I hate selling, so I figured out how not to do it (well, kinda, sorta). Read The Hotline to discover how you can avoid selling, too. Do this week’s Challenge, and you’re on your non-salesy way.
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— Ann Gynn
The Hotline
How Do I Get Customers When I Don’t Like Selling?
I didn’t start my business to become a salesperson. I did it because I care about the work. So how do I get customers without feeling like I’m constantly selling?
I can relate. I always said I couldn’t do sales. Yet, here I am, years into solo entrepreneurship, and somehow I’ve brought in revenue to keep the business going.
Here’s the TL;DR version: I reframed selling through a marketing lens. Instead of thinking, “I need to sell,” I ask, “How do I help people see me and my work as a solution to their challenges?” It may sound like semantics, but that shift made it feel doable.
Here are three ways to attract customers without feeling like you’re selling—plus articles to help you put them into practice.
Let content carry the pitch: Share stories, tips, and examples about the problems you solve. When people recognize themselves in the challenge (and the outcome), they’ll often reach out to learn more about or buy your solutions.
In my business, publishing bylined articles for the Content Marketing Institute has led prospective clients to contact me to help with their marketing. (Ironically, I get the most prospect inquiries from an article I did on Wikipedia pages—one service I don’t offer.)
Let your customers do the selling: Testimonials and mini case studies can do a lot of heavy lifting. Prospects trust other people like them more than they trust your sales copy and elevator pitches.
Referral programs can also help, too. They reward your customers for introducing you to new ones.
Offer a small first step: Make it easy to engage with your work without committing to a pricey endeavor right away. It gives prospects a taste with the expectation that many will buy after their first satisfying consumption. Book coach Josh Bernoff just did this with a $1.99 special.
5 Creative Offers and Mini-Campaigns To Spark Sales [The Social Bungalow]
Rest assured, you can be a successful entrepreneur without turning into a salesperson. You just need to make the value clear enough and the first step small enough that people feel confident choosing you.
Got a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition of The Hotline? Call or text Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Challenge
This week: Add a no-pressure call to action to your next published content piece, such as “If you want help applying this, message me” or “curious how this would look in your business? Reply and ask.”
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What I Did With AI This Week
I’m working on an e-book for a client and needed to develop AI prompts that its readers can use to improve their own writing. My editor thought my proposed prompts were too simple. She was right.
I turned to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for help revising my prompts:
“Please review this prompt and make it better. Tell me what additional information you need from me to create the improved prompt.”
Try it and see how well your prompts improve so they deliver what you want on the first try.
Have any AI tricks of your own? Hit reply, call, or text the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Marketing Minute
Teach, Example, Shortcut
Break down a tip into three parts: Teach why it matters. Give an example. Share a shortcut to make it happen.
Publish the tip on social media by starting with the teach component, then insert line breaks so they have to click on “more to see the example or get the shortcut.
The Shortlist
🖼️Best AI image generator? Jim MacLeod says, “It depends.” Fortunately, he gives the answer on which AI creates the best images based on differing criteria.
🤔Doubt vs. questioning: 5x entrepreneur Gregory Scott Hanson shares this philosophy: “Every founder doubts themselves. Every real entrepreneur questions the path. The difference? They keep going.”
👾Seeing Reddit? Reddit is a great space to learn about your audience and helpfully demonstrate your expertise. It can also work as a paid ad channel, and its new AI-powered ad campaign type may help your buy have a bigger impact.
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Got a question you’d like me to answer in The Hotline? Email me or DM me on LinkedIn. Even better: Text or leave a message on the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.