The best way to sell anything is to help first

Screenshot from X

I saw this post on X and I believe it's worth talking about. The best way to sell something might just be to try less hard selling it to other people. This can be really confusing for most people because we’re all taught that the best way to sell something is by pushing it and hardcore advertisement, pointing out the benefits and following up on it.

This made me really realize what was going wrong in the past with regards to the businesses I've been involved in because I had been doing this for years, but nothing seemed to come of it.

A few years ago, I started freelancing, but nothing much was coming my way. I had due rent, my laptop wasn’t working and I had some anxiousness going on. I sent long emails about the things that I do, the way that I do them and why I’m the best choice. Nobody replied. But then one of my former coworkers sent me a message, kind of, on the price that the company might charge. I answered this question at an incredible level of detail, even going so far as to forget that I had something for sale. They contracted me two days after that. I looked back on this, realizing that, honestly, that’s all there really was to it.

Let me give another example that’s more similar to this in the selling aspect. I recently tried to find a stupidly specific screw for a project that I’m doing. They had the specific screw that I needed, but the associate did nothing but show it to me, almost swearing saying, you probably don’t need the expensive kind. I never forgot it, I saw that the associate did nothing but try to help me find the right one instead of selling what will give him the most profit which he could have convinced me to buy.

I ended up returning to his store even though it takes longer to get there. Maybe this particular instance can just be attributed to me, but I feel as if people can tell when we’re trying to sell to them as opposed to when we’re trying to help them get what they want.

There’s a difference. It might seem like an unusual place to apply this, but where this really came into play for me was when I attempted to get one of my friends to read a book that I liked. I worked way too hard, pointing out the themes but made a mess out of the whole experience. After some months, I left this particular book on their kitchen counter without saying anything, leaving them to find out on their own that this book might be good reading material, which eventually did happen. She told me that it was something she enjoyed reading, but I pretended like it really wasn’t important to me, but you know I'm lying.

Sometimes helping others can look and feel less heroic, even boring really. Almost like we’re not doing enough pushing our product or service, but maybe it's good, maybe we’re just waiting for the other person to come to us, which, to be honest brings the best feelings out in me, like we’re on some sort of adventure together.