How to Sell without Selling: My Top 10 Tips

In today’s post, I’d like to teach you how to sell without selling. Let’s start by defining what selling is. In my own words, selling is when you transfer your ideas to someone else. You get someone else to see your point of view.

Selling isn’t just selling a product or service. Every day we sell our ideas to other people. Where are we going to eat tonight? Are we going to do this project or that project? Are we going to watch movie “A” or movie “B” tonight? These are all examples of selling. Remember, selling is influence.

If you have a business, your job is to make the cash register ring. You must learn how to sell. And the best way to do it is to sell without selling.

Most people don’t like the word sales. They don’t like the word selling because they think of it as hype, pressure, or trying to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do.

You know, like visiting a car dealership, on the last day of the month, being locked in a small room, having the thermometer turned way up where you’re sweating, and the car salesman is pressuring you to buy a more expensive car than you want or can afford.

That is not selling. That is lame. That is unethical and unprofessional, in my opinion. And if you’ve experienced something like that before, I’m sorry. That’s not something professionals do.

How to Sell without Selling: 10 Tips

What I want to do in the paragraphs below is share 10 strategies and tips that I use, that have worked well for me through the years, to sell without selling.

Keep in mind, if you are brand new to entrepreneurship or sales, these ideas might sound weird, even unconventional. All I ask is you keep an open mind and look at this advice objectively. Let’s get started.

# 1: Ask Questions & Listen

The first tip and one of the most important tips is to ask questions and listen. I have found from personal experience, you want your prospect to talk four, five, even six times more than you do.

You need to get good at asking questions and then being 100% quiet and listen attentively to your prospects. Why? Well, first, they like this. But second, you can get a lot of helpful information from your prospect by learning how to ask the right questions and listen. You learn NOTHING from talking but you can learn a lot by listening.

# 2: Get People to Contact You First

This is my best tip. Get people to approach you first. When you are in sales or when you’re trying to sell something and you reach out to people, most people have their sales barriers put up. They’re automatically in “defensive mode” in fear of being sold something they don’t want.

However, when people approach you first, their defense mechanisms are down, and you are now in the driver’s seat. They’ve already pre -qualified themselves by approaching you first.

How do you get people to approach you first? There’s only two ways that I know of. You can do attraction marketing, or you can do advertising. You can learn more about those topics from other articles on my website.

# 3: Be Calm, Cool, & Collected

You must be calm, cool, and collected. Tom Hopkins, who’s a very popular sales trainer, taught me to act like a lamb, sell like a lion. In other words, have that relaxed intensity but don’t be overly aggressive. Just be relaxed, try to match the body language of your prospect, and you should be good to go.

# 4: Never Use Pressure or Hype

Next, never use pressure or hype. Those days are long gone. We have what’s called educated consumers in today’s world. If you use pressure or hype, you’re going to lose most sales and rightfully so.

# 5: Follow-Up

The next way to sell without selling is to follow up. And when I say follow up, I really mean automated follow up.

I like to personally use an autoresponder, but you could also do this through direct mail. You could do this through texting. You need a way to follow up with people, so you drip on them. That just means you stay in touch with them periodically, maybe once or twice a week, and a minimum of once per month.

In your follow ups, make sure you provide value. You do that by providing helpful information. You can share articles, videos, tips, testimonials, or any information that would BENEFIT your prospect. Most people need 7, 10, even 20 follow ups before they buy. If you can just stay in touch with people you significantly improve your odds of success.

Most salespeople never get past that second or third follow up. Just getting to the 10th, the 20th, even the 30th follow up, your odds of success increase significantly.

# 6: Build Up the Like, Know, & Trust

Another thing you need to do is build up the like, know, and trust factor with your prospects.

People like to do business with people they like, know, and trust. The best way that I’ve found to do this is to do what you say and say what you do. Be a person of your word and a person of integrity.

I like to do this through video marketing because people can watch and listen to you at the same time. This builds an instant connection with them.

The more that you “do what you say and say what you do” and the more someone interacts with you, the higher the likelihood they will eventually like, know, and trust you.

# 7: Put Yourself in Your Prospect’s Shoes

Another tip to sell without selling is to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Some people might call this empathetic. What you need to do is take your eyes off yourself for a minute and think about your prospects.

What type of fears do they have? What are they worried about? What problems are they dealing with and how can you offer a solution to those problems? The more you know about your prospects with what they fear and what they think, the better you’re going to do with sales.

# 8: Educate Your Prospects

Number eight is to educate your prospects. I would like to replace the word salesperson with educator. I think of myself as an educator, a teacher. Yes, I sell stuff, but my real job is to teach, train, and help people. If you do that, you will become successful.

I make videos, write articles, and create podcasts to educate people in my target market. This positions me as an expert and authority in my niche. Some of these people reach out to me to join my team or buy from me.

Even if they don’t buy or join right away, I’ve built up the like, know, and trust factor, so when they eventually become ready to buy, they will think of me! That’s a win-win!

# 9: Focus on What’s In it for Them

This goes hand in hand with number seven. Focus on how your product or service can benefit the person that you’re talking to rather than how much money are you going to make from that one transaction.

If you focus on what’s in it for your prospect, you can never go wrong because you’re focused on them, not you. You’re focused on the value that they gain by doing business with you, by using your product or service. You’re focused on helping and serving your prospects. That is the # 1 priority of all top salespeople.

# 10: Tell Stories

Another great way to sell without selling is to become a good storyteller. This is a learned skill. This is something I’m not very good at yet. I’m working on it, but I’ve followed a lot of excellent marketers who sell a ton of products, and they don’t try to sell anything.

They basically tell stories, and they mix in their marketing messages and their sales pitch right within their story and it doesn’t even feel like a marketing message or a sales pitch. If you can learn how to incorporate stories, either your own stories or other people’s stories, or if you can take your sales message and turn it into a memorable story, you’re going to get a lot more sales.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these are some of my best tips on how to sell without selling. This is by no means a conclusive list. I would love to hear from you if you have any tips or suggestions you would like to share. Feel free to leave a comment below to share your thoughts. Thank you.

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Chuck Holmes
Network Marketing Professional (21+ years)
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mrchuckholmes@gmail.com

How to Sell without Selling