Hey ,

Last week I posted a carousel on LinkedIn called "How to Sell Anything to Anyone."

It went a bit nuts.

A heap of saves. Tonnes of DMs. A few people even screenshotted sections and sent them to their sales teams.

So I wanted to go deeper with you. Because a carousel gives you the framework - but this email lets me explain why each piece actually works.

Here's the truth most people miss about selling:

It's not about persuasion. It's not about charisma. And it's definitely not about having the best product.

It's about building a system that creates trust - methodically, predictably, and repeatedly.

I spent the first few years of my career thinking sales was about being convincing. Turns out it's about being clear. Clear on who you help. Clear on the problem you solve. Clear on why you're the one to solve it.

After 10 years of testing this across 100+ businesses — and helping clients generate over $30m in revenue — I've distilled it into 7 steps. Here's what they are, and more importantly, why they work:

1. Define a clear ICP.

If you sell to everyone, you sell to no one. This isn't a cliché. It's the single biggest reason most sales processes fail before they even start.

You need to know who your product is for, who it's not for, what stage they're at, and what they're struggling with right now. When you get that dialled in, your messaging sharpens. Your conversations get easier. Your close rate climbs.

Most founders resist this because they're scared of narrowing the market. But narrowing is what creates traction.

2. Understand their pain — deeply.

The fastest way to sell is to demonstrate that you truly understand what your prospect is experiencing. Not surface-level stuff. The real pain.

The two BEST ways to do this in a customer conversation is ask specific questions that bring this pain to the surface. You can do this by using one of these frameworks:

SPIN selling:

• Situation ("What's your current setup?")

• Problem ("What's not working?")

• Implication ("What does that cost you?")

• Need-payoff ("What would change if this was solved?")

GAP selling:

Finding the distance between where your customer is now and where they want to be. You can find this by understanding four core things:

• Their problem

• The root cause of the problem

• The impact of the problem

• The quantified impact of the problem.

When you can describe someone's problem better than they can describe it themselves, they automatically trust you to solve it.

That's called diagnostic authority.

It's the same reason you trust a doctor who describes your symptoms before you tell them.

3. Create an irresistible offer.

All sales and marketing flows downstream from your offer. Full stop.

I like Alex Hormozi's Value Equation for this:

Your job is to maximise the top and minimise the bottom.

Paint the dream outcome so clearly they can taste it. Prove it works. Shrink the time to result. Remove the effort on their side.

Then stack bonuses that kill objections and guarantees that remove risk.

Make saying "no" feel like a bad decision.

4. Build an ecosystem that drives leads.

The best entrepreneurs and sellers don't rely on one channel. They build an end-to-end system that generates, nurtures, and monetises attention.

→ Attention comes from social content, outbound messaging, or ads.
→ Nurture happens through newsletters, lead magnets, and funnels.
→ Monetisation is sales calls and product pages.

When these three layers work together, you stop chasing. Prospects come to you already warmed up. Already trusting you. Already half-sold.

This will help you here:

5. Remove risk with proof.

People don't need more persuasion. They need evidence that this will work for them.

Show proof in this order:

• Results first.

• Then process.

• Then people.

• Then consistency.

• Add context — who it was for, what changed, and over what timeframe.

Use case studies that show the steps you took to create the win, not just the win. Make your delivery predictable: "In week 1 we do X, week 2 we do Y."

The moment you lead with price before outcomes, or use "trust me" language instead of evidence, you've lost the room.

6. Make the next step easy.

People don't need pressure. They need clear guidance on what to do next.

End every conversation with direction, not a question mark.

"Here's what I recommend."
"Here's the simplest next step."
"Do you want me to map out what this looks like for you?"

This reduces cognitive load.

And the brain always gravitates toward the path of least resistance. When you tell them the next step, you signal confidence. People buy from that.

7. Ask for referrals.

Once you've delivered a strong result, referrals become a natural extension of great service - not a separate sales tactic.

Deliver a clear, measurable win. Communicate progress and outcomes. Then clarify who you help best and make introductions easy for your current customers.

Getting them to talk about you is equally valuable.

Most people overcomplicate this.

Just do great work, make the result visible, and then ask.

That’s how you can sell to anyone.

Seven steps. Nothing fancy. Nothing that requires you to be a natural-born closer or some kind of sales savant.

Just a repeatable process that builds trust, removes risk, and makes the next step obvious.

I spent 10 years learning this the hard way. But after understanding these principles — and building systems around them — I've been able to help my clients generate over $30m in ARR.

And the thing is, once you've nailed this framework, the next bottleneck becomes execution. Where do you store prospects? How do you track follow-ups? How do you build a pipeline without drowning in spreadsheets?

That's exactly what Sollo is built to solve. A lead-generation CRM designed specifically for solopreneurs and small teams. AI-managed pipeline. Built-in AI sales coaching. Without the enterprise bloat or pricetag.

If you're building a business solo — or running a lean team — go check it out at www.gosollo.com.

Power to you,

Mike