Do you hate selling? A lot of creative people do. They just want to create their fanciful arts & crafts and let someone else do the selling.
If you fantasize about a future when teams of publicists and salespeople pound the pavement and do all the selling for you while you cozy up to your fireplace, your throw pillows, and your cat, making your art and never sullying your hands in the distasteful muck of sales, join the club.
Sadly, this beautiful future is never going to happen. You are—and always will be—the chief salesperson of your work.
You sell your work from the moment you conceive it. It has to persuade audiences to take interest in it. It has to lure them to consume it. It has to compel them to react to it.
If you want people to see your work, you have to shout it from the rooftops. You have to be online, in stores, on stage, and on TV.
If you ever make it big, the pressure to sell will only intensify. The publicists, agents, and salespeople will want you to lead the charge. They’re nothing without you.
It’s a hard truth, but there it is.
Here’s a harder one: we tell ourselves we hate sales because we have integrity—we’re all about the purity of the art. In reality, we hate sales because, deep down, we don’t believe in our work, we don’t think anyone wants it, or we don’t feel like we deserve to be promoted or celebrated.
If that’s you, get that problem handled. It’s the only way you’ll ever make a living with your creative projects.
A good way to get over an aversion to sales is to buck up and sell. Sell! The more you do it, the easier it gets.
Selling, well until I was myself ( not all the books I read about how to selling like snake oil salesman) and sold from the place of leaving the results to the results, just take the action and enjoy people, and repeat the action I started enjoying sales. Selling from a place of detachment from the results.
This really cuts to the heart of it. Selling seems like narcissism. We have to find an authentic, humble confidence, an unshakable confidence, and sell from that place deep inside. Where is it?