To preface, I’ve been a personal trainer since I was 20. I turned 30 in 2019. That’s 10 years of “sales experience”. Lets begin

1 – Sales is not about Sales, it’s about Psychology

You are influencing someone’s thinking, which means you need an understanding of how people think. They best salesman are persuasive because they’ll talk to you similar to how you talk to yourself, but slight more clear

2 – You’re Selling Someone on a Decision

What that decision is about is irrelevant, because the principle remains the same. You are increasing their certainty on their decision making. This requires knowing what influences people’s decision making

3 – People Think in Stories

And the best salesman are storytellers

A decision made – YES or NO – affects the development of their personal story. The easiest sales, the people already desire what you’re offering as part of their story

The hardest sales, you must present a story to them that they decide they want to make real (by saying yes)

4 – Most of Sales is Listening

Sales is seduction

• Ask questions
• Listen
• Ask more questions
• Answer questions even If asked already
• Never lose interest in the client/customer

People buy from people they LIKE

5 – You can use Tricks, but Relationships are Better

But tricks always come across as desperate, and they rarely capture repeat customers If you view sales within the dynamic of “getting to know” someone, you’ll feel far better about what you are selling

6 – Physical products are EASIEST to sell

There are three markets:

• Low end – lowest cost wins
• Middle – Reliability and quality relative to cost
• High end – Status and quality regardless of cost

Low end cares most about price. Quality and reliability are secondary. They are the people who are most persuaded by sales, discounts, deals.

Middle end is looking for quality+reliability, they want to be assured they are making the best decision possible.

High end is luxury items and high ticket items They are buying an experience and/or status. They buy based on the power of the story they hear or have heard. Cost is not an issue, rather is the story worth the cost?

7 – Intangible products are the HARDEST to sell

• Training
• Consulting
• Coaching

These things have no guaranteed outcome, and rely on the customer doing future work. Expertise, decision relief, and testimonials are the most persuasive strategies to sell these

8 – Copywriting (writing to sell) is Storytelling

Good sales copy never reads like sales copy. The best sales copy has nothing in about the product, other than an offer (that is literally an offer, and not pushed)

Good sales copy mimics the in person experience of getting to know someone. That is why “Story selling” works so well. It’s also why my email list is 18,000 people in less than 3 years (this was in July 2019)

Copywriting applied to products is quite easy. What’s the story of the PERSON buying the product? Good copy resonates with the reader, bad copy sounds like a sales ad for a product

9 – You’ll hear “everyone WANTS to be sold to”

The deeper truth is that people want to be told what to do, because making constant decisions about everything is exhausting. Sales alleviates this stress

You’ll hear about targeting people’s “pain points”. This is overwrought. The meta reality is that everyone’s life has areas of insecurity and uncertainty. What people buy is aimed at alleviating these areas

Everyone has something they wish was better about their lives or themselves. Thinking this in terms of story gives you a far more compassionate understanding than conceptualizing it as “pain points”

10 – Honesty Sells

If you’ve read this far, you notice that I’ve used ZERO conventional sales tactics, tricks, copywriting phrasing. I am not “salesy”. I’ve not listed anything truly specific, instead its meta level stuff on HOW TO THINK

I teach people for a living, I just taught you the mindset behind selling. When you are a master of craft, “selling” is EASY. People learn the same way they are sold to, whether they realize it or not
If you enjoyed this, you’d probably enjoy the newsletter. I say probably and not definitely. But definitely probably you’d enjoy it.