💎 How I Sell Without Actually "Selling" – My Blueprint for Closing $20k in 4 Days

Manipulation Vs. Genuine Influence

Before implementing any of these strategies, I was ethically conflicted.

If someone extensively consumed research on human behavior and thoroughly grasped the depths of psychology, would you openly trust them?

How would you know they aren’t playing tricks on your mind? What incentives would they have to put your interests above their own?

After learning the fundamentals of persuasion & influence, I instinctively rejected the sales frameworks I encountered.

“If someone claims to make a decision in a few months, you need to push them to understand why now is the best time to move forward with your service”

“If the customer sees value in your service but says you're too expensive, don’t immediately assume the deal is over. Have them understand the cost of not buying your service, and how that would outweigh the price tag they would have to initially pay”.

Regardless of the strategy I discovered, the same concern echoed in my head: shouldn’t people already know what’s best for them? Who am I to intervene and rush their decision-making process if someone wants more time to think? After all, people should have the clearest idea of their own needs – not me.

This entire approach felt forced, excessively assertive, and unnatural. I lost faith in learning the flashiest “persuasive technique” to boost revenue for my startup .… until I stumbled upon a book that shattered my reservations about sales.

A core point of emphasis in How to Win Friends and Influence People is delineating the difference between manipulation and positive influence.

To distill the main idea: manipulation occurs when you extract an advantage from someone else at the expense of their wellbeing; influence is present when both parties receive a mutually beneficial outcome.

This sounds great in theory, but how do you implement genuine influence in practice?

Focus on how you can benefit someone else, and it will benefit you

Humans are pretty self-centered creatures – I’m a guilty culprit myself.

I go on long walks, contemplating my own goals. My own problems. My own shortcomings. My own vision for what I want out of life.

“What goals do I need to prioritize for today”

“How do I prepare for this upcoming meeting”

“How am I going to make time for exercising”

“I still need to call my family”

I’ll be blunt – when I’m alone, I spend way more time thinking about myself than I do about other people’s problems (I promise I’m not a narcissist, I’m coping by believing this is human nature)

However, I hope I’m not the only one who’s reached this conclusion: it’s a fundamental component of our psychology.

The core idea of How to Win Friends and Influence People is simple yet rarely applied: people are occupied with their problems more than yours – If you want to influence them, speak in terms of their interests instead of your own.

This sounds effortless in theory – but remember – we’re predisposed to think of our own needs more than others. That’s why I know countless friends who finish the book, but very few consistently apply its teachings.

I’ll provide two examples of how this strategy works, both in a business and personal context.

Conducting Influence in Business

I gave up on crafting the perfect pitch.

Two mental shifts were all I needed to stop sucking at sales.

1.) How can I trigger a change in someone’s behavior

2.) How will it improve their life (emotionally, financially, physically, etc.)

This aligns with Dale Carnegie’s principle of mutually beneficial outcomes, and always speaking in terms of other person’s interests.

If all you wanted from this reflection was an actionable strategy to accelerate sales benchmarks, here’s the section you’re looking for. My conversion rates skyrocketed after I learned to guide each customer through these 5 stages of awareness:

1.) Can you help them visualize a personal connection to their problem?

The most costly mistake I’ve made in a sale: assuming I understood the nuances of someone's struggles. For example, let’s say you’re selling a fitness program and a customer complains about remaining consistent with exercise. What does consistency look like to them – is it 5 or 7 days of exercise per week? What has specifically been preventing them from being consistent? Why haven’t they been able to achieve their fitness goals by themselves? How does the gap between what they want and where they currently are make them feel?

On the surface, “Consistency” could appear as the same problem shared by many people; however, each person has a different way of visualizing, perceiving, and attempting to overcome it. If you dig deeper with these questions, 80% of your job is complete when can understand a clear mental image of three things: why does someone’s problem exist, why they haven’t been able to solve them on their own, and how is it making them feel on an emotional level.

While logic, facts, and figures are necessary tools of persuasion, I’ve witnessed most people only make important decisions when it “feels right” to them.

In order to get someone to trust their gut instinct, you need to first have them understand it.

2.) Do they know of existing solutions?

You can’t prove why you’re the best fit for someone if they're blind to how your service compares to any alternatives. In most circumstances, a customer has already received support from another source before speaking to me. My goal in a sale isn’t to assertively double down on why my service is the best fit – instead, I’ll guide them through why their previous efforts haven’t gotten them the results they’ve been looking for (otherwise they wouldn’t have booked a call with me).

Here’s a straightforward question I often ask: “So you mentioned you’ve struggled with (X), could you help me understand how you’ve tried to solve this in the past? Did you find any sources online or other people that you’ve tried to rely on”?

Afterward, here’s how I follow up: “That’s great to hear, how useful did it feel when you tried getting help from (x)? If there’s something you still feel like is missing, why do you feel like they weren’t able to address your concerns?”

3.) Do they know why you’re the best solution?

Everyone wants to know what makes you different and better than your competitors, but no one wants to hear you say it (or else you come across as too “salsey”).

If you can’t explicitly say it, what are you supposed to do?

That’s the beauty of asking questions. With each example so far, I've deliberately posed a question instead of structuring a statement. People rarely change their minds when you combatively enforce your perspective on them. (Sure, my parents could scold me for not doing my Kumon homework, but would I be intrinsically driven to do it myself?)

Instead, you need to subtly guide someone to reach their own conclusions.

Here are a few examples I’ve used in the past, building up from least to most assertive:

“I recall you weren’t able to get help from (X), where do you feel like I could benefit you the most? That way, if we do work with each other, we can ensure you don't run into the same issues you did in the past and help you achieve (describe any goals they’ve mentioned)."

“Before working with us, I recall you specifically struggled with (X). Where did you feel like we helped you in ways that you didn’t receive from (mention other sources of information/support they’ve turned to)

“We do have limited spots in our program, and we can only prioritize people who are committed to achieving (X) goal in the next 6 months. Based on your experience working with us, why do you feel like you would want to work with our team in particular?”

Notice how I’m not the one selling – I’m letting the customer do it for me.

4.) Why should they take action NOW

Sales is more than a game of persuasion: it’s about triggering a change in someone’s behavior – whether that comes in the form of trying a new product or service. Think about the last time you’ve heard one of your friends talk about picking up a new habit; what’s the brightest red flag that revealed they really weren’t about it?

“I’ll do it in a few weeks”. “I’ll think about doing it soon”. “I’ll try to do this sometime in the future”.

Even if someone clearly understands why you’re the perfect solution to their problems, they won’t take action unless they can internalize exigency before committing. That's precisely why many people can understand the undeniable health benefits of daily exercise, yet refuse to get a gym membership until they feel compelled that today is the best time to start.

There are numerous ways you can inflate exigency in someone’s mind, but remember, there has to be a genuine reason for you to do this – or else it won’t work. People aren’t stupid. They can call your bluff if you’re trying to fearmonger them into something that won’t add any real value to their life.

To preface, my company limits the number of clients we sign on within a 2-week time frame

“To maintain our personalized mentorship and support system, we can only prioritize a limited amount of students two weeks from our call today. If you felt that we were able to help you with (x), why do you feel like right now would be the best time for you to get support from us?”

If your company doesn’t have any sales deadlines, you can try this.

”If we’re going to work together, I want to make sure you can make the most out of our service. From personal experience, I’ve found that our most successful clients had one thing in common: they took initiative and simply got started earlier because it gave them enough time to implement (mention the strategy/service you offer). I’m curious to hear on your end though, why do you feel like right now is the best time for you to start getting help from us?”

If they see value in the service but say they’re too busy, you can always use the objection they give as the reason for why they should get started now (credit to a podcast I listened to from Alex Hormozi):

“Totally understand that you're busy; I've actually found that our most successful results have occurred with people who were already occupied before joining our program. If we could make our service work for them when they didn't have much time, we found that our results lasted more effectively when their schedules freed up. Since life can always be unpredictable, I do want to ask you a question: Would you prefer to make this program work, regardless of circumstances you won't always be able to control?

If there are obvious emergencies or real reasons why someone can't commit, I would never push them (99% of the time, however, this friction is normal for anyone committing to something new in their life)

At first, I hesitated to implement this advice: I felt too pushy when someone didn’t want to make an immediate decision themselves. However, once I started to view my service as a positive, transformative event in someone’s life, I treated objections the same way I would encourage a friend to implement better habits in their daily routine.

It's the same way a dentist will encourage you to floss after identifying potential cavities in your teeth, or a lawyer warning you to take precautions against risking business litigation. I’ve had experience helping students maximize their career development – and complacency is a genuine limitation that prevents many students from reaching their potential.

After accumulating enough experience within an industry, you will obtain foresight into problems that only you can see that your customers simply won’t. If my service would provide real value in their lives, I assumed an obligation to guide them in an honest direction – even when objections were presented directly in front of me.

5.) Do they trust you on a human level?

After reading all of these frameworks, questions, and examples, it may be tempting to robotically download all of this information and regurgitate a canned script.

You’re talking to a human, so you have to remember to speak like one too.

This concept could belong as a separate blog post, but I’ll keep the main ideas brief. Here are two methods to guarantee you won’t sound like an NPC in your next sales call.

a.) Openly Connect with Someone’s Lived Experiences

When you ask about any struggles they’ve been facing, empathize with their difficulties and share a personal story to make them feel acknowledged. For example, I can connect to many first-generation immigrants who are unfamiliar with America’s higher education system. I frequently share stories of how straightforward the process was when my Dad was applying to engineering schools in India, and how different my experience was going through the U.S. system. Afterward, I'd contextualize how I’ve guided other immigrant families who also felt lost, confused, and overwhelmed with the entire process.

Trust doesn't develop when I explain the intricate details of my service; it forms when families hear stories that feel relevant to them and validate their lived experiences.

Fostering a real, emotional connection is equally important as hitting the “right questions” that you prepared before a meeting. I deliberately avoided an actionable script in this section for this particular reason: you adapt your storytelling based on each person you’re speaking to.

b.) Convey Detachment

The moment you obsess over a sale is when you lose it. If you want someone to trust you on a personal level, they need to feel like you intend to help – as opposed to pushing them toward an outcome against their interests.

If you want to communicate that you feel secure with whatever decision they make, phrases such as “I’m not even sure we could help, I would need to know (X) about you to see if our program would make sense for what you’re looking for” demonstrates that you won’t just try to sell your service for the sake out it. It communicates confidence and sincerity.

The more you try to chase after a lead, the farther they run.

The less you control, the more you attract.

Conducting Influence in Life

While many of these techniques have certainly elevated conversions in my sales funnel, spreading genuine influence has contagiously infected my personal life.

Last semester, I completed a research project to address political misinformation by leveraging independent fact-checking. With a group of three peers and a faculty mentor, most of our tasks were completed with relative ease.

Surprisingly, the most pressing obstacle we faced was not a research problem – it was a persuasion problem.

How would we get random, busy college students – who had no personal connection to our project –to fill out our survey?

Our baseline goal was to obtain a sample size of 100 students to conduct sufficient data analysis. Initially, we requested leaders of student organizations to share our survey during their meetings, or any faculty professors we knew to present a QR code before class.

With less than a week before our presentation deadline, our survey results left us perplexed: only 10 people responded.

Putting myself in the shoes of our research subjects, it slowly made sense to me – I overlooked the #1 Rule of How to Win Friends and Influence People: We only asked for their input without giving anything they wanted in return.

To ideate a more effective plan, I posed a broader question to myself: What motivates college students to take action?

This question optimized my intention: rather than asking people to fill out my survey, I exclusively focused on what I could do for them. I carefully observed why some events would draw larger crowds of students than others, and I picked up on a common theme: social engagement, free food, and low time commitment.

Social Engagement

To escape the monotonous routine of exams and assignments, students want refreshing, new, and direct engagement with either friends or strangers.

Free food

College students love food. I noticed every event with decent turnout provided donuts, chocolate, pizza, or catering.

Low time commitment

College students are busy. They have midterms. They have lectures to take notes on. They have internships to apply to. Events that aren’t a hassle generally attract larger crowds on campus.

A blank QR code before class didn't execute on any of these criteria – so I ensured our next strategy did.

On a bright, sunny Wednesday, I cold approached random strangers with a bag of Twix bars – obtaining 120+ signups in three hours.

Not a single person refused to complete the survey.

The secret was revealed in the very first sentence I opened with: “I know we’ve never met before, but would you be willing to spend two minutes of your time to win some free chocolate?”

People’s eyes would beam with excitement whenever I approached them, and the first words that left my mouth had nothing to do with my research project.

I approached groups of people sitting outside with just a bag of candy (this was probably excessive, but I deliberately purchased Twix bars after researching the most popular chocolates consumed by college-aged students)

I piqued people’s social curiosity, offered them free food, and made my ask incredibly low effort and frictionless.

As a bonus point, I applied another essential teaching from Dale Carnegie: Always give people a feeling of importance.

While I provided more context about our survey, I would assign a positive label to the action I wanted these students to take.

“Yo, just for full transparency, I have to collect this data in literally three days – do you want to be the reason you saved me from failing this class?”

Who wouldn’t want to feel like the hero in another person’s life?

However, displaying insincere appreciation will always backfire – this worked because I truly appreciated the time people dedicated to helping my project. As a result, my voice naturally shined with gratitude.

Even if you can’t provide a material product or service, you would be astonished to see how far a genuine compliment or nudge of encouragement could take you.

Expressing honest appreciation for the people around you certainly wouldn’t make your life worse, so why not start now?

Especially since it’s in such high demand, yet surprisingly short supply.