The following post is from my old column “Dear Ash.” Aspiring and new freelancers would submit their questions, and I’d answer them Agony-Aunt style.
Dear Ash,
How do you sell your services or products without feeling like you’re too “pushy” or “tooting your own horn” way too much?
From,
Feeling Sales-y
Dear Feeling Sales-y,
Let me start by telling you that this feeling has never gone away for me.
I always feel like I’m being too pushy or I’m pissing someone off when I promote my products and services.
It was there when I first started posting weekly on my blog. The first time I made an Instagram post about it, I was terrified. I rewrote my caption 10 times and called 5 different people to ask if I should do it. All of them said yes, but I needed to hear their “permission” over and over again.
When I finally pressed Post, I immediately chucked my phone under my pillow so I wouldn’t have to see the (lack of) notifications. When I opened Instagram an hour later and saw the encouraging comments, a flood of relief and dopamine coursed through my body. People had actually clicked the link in my bio to read my piece. People actually liked what I had to say!
I was flipping over the moon!
…until I realised I’d have to repeat this whole saga again next week.
And sooo it began. When it came time to promote my weekly blog post, I’d feel this uncontrollable urge to vomit, a tightening in my chest, and a flurry of thoughts like: who do you think you are? People are going to roll their eyes at you. Nobody even cares! And when these thoughts were “confirmed” by low likes and zero comments, I’d plunge into despair.
I persisted through this for 2-3 months before I eventually succumbed to the spiral of negative thoughts, and stopped posting about it altogether. Going through this emotional rollercoaster every single week felt like such a chore, it felt easier to not “sell” myself at all.
As you can imagine, the views and number of subscribers I received plummeted dramatically.
This cycle repeated itself when I started actively selling my copywriting services. Now, I wasn’t asking someone to read my posts – I was raising the stakes and asking them to part with their hard-earned money. Cue the imposter syndrome, the fear nobody would buy, and the vivid scenario I painted in my head of someone screenshotting my post, sending it to their group of friends, and roasting me in the group chat.
So, I only did the bare minimum and sporadically chucked up posts saying, ‘I have this thing!’, and hoping that this *one* caption would somehow convince someone to buy from me. That was the extent of my marketing.
But you know what happens when you don’t “market” or “sell”?
You don’t get clients/customers…
Which means you don’t get any income…
Which means you spend more time worrying about how you’re going to make money instead of focusing on what you *really* want to do – make an impact.
It happened yet again when I launched this very column. I knew that if I wanted people to sign up and ask questions, I needed to promote it on a weekly basis and talk about it frequently.
But I was so fearful of what people would think about me (that I had the audacity to start a column no one had asked for and branded it with my own name) that I decided to shrink and play small. I didn’t put 100% of my energy into doing it, and I inevitably felt deflated when I wasn’t seeing the sign-ups I wanted.
All that to say, I know how uncomfortable it is to promote yourself online and it never really goes away. It can feel like you’re placing such a vulnerable part of yourself on a platter for the world to judge, mock or worse – ignore. Or like you’re placing yourself on a pedestal and going on and on about how great you are.
Here’s what I’ve learned about selling & promoting:
It’s all about your mindset.
Selling, when done ethically, isn’t bad. It isn’t saying, “look how great I am, give me your money!”
Selling is a conversation. It’s empathising with the challenges your prospect is facing, then laying out all the reasons why the offer you’ve created will help them.
Promoting yourself is making sure you actually *get* to have this conversation. It’s about placing your offer in front of the people you know it’ll help.
To not promote yourself would be like finding the cure for covid, but not tell the world about it because you don’t want to be pushy or annoying. Bit ridiculous, isn’t it?
Unless you’re Kylie Jenner, no one – at this stage of your career – is going to leap at the opportunity to throw their money at you or look at what you’ve created unless you tell them about it.
That doesn’t mean you just throw 1 post up about your product or service, and leave it at that. That would be like walking into a party with 100 people, yelling “I have this thing!!”, then bolting before anyone can ask questions. Especially since, according to the Rule of 7, it takes, on average, 7 interactions with your brand before someone is “ready” to take action.
And you can’t upload something and expect all 850 of your followers to see it. Especially now that Instagram and Facebook are only showing your posts to about ~10% of your following.
You have to actively get it in front of the right people by talking about your products and services more often.
Here is how I like to promote 1 service in many different and engaging ways
- Write a post explaining what it is and the benefits my clients will receive
- Post testimonials to showcase the results
- Talk about the common mistakes people make when they try to DIY (and how to avoid them)
- Show the behind-the-scenes process when I’m writing copy for my clients
- Paint a picture of what life will look like after someone uses my service
This isn’t being pushy. It’s showing someone everything they need to know about my service to make an informed decision.
Most importantly –
Know that you’re not promoting and selling yourself for the people who are going to ignore your offer.
You’re doing it for the 1 person you know it will help.
Right now, there’s someone out there who needs to hear what you have to say.
Someone needs to know the story of how you battled your challenges and came out on the other side.
Someone needs to know your product exists because it’ll solve 90% of their problems.
And you owe it to them to make sure they know about it.
So, Feeling Sales-y, I challenge you to promote your product or services 2x this week, even if it makes you feel like vomiting. Don’t do it from a place of “this is pushy.” Do it because you know what you’ve created will help someone, and you’re going to do everything in your power to get it to them.
Love,
Ash
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