In this newsletter, I’m going to show you five ways to sell more—even if you hate selling.

Over this past week, I’ve made three significant sales.

The first was in one of my side businesses: Melbourne Professional Resumes. The client hired me earlier in the year to write her resume. Now she has a specific job she wants to apply for and needs a cover letter. What made this significant is that she’s a returning customer.

[Update 9 Mar 2022: I’ve moved on from the resume business, so please don’t ask if I can write your resume. However, if you’re after tips check out this episode of my friend James Fricker’s podcast, Graduate Theory: “On Resume Writing and Authenticity with Nimarta Verma.”]

It’s fairly easy to make a single sale. But the purpose of sales—and business—is to start and build profitable relationships. The litmus test of success in sales is whether your customers buy from you again and again.

The second sale was to a new copywriting client. She’s tasked me with writing an ad that gets even more people to her entry-level event.

The third sale was to another new copywriting client, but a long-time friend. It’s the largest single sale I’ve made.

Personally, I love sales. But I totally get why many people hate selling. Many people carry a lot of baggage about money, and those “mind viruses”—as prosperity activist Pat Mesiti calls them in The $1 Million Reason to Change Your Mind—impede you from making the most money you can.

Here then are five ways of selling effortlessly:

1. Build Your Subscriber List

Your emails need to be valuable, or people will quickly unsubscribe from your list. Make it clear what value you offer your audience. Write powerful headlines (or subject lines).

My pitch at networking events for my email newsletter is:

“As reviews editor for Business First Magazine, the inflight magazine on Virgin flights in business and first classes, I read heaps of business, self-improvement, and personal finance books. In my newsletter, I share the best ideas that I learn from those books. Would you like me to add you to my subscribers?”

Even if you’re not set up to sell anything straight away, opportunities will come your way just by showing off what you do well.

When you’re in touch with people regularly, you’re the first person they think of when they need—or know someone else who needs—a copywriter, a resume writer, a hypnotherapist, a coach, or whatever you are.

2. Help Before You Sell

Your attitude should always be to help, not sell. If your attitude is to sell people, you will repel people. No one cares about you or your product (network marketers especially take note!). People have their own problems, their own concerns, and their own goals. Help them solve their problems and achieve their goals and people will reciprocate and buy from you—or refer you to people who will.

And when you help people often enough, they’ll help you when the going gets tough.

3. Turn Up

While no one cares about you, they will always hold it against you if you don’t care about them.

The way to show you care about people is to keep your agreements—and to deliver even more value than they’re expecting.

I promise a weekly email newsletter, Thought Leadership, and a monthly email newsletter, The Leader’s Bookshelf.

You may not notice if they don’t turn up in your inbox until you think about hiring me. Then you may think, “I haven’t heard from him in ages. I have a copy project, but is he still copywriting? Maybe I should call him. Actually, this other copywriter stays in touch with me regularly. I’ll just ask her if she can handle my copywriting project.”

Whether it’s in person or online, keep your agreements. Turn up as expected.

[Update 9 Mar 2022: My weekly email newsletter is now called Your Leading Edge and arrives in your inbox every Friday morning. My monthly email newsletter is still called The Leader’s Bookshelf and gets sent on the second Tuesday of each month. You can check out the June 2016 edition or the April 2022 edition.]

You can subscribe to both emails by filling out this form now:

But here’s a little known secret: Online promises—when kept—are worth more than offline promises. Why? Online, so few people do what they say they will that you stand out when you become someone people know they can count on.

4. Unlock the Power of the Fabergé Method

If you’re doing those first three things right, you’ll tap into the Fabergé Method of networking.

The name of this method comes from a Fabergé Organics shampoo commercial in the 1980s, featuring Heather Graham. I learned about it this past week from The Golden Thread newsletter.

In the commercial, Graham tells two of her friends about Fabergé. They then tell two of their friends. Who tell two of their friends. And so on.

Master the first three ways above, and the Fabergé Method comes into play. When you deliver useful content, help people, and show up, you build your reputation. That reputation means that people will tell others about you. When those other people get to know you, they’ll then tell other people about you.

5. Remove Emotions from the Selling Process

What do you do when you’re selling to someone and they say they don’t have a lot of money?

This tests what mind viruses you have.

When you allow emotions to run your sales process, you make a lot of assumptions based on your own “mind viruses”.

What does it mean when someone says, “I don’t have a lot of money”?

If you’re talking to someone who works in a factory, not having a lot of money means something completely different than if you’re speaking to a multimillionaire CEO. Never assume that “I don’t have a lot of money” means they don’t have enough money to afford your services.

Successful selling is not about getting the very most money while delivering the very least in service. It’s all about achieving a fair exchange of value.

And the way to do that is by following a script. A well-structured script removes the emotion from the selling process, and it allows you to determine if your service is a good fit for that person. And if it is, it helps you encourage them to buy.

One question that’s always included in my scripts is: “How much were you expecting this would cost?”

First, this eliminates people who have completely unrealistic price expectations.

Second, if their figure is in my price range for the project they’re after, I can make them an offer that sounds like a bargain—an amount still within my fee range, but cheaper than what they were willing to pay.

Third, it helps me see how I can give them a premium offer and what value I can bring to it to get them to choose that over the original price.

Conclusion: You Can Learn to Love Selling

If someone hates selling, it often comes down to two reasons.

First, they don’t believe their product or service genuinely helps people. When I watch my mentor Dr John F. Demartini sell his signature program, The Breakthrough Experience, from the stage, I see him moved to tears because he understands the power of the program to transform people’s lives. I’ve done that program twice and can attest to its power.

If you know your product or service helps people, you can focus on helping them and caring for them—not pushing them to buy.

And sometimes helping people means you admit that what you’re selling isn’t the right thing for them.

Second, they don’t place a high enough value on themselves and see their true worth. Too often people undermine their sales efforts because they don’t believe in themselves or the value they bring.

One unexpected tip that leads to you placing a higher value on yourself is saving a portion of your income to either build your savings or grow your investments.

The bottom line is that with the right training, you can learn to love selling.

What holds you back from selling more? Please comment below.

Join me in a free webinar I’m running on “The 5 Greatest Rules of Selling for the 21st Century” (and yes, this is still current as of 9 Apr 2022) by filling out the form below: