How to sell a service as a solopreneur when you hate sales

If the idea of selling gives you the eek salesman vibes, this post is for you. I am here to shift the idea you don’t know how to sell. Well, maybe you don’t know now, and that’s ok!

>>>> Selling is a skill that you learn.

Don’t worry I won’t send you an old YouTube video on how to sell because those never worked for me. You can totally sell a service without feeling icky about it.

We are solopreneurs, we sell differently. 

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Selling is helping.

There are 2 types of sales here: active and passive.

Here comes the tricky part – where most people get it wrong. You can’t do Passive Sales without Active Sales and vice-versa. 

The good thing is: they don’t need to be 50/50! 

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You can do 80% Passive and 20% Active and it still works!

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How to Passive Selling doing the minimum of Active Selling?

I used to think that if I created my portfolio and my website, Google would do its job and find clients for me. I believe this was the magic of Passive Sales! 🤣

There’s nothing passive in Passive Sales. You work so much!

If you still think that your portfolio is good enough to people find you and hire you – I am here to say – it’s not! Sorry!

How to Passive Selling doing the minimum of Active Selling?

As I said in the post “3 things I wish I knew before I start freelancing“, everything is sales.

First, you will need to figure out what you’re going to offer as a service.

➡️Give it a name, a price, and what’s included.

➡️Create a portfolio to show people you know how to do this thing you’re offering.

➡️Make it simple to contact you.

Now you are going to create desire!

You can do this in many ways. For a while a used a method of choosing 1 Facebook group and be THE person that would give tons of free value.

I would help 10 people per day, with whatever issue they had and I got many clients doing this – but this was indirect active sales and it was time-consuming. 😫 

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Here is the checklist:

🟩 Choose a specific pain point to attract your ideal client ( they try to DIY but they don’t have the skills to create a website themselves, they are taking way too long because they don’t know what’s important, they have no strategy, etc)

🟩Add items in your service to address that specific pain point (you work fast, they are going to save time using your service, etc)

🟩Position yourself as the to-go person for that kind of problem (I don’t care if there are 1000 designers who do the same thing – you will position yourself as the expert in that niche, etc).

🟩Tell them what they need to do next. Every. Single. Time.

The last one is important!

You are going to do a Call to Action: the action will be – click on my website, send me a DM, fill my form, anyway they need to do to hire you, to contact you.

You received a message, what now?

It’s time to make a sale.

>>> It’s going to be as weird as you want it to be.

This is not a script. Sometimes a message comes with a question, sometimes is just a hi, and sometimes people want to talk to you.

But no matter what, always thank them for contacting you.

This is always a conversation, never a block of text.

Then genuinely help them, but do not give all the answers – give them an idea of how your service can truly help them achieve what they need.

If they need to see your work or what’s included, ask permission to send a link. They have to think they are in control of the situation, they don’t know they are inside a sales moment. 

Depending on the price of your product, some people require a discovery call, just to look at you, just to see if you are a good fit.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk, you can skip this by sending voice messages.

Sometimes now it’s not the right time for them, so ask if you can follow up in a month or two. If they say yes, add this to your calendar, send an email to your future self, make a note on your bullet journal, whatever! But DO FOLLOW UP!

This is important! And it can be a simple email like:

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This is your process! You decide how you are going to approach this. If you don’t want to do sales calls, then, don’t do it. Make this unique to you.

Say you only work with introverts and you will never have your camera on in a meeting – every communication is done by chat.

You would be surprised by how many people prefer to work this way.

👉I work this way – although I do sales calls, most communication with my clients is done by chat or voice messages. I had one client who wanted to do everything with calls, I decided I didn’t want that, so I made it very clear I would only talk via chat or email.

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Recap:

• Make sure you have a service that solves the pain point of your client
• Aknowlegde this pain point in form of content and offer small tips to solve it but also point your audience to your service
•  Add a Call to Action to each form of content you create. 
• Make a conversation where the final step is getting the client. 
• When now it’s not the right time ask them if you can follow up in a month or two. 
• Create a process that works for you. 

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But the thing I wanted more was the Notion Dashboard I have today, with everything a freelancer needs to start. 

I am now offering it to you.