You're in sales whether you like it or not

Welcome to the 23rd issue of Write On!

The newsletter that arrives in your inbox every Wednesday… rain, shine, sleet, or snow.

Estimated read time: 2 minutes 50 seconds

Don’t play on hard mode like I did

I tried to sell my first course on hard mode.

I was on the brink of giving up until one marketing tactic turned it all around.

Picture this:

• $950 course

• Writing about 3 topics

• No traction on my waitlist

That's where I started.

All of my how-to threads were getting minimal traction:

• Engagement was low

• I spent hours writing Twitter threads

• Only 1-2 people would join the waitlist

I was ready to give up on the idea of running a course...

But then it all turned around with 1 viral thread. A story that showed my credibility:

This thread made up the majority of my 150+ waitlist signups. That waitlist helped me pass $10,000+ in course sales over the year.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the takeaway is clear in hindsight:

• LESS selling and “How To” posts

• MORE stories and “How I” posts 👇

190+ Write On readers are on the waitlist to become a better storyteller so they can sell more online. Consider joining them because you’ll get:

• Early access to the course launch

• Sneak peeks into the course

• Exclusive pricing

Just click the button below 👇

Top Finds This Week:

📖 Storytelling: Trung Phan grew an audience of over 650,000 Twitter followers in 3 years. Here are 5 of the storytelling tactics he uses to go viral: (link)

🧠 Psychology: Copywriting is NOT writing. Copywriting is understanding human psychology. Study these 7 aspects of psychology to become a world-class copywriter: (link)

🖼 Framework: How to use The 5C Framework to sell your story with a personal brand: (link)

📜 Principles: This tweet is 8 words and got 73,600+ likes 🤯. It’s a basic principle every writer should be aware of: (link)

⚙️ Resource: Trusted by teams at Google, Shopify, Hubspot, and more as the home of practical, repeatable conversion copywriting: (link)

🤖 AI: Why Perplexity AI is a better chatbot than ChatGPT and how you can use it to improve your writing: (link)

✍️ Write On: The best A/B test win I've had this year that resulted in a 70.89% uplift in revenue per email. The only difference was a few lines of copy: (link)

The sleazy car salesman ruined it for everyone

Switching things up a little bit today and playing the role of myth-buster.

The skill of selling has developed a bad reputation.

Some negative associations that come to mind about salespeople:

• “They use clickbait.”

• “They try to trick me.”

• “They try to hard-sell me.”

As a result, I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who want help with copywriting because they’re uncomfortable with selling.

• They don’t want to send that extra email or text message.

• They think their prospects and customers don’t want to hear from them.

• They don’t want to sell the product into which they’ve put blood, sweat, and tears.

As a result, these false narratives hurt their ability to grow their business.

But guess what? These entrepreneurs are hypocrites without realizing it:

We’ve been conditioned to think that selling is bad.

But entrepreneurs sell every day whether they realize it or not:

• They sell when hiring new talent.

• They sell when negotiating with vendors.

• They sell when motivating their team on a new goal.

• They sell themselves on a late-night snack.

• They sell their kids on going to bed early.

Selling is everywhere.

So you might as well get good at it:

Embrace the salesperson within you.

Continue studying:

• Persuasion

• Storytelling

• Copywriting

• Human psychology

As long as you remain authentic in your desire to provide value for others, nobody will care if you use a “price anchoring” technique to help sell your product or service.

They only care that you helped them achieve X at a fair and reasonable price.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.

See you next Wednesday!

Joe

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here’re two ways I can help you:

1. Facts tell. Stories Sell. Use storytelling in your copywriting to grow your business. Get early access to my new course: The Storywriting Playbook (👉Add me to the waitlist!)

2. Keep your writing sharp all year round and enjoy free lifetime access to my collection of Write On copywriting guides (👉View all guides)

P.P.S. If you've got a moment, I'd love to get your feedback:

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