Entrepreneur

Sales is scary.

Even more so if you’re shy or introverted.

But it doesn’t need to be.

I’m one of the biggest introverts you’ll ever meet. And yet I make 90%+ of my revenue from direct selling. In this post, I’ll share my exact process for selling products of all prices. I use these methods to sell 5-figure sponsorships, 2-figure consumer products and have even sold 4 companies, some for multiples of 6-figures.

Why would you want to learn how to sell? Isn’t sales dead in the internet world? Quite the contrary. Selling is one of the most predictable revenue channels you have. By knowing stats like your email open rates + conversion rates, you can create a very clear picture of how much money you will make for every 1000 emails you send. As a solo-founder, this is one of the most powerful levers you can pull.

Unfortunately, most people shy away from sales and focus on “less scary” marketing methods like social, content and SEO.

But sales doesn’t need to be scary When a lot of people think about sales, they think about:

• Wolf-of-Wall St levels of sleaze

• Cringeworthy emails

• Unsolicited follow ups

• High energy / high charisma people

• Cold calling

Thankfully sales doesn’t need to be any of these things.

One of my key methods of making sales less scary is to remove myself from the selling process as much as possible. I do this by making the sales offering so sellable that it sells itself.

So instead of trying to be high energy, charismatic sales people and making hundreds of cold calls, we focus on all the other aspects of our business that can do the selling for us. These include:

Product, Pricing, Credibility, Psychology, Strategy, Honesty, Tools, Sales materials and your Sales process.

Let’s go over each of those:

1/ Product

Your product or service is the actual thing that you’re selling so it’s pretty obvious that the quality of the product should be good. If you don’t have a good product, it doesn’t matter how good you are at sales as it will never sell. On the flipside, if your product is fantastic, it may sell itself.

The key here is that you need to be able to identify your “unique selling points”. The key features which differentiate you from your competitors. Your selling point could be a lower price, a feature that nobody else has, a bespoke service, 1:1 customer service etc. It’s not branding. Don’t make the mistake of thinking branding alone is a unique selling point. It may help in selling your message more easily, but it’s not a selling point in its own right.

2/ Pricing

Next up, your pricing is a massive strategic lever you can pull to make your product sell more easily. You can use high pricing to suggest quality, a lower price to suggest value, or use pricing strategies such as “price anchoring” where you create additional products that you don’t intend to sell to help showcase the value of the main product more. Couple your pricing strategy with upsells and discounting and you’ve got multiple ways to invoke powerful responses from customers by simply playing around with pricing options.

3/ Credibility

Existing success is one of the biggest cues that convinces people to buy your products. This is why companies put logos of their existing clients, or publications where they’ve been featured, or reviews from previous clients. Do everything you can to get any of these and put them on your website and sales materials. If you’re just launching your business, consider giving some work/products away for free (or at a reduced rate) to get a few logos/reviews for your site.

Optimize your social profiles in a similar way by using high-quality images, creating a clear bio that explains what you do and posting high-quality content on the topic your business relates to.

4/ Psychology

The key thing I think about with selling is psychology. I don’t think about sending 8 unsolicited messages on LinkedIn, which everyone seems to do and I can’t imagine ever works. Instead, I put myself in the shoes of the person I’m trying to connect with and work forwards from there. That’s a good rule to keep in your mind, to always think about how your email, or pricing, or what you say in a call comes across to the other person.

The next part I think about is the actual sales process. I don’t do the hard sell. Instead, I try to start conversations. Conversations lead to calls, calls lead to sales. Start conversations.

5/ Strategy

I’m a big fan of chess. And Sales is not too different as there is a lot of strategy involved. You always need to think about potential customers as the other player and think about what their next move might be. Take into account things like changes in the market, seasons, holidays etc. Read the news. Watch the industry. Always be ready to pivot your strategy when something changes.

6/ Honesty

There is a stereotype that sales is all about lying. It’s not. This probably came about as a good salesman is often characterized as somebody who can sell anything, even when it’s a bad product. Effectively, these people are good at acting and lying.

Real selling on the other hand is about selling a product where the buyer will get more value from the product than they paid you. That’s fair business. So there’s no need to feel like you need to lie. People can smell a lie. If you approach your sales with honesty, customers will appreciate it and will buy more readily.

7/ Tools

There are a lot of great tools for helping you with your sales nowadays. My favorites are:

• Apollo for outbound email campaigns

• Superhuman for emails

• Attio CRM for managing the Sales Pipeline

It doesn’t need to be complex. These 3 alone make the entire process a lot easier.

8/ Sales Materials

Create a visual sales deck which has everything a customer needs to know about what you’re offering. This includes the details of the product, the pricing, quotes and logos of previous customers, places you’ve been featured etc. Make it as visual as possible, using images, graphs and charts where possible. This allows you to showcase all the selling points of your process succinctly and in a compelling manner.

Instead of writing long emails with every selling point you have, you can now write short emails explaining the overarching benefit they will receive and then ask them if they would like to take a look at your sales deck. It’s very easy for the customer to say yes to that question because there is no obligation to buy and allows you to move them onto the next stage of the sales pipeline.

9/ Sales Process

Speaking of the Sales Pipeline, the final weapon in your arsenal is to have a very simple and efficient sales process that takes care of moving potential customers through the sales pipeline. Here is my high-level sales process:

• Automated outreach emails with follow ups

• Respond to all incoming emails with email templates and sales deck

• Book meeting

• Follow up

• Close

I'm writing on this topic every week on Substack where I share 15 years of learnings in 3-min guides. Feel free to use those guides too if they're useful.