my personality shining through, and it could be a way that someone connects with me because maybe they also go to the Renfaire dressed like an elf. People like us do things like this.
However, if you’re worried about breaching your brand aesthetics, showing your personality doesn’t have to deviate so extremely from your brand. If your business emphasizes self-care, show yourself getting a massage every month as your way of carving out time to relax and unwind. Simple, but still a personal little tidbit about you.
We are in the era of the personal brand, and we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the humanity that exists in us with the business that we’ve created. Instead, we need to bring them together. Whether it’s in your sales copy or your marketing, don’t be afraid to show your personality. This is a huge way to set yourself apart in your messaging but also just as a human and a business because I don’t know about you, but I am already ready to invest in a brand that I align with and feel connected to.
As a copywriter, I am a huge advocate for adding personality into your sales copy and I like to have some fun with it. Adding personality into your copy – especially long form copy – makes it a delight to read. Here are 3 quick and easy ways to infuse your copy with your personality:
1. (Theater reference incoming!) Put in an aside in your body copy.
An aside in theater lingo is when a character on stage turns to the audience and makes a quippy remark that typically the other characters aren’t meant to hear. See what I did there with the parentheses? Asides are just a fun opportunity to add a little bit of fun cheekiness into your copy.
2. Use pop culture references.
This is a bit of attract and repel marketing but if you make a reference to something well known like Kevin from The Office spilling a whole pot of chili with the caption “Ugh, Mondays. Am I right?” You will either make a really funny connection with people who get it, or people will just keep scrolling. But the point is you made a connection with someone organically rather than forcefully.
3. Talk as if you’re speaking to your friends.
Our tone will change depending on who we’re talking to. But if you want to seem down to earth, write as if you’re speaking to your friends. It doesn’t have to be perfectly formal, grammatically correct writing all the time. When we’re talking to our friends, chances are we aren’t grammatically correct. Start sentences with “and,” use abbreviations and slang. It’s actually quite liberating to allow yourself to shrug off the super profresh formal writing.
Detach Yourself from the Outcome
Let go. Simple as that. Again, referencing the good ol’ used car salesperson, their ultimate goal is to get you to buy a car – nothing more and nothing less and they’ll do whatever they need to get you to sign off on the purchase. The last thing that we want is to give off that desperate energy.
When you detach yourself from the outcome of a sale, your energy is likely going to manifest much more positively. The more you want the sale, the greater that desire will manifest in your energy. That’s when we hit that desperate stage. But when it comes to energy and vibrations, we are all so much more deeply in tune than we give ourselves credit for. And I believe that desperate energy is what is actually causing us to lose sales.
It’s hard to attract when you’re giving off desperation so do what you can to detach yourself from the outcome. Let whatever happens, happen and believe that whatever is going to happen was meant to happen. If you don’t get the sale, so be it. That just means that you have the space in your business to take on another client who is meant for you and you’ll be able to serve them to your fullest extent.
All of these are tips that I have picked up over the years and have served me well. But it all really boils down to just being a good person. Someone with integrity. Someone who isn’t going to force something onto someone who doesn’t need it. Someone who really listens and learns about the person in front of them so you can serve them well in the future but only if the opportunity comes up because it might not and that’s okay too.
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