How Being Sensitive Is An Emotion You Can Use To Better Business Sales
Of a sensitive girl, childhood bullies & more business sales
I was a sensitive child. Emotionally tender was how you could describe me.
Well-meaning adults would tell me I had to stop being sensitive or life would get in my way.
My tears flowed fast & easy when I saw someone get hurt. I could eerily put myself in other’s shoes because when they hurt, it felt like I was hurting.
As old as seven, I felt a strong connection to anyone in pain or anyone beaten down by their situation.
I remember when I was a young child & playing in my backyard with two rowdy boy pals.
A sparrow had built its nest on our favorite tree & a baby sparrow hatched the day before. The boys were curious as only boys could be. They had to climb the tree to see the chick but knocked it down in their impatience; not intentionally, I am sure. The baby sparrow fell to its death which was the moment I was introduced to my strange sensitive nature. I cried buckets and couldn’t stop thinking about the little dead bird that day, the day after that & many days after. I stopped talking to the two boys, who called me wimpy & shrugged me off! “Wimpy” soon revealed her true self to everyone. She became the butt of jokes and a target of playground bullies!
But weirdly, I was more resilient when it came to my feelings. Sensitive “Wimpy” withstood the name-calling & taunting to grow up a well-adjusted adult.
After being called ridiculous all my life for being too sensitive or “a tap on demand” as my matter-of-fact uncle who had bulldozed his way into board rooms preferred to call me, I now realize being sensitive is my greatest strength.
How and why?
It is a sign of strong character, born from compassion, a great value to have.
I find it remarkable that the adults called me “sensitive” and the kids called me “wimpy” but in reality, they just couldn’t understand me, so they chose to label me.
My sensitive nature means I am empathetic. I feel like reaching out to people in trouble. I can help them with no second thoughts. Now if that is not a strength of character tell me what is.
Since starting my one-person writing business, I have learned how being sensitive is an advantage I can use to sell ethically.
As a business owner, you can too if you are anything like me. When you start a new business, you are full of enthusiasm. But along the way you allow self-doubt to creep in. “How do I sell my business?” “Why will anyone buy from me?”, “Will I be able to get customers, or will my attempt be a waste?” could be some questions about marketing your business you ask yourself.
Selling works in counterintuitive ways, easy ways even.
You already instinctively know that!
When you rent ad space to sell you always run the danger of looking too pushy. Like a snake oil sales wo(man) eager to fob off an unsuspecting customer. You & your business stand the chance of looking like my bulldozer uncle, who cared about nothing but his interests & picked on his niece in his spare time.
On the other hand, notice what happens when you help someone with information or guidance. You don’t expect anything from them, since you help them out of the goodness of your heart. But they want to be of help to you in turn! You can use this basic goodness of human nature, “the wanting to help those who have helped us when we were in need”, to close a sale. You can sell without feeling guilty for pushing your agenda.
How can you best leverage your sensitive nature & your customer’s innate goodness to rake in huge business revenue?
You can write business blogs for your customers and sell through those blogs.
We humans make decisions with our hearts. Then we use our brains to justify the decision. This means, that to sell through your blogs, appeal to the heart rather than the brain.
Start by profiling your ideal customer. Who are they in their entirety? How old are they, do they belong to any particular region, gender, or race? What are they likely to do for a living and what is their purchasing power? What are their hobbies? Who are the people closest to them? What are their problems, joys, fears & and frustrations? Yes, get under their skin. It is easy when you approach them with empathy. Notice their pain points in particular. What are their problems? Any that you can solve with your product/service?
Address these pain points in your business blog to help a large number of your ideal customers regularly.
This also means your business blog need not be obvious.
You can tell stories through it. You can drive home lessons on values. Don’t forget to talk about the benefits and features of your product/ service. Have “how to” guides. Give your readers practical examples of how you can solve their problems for them.
And your business? It will sell itself.
Here are some numbers to show you that blogging works to increase your sales.
The median website gets 20,000 unique visitors per month. Businesses with a blog receive 55 percent more visitors to their website than those that don’t and produce 67 percent more leads every month. That’s an insane lead generation rate, one you won’t get from ad copy alone! The average conversion rate is between 2% to 5%. Putting these numbers together means your website will get at least 10,000 additional visitors every month with regular blogging. Assuming 2 out of every 100 visitor buys, you can calculate the additional monthly revenue a well-written business blog will make for you.
Here’s a recent chat I had with an old boss that drives home my point.
He had left our former employer to head a start-up that distributes medical equipment. They had ventured into a new line last year and decided to test sales through a business blog. They employed a freelance writer to blog for them. The blog gave them 17X ROI!
How do you blog when you run a business and are time-sensitive?
Like all good things, you need to invest time in blogging. When you haven’t updated your website in a while or you have content ideas that “you just don’t have the time to work on”, you may need to outsource your blog writing to someone who writes for a living.
How can you gauge if a writer can use sensitivity to sell and be good enough at their craft to increase your business sales? It boils down to these:
A sensitive writer shows profound interest in what you do for a living.
A sensitive writer is interested in others. They will be compelled to research your business. They will have a ton of interesting questions about you and your customers. If a writer shows no interest in what you do, that’s a red flag.
A good writer would have written genius articles in your business niche.
This is a no-brainer you may want to tick off right away. Do you see long, informative & engaging articles in their portfolio? Do they speak from experience rather than only research off the internet? As an example, if you sell running shoes you might prefer to hire a runner to write for you.
Writers who are allured by words frequently write popular articles. Two reasons probably why their guilty pleasure works in their favor:
They tend to write great content without being too focused on analytics.
They stay in the game & increase their chances of success. Like the SEO-focused blog churning robots say, “It boils down to being consistent.”
It’s like this. When a writer wants to only increase article views, their writing will stink because their neediness shows. When they write to tell stories, they can make stoics weep by weaving emotions into their masterpieces.
They will give you a strategy & commit to it.
A proficient writer will be able to give you a strategy for how they plan to grow your blog & sell your products. I have shared a good strategy here with you. Your writer’s strategy may not be exactly this, but you can take some pointers, so you know what your writer is talking about.
- Have a target sales number in mind to work backward on the web traffic number goal. Extrapolate both numbers for a year.
- Begin to write articles for your business niche after researching keywords in tools like Ahref. Cite reliable sources in your writing.
- Start by writing a cornerstone article. Include links to authority sources. Over time write those articles for your blog to prevent people from leaving your website. Replace links in your cornerstone article. You are building a web of resources for your buyers/ potential buyers. Your content can also include guest posts.
- Work on a social media strategy to increase footfall for the blog. Social media may complement the blog posts, could be about the blog posts, or both. Reddit, Medium publications, and LinkedIn/ Twitter are part of a great social media strategy.
- Organize the content so blogs are consistently published in line with deadlines.
- Build an email list in a quiet non-annoying way. A probable technique could be to have a CTA in the blogs.
- Use the blogs and (occasionally) the email list to sell.
- Track the traffic & sales target goals.
They are prolific.
They have a portfolio of work they proudly flaunt. Great content they showcase in their portfolio can be from these places:
Blogs: where the writer has published guest pieces.
Medium: where they have a well-written portfolio.
Their client websites: In case they can share client work, you may request them to do so.
Psst! Here’s a cool tip. I would gun for a newsletter writer who writes on a platform like Substack. When they write a newsletter consistently for an audience that subscribes to their work you know their writing will sell.
They are willing to share references.
The freelance writer may be new to client work, which is okay. But you can still expect references from publications they have written for/ other well-known writers who are willing to advocate for them.
They can negotiate for themselves.
Why is this relevant? Hear me, you need a good negotiator. Writers who advocate for themselves treat their writing like a business. They write to earn profits. This means they write to make profits for you too.
The monetary value of the benefits they give you should be ideally more than what you pay them.
They are willing to work a trial period.
You and the writer will both need a trial period to determine if you are a good fit. If it all goes well in the trial period, you can and should strike a long-term deal. A writer confident in their abilities will agree to a trial period. After the trial period is over, it may be best to hire a writer for a retainer & pay them the balance for ongoing work. Paying per word or blog may not be the best option for either you or them. It’s just cheaper when you secure a long-term deal. You also secure the writer’s dedication when you hire them for a retainer fee.
They are willing to write a test article.
If you publish it, you can pay the writer. A test article will tell you about the writer’s abilities. It will also help you both test how you will work together.
As a writer, I know the power of blogging.
For a small business, it could be the #1 selling tool. As a yet-to-be-known name, not many people will buy from you if you sound pushy and desperate to make a sale. A blog however is a level playing field & one you can use to up your game if you approach writing it with sensitivity.
I am a bird lover & freelance copywriter who writes blogs that increase business sales. I like to work with businesses who consider kindness a virtue & want to make the world a better place with their product/ service.
