I know, it gives some of you the ‘ick’ – being sales-y in LinkedIn and blog posts can seem a bit scary, and I get that.
But do you know who doesn’t find it scary?
Pretty much any B2C company you’ve ever subscribed to an email from.
I had a look at my inbox this morning to find out if I was talking out of my arse, and luckily it seems I’m not.
- Fast fashion peddlers Temu and Shein send multiple sales emails, texts, and in-app messages every day. Even though I deleted their apps months ago and filtered their emails into spam.
- Poundland have sent me at least 2 emails a day for the last 6 months since I got sucked in via a discount voucher and bought some pet stuff from them.
- Everything 5 pounds have sent me 3 sales emails a day for forever, even though I can’t remember the last time I bought anything from them.
It’s not just the budget fashion and tat shops that do it (although I realise this says something about my buying habits!).
- Mexican restaurants Las Iguanas and Chiquitos send me daily or weekly emails, purely to get me to buy something.
- Ticketmaster email me regularly to promote their offerings.
- I get multiple emails a week from Marks and Spencer, IKEA, Scottish Power, Molton Brown, Currys, Argos – pretty much anyone I’ve ever signed up to an email list with.
And do you know why they think that’s OK (and in fact, it is OK)?
Because I asked them to do this.
Granted, I didn’t know I would be getting multiple emails a day from some of them, and they never send me anything but sales emails, but that’s what I signed up for.
In much the same way that when I connect with someone on LinkedIn or I read their blog, I expect them to try and sell to me. It’s part of the deal. We all know this.
The companies mentioned above give me discounts and special offers in return for being allowed to sell to me.
Your connections on LinkedIn get to read your helpful and entertaining content in return for allowing you to post the occasional sales message.
So don’t be afraid to do it. I promise you nothing bad is going to happen if you write a LinkedIn post or a blog post right now that says “Here’s my service, I’d love it if you’d check it out and buy it”.
And now is the perfect time – if you work with bigger companies, budgets are being set, so make sure you’re on their radar,
If you work with smaller companies, maybe they’ve finished their tax return and realised they have a little more budget than they thought they had.
I’d say now is the perfect time to get over the ‘ick’ and write a post about:
- One of your services you’d like to sell more of
- A special offer just for April
- Your 1:1 consultancy offering
And if that’s still too icky for you, write a post about your newsletter or mailing list and what benefits people can get, what they can learn, if they sign up.
Just don’t send them 3 sales emails a day.
