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Week 16: How much should you hard sell?

Even if you don’t know the meaning of “hard sell,” you’ve felt it or seen it. Have you ever watched an infomercial? Been pressured to purchase something because time is running out or it’s a limited-time offer? Attended a timeshare presentation so you could get free tickets to Walt Disney World? (That describes me, 20 years ago. Fortunately, I was able to resist the hard sell.)

Hard sales tactics tend to be associated with characters we don’t particularly like or admire, such as used car salesmen and strangers who spam you with loan offers.

But at some point, you will be tempted to deliver a hard sell, too—to the people who know you, follow you, or subscribe to you. Is that OK? How much is allowed before you do more harm than good?

There isn’t a single right answer, but I’d follow these principles.

• It’s typically a service to inform. It’s always OK to announce opportunities, events, upcoming books, new classes, new offerings, etc. to your readers or community. The problem is when you primarily focus on yourself and getting people to do what you want. This creates an overall sense that the community will only hear from you when you want something from them. And that leads to people tuning out.
• The more trust or goodwill you’ve built over time, the more grace you will be granted. If people trust you, and if you’re transparent with them about how you work and why, then you deliver a “hard sell” (especially at an appropriate moment), it will be received favorably.
• Timing matters. If you do a hard sell on the day of a book launch, or on the day you make something newly available, you don’t even have to make it a hard sell. People will instinctively act once you have something new, assuming they enjoy and trust your work. Take advantage of key moments when people won’t see what you’re doing as a hard sell.
• Don’t underestimate people’s gut instincts. People can sense when you’re acting out of desperation or trying to manipulate them. And some communities are highly sensitive to being taken advantage of; they run in the other direction when you employ the hard sell when trust is lacking.

I don’t like creating rules such as “Post about others 8 times for every 1 time you post about yourself,” because none of this can be reduced to a formula. This would be like keeping score in a marriage (not advisable), or it’s transactional, which is not the kind of relationship I recommend for writers, readers, and creative people. We are in a unique and valuable position: people respond to qualities of authenticity, curiosity, and integrity, and writers can excel in these areas without being sales focused. Or: These qualities sell on their own, and don’t require a hard approach.

How do I personally engage in the hard sell?

Because of my reputation, my platform, and my number of offerings, I’ve reached a point where it actually makes sense to send out a sales and marketing email every two weeks for my online classes. Why? Because it acts as a service for people who are consistently interested in what classes I have to offer, which change from month to month. It means people can stay updated without having to visit my website or subscribe to any other newsletter. That kind of “hard sell” doesn’t wear out its welcome and doesn’t need to be supplemented with anything else.

Aside from that, my “hard sell” is limited to mentioning paid offerings in the margins of email newsletters I send, like the mention of my book at the end of this email.

Exercise

Study how other individuals are able to market and promote what they have to offer, while building trust and providing value, particularly in their email newsletters. Here are three examples to start.

• ​Jocelyn Glei​
• ​Jeffrey Yamaguchi​
• ​Wes Kao​

Explore further

• I highly recommend Derek Sivers’ Anything You Want for lessons in entrepreneurship that match the values I’m promoting in this series. Or read his blog.​
• Watch Simon Sinek’s famous TED talk, Start With Why.
• ​Sorry (Not Sorry), Self-Promotion Doesn’t Work by Tara McMullin
• ​3 Book Marketing Misconceptions and What to Do Instead by Angie Isaacs

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