This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Weekend workshops sell like a Girl Scout. That's right, sell like a Girl Scout. Have you ever seen the Girl Scouts selling cookies? Depending on where you live, they might be called Girl Guides, or maybe you live in a country that doesn't have Girl Scouts, but you might've heard of them anyway. Among other things, once a year, the Girl Scouts, at least in the United States, set up shop outside drugstores, shopping centers, grocery stores, and so on, selling cookies, a few different kinds of cookies.
They sell these boxes by the dozens. They sell a lot of cookies, and everybody's happy about it. Everybody is happy to see them. They are very persuasive. They're cookies.
They kind of sell themselves, plus it's like cute little kids selling these cookies. Let's talk about how this might apply in the world of side hustling. That's what we're all about. This new segment, Weekend Workshop, it's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle in 2025, one-step or concept per week. And we are using the book, Side Hustle, from idea to income in 27 days.
It's available wherever books are sold. If you don't have it, well, I'm taking you through the key steps, along with listener stories and examples throughout the year. And today is day 18 in the series. It's all about selling in a natural, authentic way. Learn to sell your products or services with confidence and authenticity without feeling pushy.
That's why I use this model in the book about the Girl Scouts because if you walk down any city street, you often encounter street canvassers. And they're like jumping in your path and they're like, here's a pitch to save the polar bears or whatever it is. And not to say that the polar bears are not worth saving, but it can be a little bit aggressive. It's a little bit annoying. People don't want to have these encounters.
So there's all kinds of tricks that the canvassers learn to try to catch people off guard. And then you've got the Girl Scout with a cookie stand happily offering something people actually want to buy. Girl Scouts in fact sell hundreds of millions of boxes of cookies each year without any high pressure tactics. So how can you apply the same principle to your business? You don't need manipulative sales techniques or pushy marketing.
Instead, you want to focus on communicating how you can help people and make it easy for them to say yes. So in the book we use the example of Julie, she designed this modern astrology calendar. Instead of aggressively promoting it everywhere, she started by sharing it only in online communities where people were already interested in astrology. She noticed that her clean, contemporary design appealed to people who found traditional astrology calendars to be too hippie or too new age looking. And by understanding her audience and offering something they genuinely wanted, sales came naturally.
The key is leading with benefits. How your product or service improves someone's life instead of just listing a bunch of features. In other words, don't just tell people what something is, tell them why they should care. That is a core lesson of the day. We're gonna take a quick break when we return.
How can you put it into practice? [Music]
All right, so how can you sell like a Girl Scout even if you don't have cookies for sale? The best sales approach most likely is not about a trick or a technique. It is about making it obvious how you can help people, eliminating the barriers to purchase. We've talked about this a few different times in constructing your frequently asked questions, in writing all of your sales copy, you want to think about persuasion from the perspective of the customer, not from your perspective.
So a couple of elements of natural selling are clear communication, where you explain exactly what people get and how it helps them, kind of remove any confusion about your offering. If you confuse, you lose. In fact, clarity can be perhaps the highest value in a sales process. You also wanna make it easy. The harder it is to purchase, the fewer sales you'll make.
So wherever you can eliminate obstacles in the buying process, do so. And as part of that, build trust, share testimonials, offer a guarantee, be transparent about your process. All these things together, they add up to success. They add up to conversion, which is what you want, right? You want to be able to sell in an easier manner without those high pressure sales tactics, which don't always work anyway.
So your action exercise for the week, 'cause you always have one, is to review your current sales approach. What are you doing? Are you making any of these common mistakes, perhaps? Number one, focusing on features instead of benefits. Number two, making it overly complicated to purchase.
And three, failing to address common concerns. If you notice any of those things, well, those are things to get away from and to avoid. And again, the more you can go in the other direction, the easier everything else will be. You are not bothering people by selling to them. That's the last thing I wanna say today.
If you have something valuable to offer, you're actually doing them a disservice by not letting them know about it, all right? Think about that. I know we have lots of folks out there who are like, "I don't like to sell." I understand, I get it. I often make products and I'm like, "Hey, here's the product if you really want it." And I realized if I do that, I am doing a disservice to people who could actually be helped through it. So I want to leave you with that.
And of course, it's better to have a simple idea. You can start right away than a brilliant idea that never launches. Take that with you as you go on your day. Thanks for being out there. New episode out tomorrow, new episode in this segment coming out one week from now, but other segments coming out every single day.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
