OK, so why am I telling you not to sell? Sounds ridiculous right? Wrong. From the average Joe's point of view, selling is about marketing your products and services to a group of either slightly interested people or people that have no idea whether they are interested until they commit and make a purchase. The issue with just marketing to them, calling them and asking them to purchase your product or service, is that you haven't given them anything yet. No matter how good your product or service is, as a consumer, I want to see the value that you are bringing to my life, I want to know how you are helping me and the benefits of being in a relationship with you.
So, what do you need to change to go from selling your product or service to giving value? Well, it's actually very easy and all you really have to do is change your messaging. We are going to pretend that I run an online shop and I sell coffee beans to independent coffee shops. I have built up a list of subscribers from the form on my shops' website and I have been sending them monthly email newsletters. The general messaging for the call to action is something like "Buy our ethnically sourced, medium roast coffee beans now". That's pretty direct, you want me to buy your coffee beans, I get it but I don't see a reason to buy yours over anyone else's. Now imagine instead that the call to action read something along these lines "Make every morning smell like heaven for your coffee lovers, grab your free medium roast sample here, it's on us :)". So as you can see, we are offering value to the potential buyer and they have a reason to connect with you. As the buyer, we are now under the impression that the coffee beans will smell incredible and will send out an aroma in the coffee shop that will attract more customers. I can also test exactly what you are claiming as you are going to send me a small sample to try it out.
So stop selling and start giving value.