As a person whose love language is gift-giving, and who’s done gift hoarding buying this year, I’ve been taking careful notes of how to sell well and how to sell poorly: how to make the “ick” factor go off like a 5-alarm fire and how to keep the “ick” factor nice and low while amping up the warm fuzzies like a toasty fireplace crackling on a winter’s night.

When I’m actually tempted to buy something I 100% don’t need, someone somewhere has mastered the art of selling without being salesy.  It’s a subtle practice, but one you can master with a careful eye and a bit of practice.

Here are my top 9 ways to sell without being salesy:

Make an honest recommendation to a potential client about what they should buy — even if it’s not something you offer.

Add 5 images of a product to its current description on your website.

Use this phrase everywhere: “If you like ______, you’ll love _______!”

Share a client success story.  Their goal plus your product or service equals client success!

Endorse other goods or services in addition to/right next to your own.

Feature before and after videos of any part of your business process or your clients’ transformations.

Personally respond to e-mails in a pleasantly persistent way.  (Use the f-word: follow-up.)

Forget logic and ‘being professional’ — tell me why my heart should care about what you’re offering.  In other words, get weird.

List 3 nitty gritty, ultra-specific benefits your business provides for peeps.  (Give special attention to the ones no one knows about because you’ve never mentioned them anywhere!)

Share the ‘why’ behind a single product or service, not just the ‘what.’

You’ll want to pick up a copy of Introverts at Work: sales and marketing alternatives for quiet entrepreneurs if you’re afraid of selling, suck at selling, or want more information just like this to help you move your magical creations without feeling like a douchenozzle.

P.S.  30-second sales tweaks that don’t suck.

The way I see it, newsletters as we know ’em are done for. Why?

Nobody wants updates about your company, or my company, or her company, or his company.

We want to hear and see your stories.

What do I mean? Lemme give you an update and a story from Kenya.

Update: Peter is a 4-year-old who came to the orphanage in February. He enjoys pushing tires around, playing with cars, and eating peanut butter bananas. I love him.

Updates speak in generalities and don’t provide the compelling why for any given situation.

So you made new purses to sell? Tell us why you made them, who they’re for, and what you hope will come of buying them for your customers instead of telling us about their dimensions and how much they cost — those details are necessary, yes, but not compelling.

Updates also tend to be brief, as we don’t want to “bother people” or “waste people’s time.”

Story: When Peter came to the orphanage, he couldn’t walk — only crawl — but now he’ll run you down with his tire as soon as look at you. He’s growing like a weed, having doubled in size in the past five months, and he’s absorbing the English language at a mind-boggling pace.

Now I understand why parents go around touting their kid’s latest achievements. “Peter learned to put his shoes on the right feet! Peter learned the words “bus” and “driver,” then drew them! Peter threatened to run me over with his car if I didn’t get out of his way!”

I’m really annoying right about now. I tell anyone who will listen just how much this four-year-old has grown and just how much I’m proud of him. (And when he barges into the kitchen, demanding peanut butter and bananas? I oblige. You would, too.)

If anyone questions why I was here or what made living in Kenya for months worth it, witnessing his remarkable progress is my first answer.

Stories provide less facts and more heart than updates.

They can be felt, they tell the absolute truth, and they give details that “don’t matter” but that make all the difference to your readers.

Instead of sending that September update that says you’re running out of portrait session spots and providing a rundown of how great your summer clients were, why not feature a single client? Why not tell the story of someone whose life you improved or whose condition you changed?

Most importantly, stories help your clients understand why you do what you do.

Whether you make belts because your skinny jeans always had that weird gap in the back or you create portraits because your childhood photos were lost in a fire — your WHY matters.

Once you’ve got a story for your newsletter, you’ll need to issue a single call to action.

A call to action asks people to do something specific: click a link, read more of your article, get more information, share a coupon, buy a product, or book a service.

If I told you to clean your closet, empty your inbox of non-urgent e-mails, brush your teeth, AND redeem your frequent flyer miles at the end of my newsletter, would you take action? Or would you just be overwhelmed, unable to prioritize what to do first?

I can guarantee that you’d be overwhelmed and do nothing. The same thing is true of your readers — of ANY readers — who will respond best to a single call to action.

Finally…I dare you to make a button for your next newsletter call to action.

Whether you want people to buy now, book now, check it out, learn more, or add to cart — a button that sums up your call to action is the simplest way on Earth to make your newsletter about 300%-ish more effective.

But Kristen! What about those pretty newsletter templates that contain three places for updates, eight links to articles, and seven different pictures?

Those templates are pretty, but overwhelming. Try sending a single story with a single call to action, and see how your peeps respond.

P.S.  The ultimate newsletter template can help you actually write your people an e-mail today.

…and if you’re like, BUT HOW DO I DO THIS WHOLE COMMUNICATING-WITH-MY-PEEPS-REGULARLY THING, check out How To F*^%ing Communicate.

I just returned from Kenya, which you know means I’ve been showering, using electricity, and enjoying television like a champ in the past few days!  While catching up on my TV loves, I saw this advertisement: “Now releasing from the Disney vault, for the first time on Blu-Ray and DVD…Peter Pan!”

Dude. That’s some amazing marketing taking place.

Disney is finding a way to make a movie that came out in nineteen fifty-freaking-three “new,” then giving attention to it as if we haven’t all seen Peter Pan and believed we could fly and watched the epic Captain Hook battle scene already. It’s extraordinary!

You’ve seen this same thing happen when fashion designers find a way to make the Eighties popular AGAIN (Holy Shizballs Almighty, do we need one more pair of sherbet-colored jeans in the world!?); when pop singers offer “Best Of” CDs full of previous hits; when McDonald’s finds a reason to sell more more McNuggets by putting 50 in a box for $9.98.

Repackaging what’s old to make it something new and exciting is an important part of doing business well.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, or coming up with an entirely new product, how can you repackage what you already have?

What’s sitting on your shelves that you can apply your repackaging ideas to and sell anew? What tweak or twist can you add to make your offerings fresh?

Here are 5 quick examples of repackaging to get your gears turning:

Selling hard goods? For anything from lotions and butters to socks and underwear, try bundling old stock with a new title. A “Back to School” package, a “First Day of Kindergarten” package containing a backpack, cute socks, a pencil kit, and a few hair bows? A “Working for the Weekend” package that mixes a gorgeous hat, a new purse, and a few travel guides? There’s no limit to the twists you can create to make what you’ve got more appealing to your peeps.

Sell services? Bundle your favorite items from local vendors with the service you’d most like to sell, and you’ve created an all new “Go Local” package. For example? Bundle a 60-minute portrait session at the park with a book about the park by a local author, a scarf to wear in the park by a local designer, and a set of watercolors to draw the park from your local art supply store. It’s a new, different reason to sell a session in the park, and it supports locals you love.

Got old stock, unused props, or random extras hanging around? Hold a contest to give that stuff away — just package it around a theme and voila! More fans or more followers, less stuff cluttering up your studio.

Got a bestseller? How can you make it even more prone to sell? Can you add a bonus audio track, video, or message that makes it more desirable? Can you add 1-on-1 time with you or with your staff members to push it off the shelves? Adding value to what’s already working makes it even more likely to fly off the shelves.

Can anything come out of retirement? Just like Peter Pan can come out of the “Disney vault,” your old products or services can be polished up and repackaged as something completely fresh. The phrase “Back by popular demand” can work wonders, here.

Whether you’re repackaging, holding a contest, adding value, un-retiring a product, or bringing something back by popular demand, I dare you to get out there and make everything old new again.

P.S.  Celebrate your (business) crockpot.