Selling is kind of a fearful word for some people, for others the thought of selling can feel “dirty”. But to succeed in any online endeavour you need to know how to sell. The truth is selling does not have to feel this way.
We Sell Everyday
Proper authentic selling does not need to be “icky”. Selling is when you've built a relationship with someone and based on trust, you recommend they take a certain course of action, and the person will pay you for that advice. That's all selling is. That course of action could be your book, a course, your coaching programme, a product, etc.
We sell every day, right? In our natural everyday life, we recommend things we like to our friends like coffee or wine, or any number of things. Now when you find something that is good and you recommend it, do you feel “strange” or “salesy”? No.
Everything you do online is a “Sales Conversation”
When you build a platform (an online ecosystem) everything you do online is a sales conversation.
For e.g. – if you've got a content strategy and you put out content that motivates your audience, or provides them with solutions, or addresses a pain, and people are engaging with it – you are building your credibility and trust. So when you decide to promote something to that group of people, they're going to be more inclined to take it. You don't have to sell as hard, and you don't have to close the deal with sneaky sales techniques because you already have a relationship with them.
That's the beauty of an online platform. I've seen this, for example, with webinars. I've seen those who have a platform of engaged people do far better than those who are going out to a cold audience with the webinar.
Webinars can work as a great sales conversion mechanism, however they work far more effectively when you have a platform of people who know and love you, and who trust what you say. In the webinar you address a real problem and offer a real solution – now that does not require manipulative or coercion because they know you.
So what I want you to take away from from this article is everything you do online is a sales conversation.
Having consistent Sales Conversations
So what I want to encourage you to do is have a look at the content you're putting out there. Do you have a strategy? Do you have a recipe where you take some content and you put it across your social media platforms? And if you do, what is the content that your audience is responding to? What is the messaging that they like?
Understanding all of these things will help you to know your audience and their needs, which will help you to put together offers that that they would respond to.
How this applies to writing and promoting a book
A lot of people who are writing books at the moment. Most people want to wait until a book is finished and then start promoting it. I would suggest that, as you're writing your book, you can be putting content out, getting the feel from your readers, getting feedback from people and see what they respond to.
What will happen is that when you finish your book and then starting to promote it, you've already got a warm audience of people who love what you're about, who get what you're about.
So just remember, everything you put online is a sales conversation, every piece of content that builds trust, that establishes your authority is a sales conversation.
Next steps….
I want to encourage you to put out content regularly and to have the proper channels in place so that you can build that audience.
If you need assistance in creating your content check out this article - "Creating Content that Builds Readership"
