What makes a LinkedIn post sound salesy?
A LinkedIn post sounds salesy when it asks for something from people who haven't gotten anything from you yet. The ask is the tell, and a few patterns give it away:
- Every post ends in a pitch. When the only place your posts ever land is "book a call," your feed reads like a storefront.
- Urgency and scarcity vocabulary. Countdown language belongs to product launches. Nobody signs a consulting engagement because a cart is closing.
- The post is about you and your services in a feed where the posts that work are about the client's world.
There's a reason this fails beyond the feeling. People have trained themselves to skip anything that looks like promotion: eyetracking research from the Nielsen Norman Group found that users have learned to ignore content that resembles ads or sits where ads usually sit. A post shaped like an ad gets treated like one.
And look at what you're selling: a considered engagement, bought by a company or a nonprofit, through several real conversations. A feed post was never going to sign that client, and expecting it to is one reason posting doesn't turn into clients on its own. Asking a post to sell just costs you trust.
Can I write about my wins without sounding like I'm bragging?
Yes: write the win as the client's story, with you in the supporting role. A brag is a post about how good you are. A client story is a post about what changed for them, and it does more for you than the brag ever could.
Three moves keep it clean:
Make them the subject
What was going on in their business, what you worked on together, what's different now. Their team, their numbers, their next board meeting.
Let plain numbers do the talking
The before and the after, stated flat, with zero adjectives.
Implicate yourself where it's true
"Took me years to learn this" reads human. A highlight reel doesn't.
Try it this week: one post, one client, what was true before, what's true now, no adjectives. If it still feels like showing off, read it again and check who the subject of every sentence is. When the answer is them, you're fine.
Should every LinkedIn post have a call to action?
No. Most of your posts should ask for nothing, and the occasional ask lands better because of it. By the time you ask, your feed has been giving for weeks, and that history is what makes the ask land.
When you do ask, three things make the ask clean:
- Make it easy and low-risk. "Comment yes and I'll send it to you" gets more takers than a calendar link, because even booking a call is a bigger step than someone who just met your work wants to take.
- Say exactly what they'll get. People take a step when they know what's on the other side of it.
- Keep it rare. One ask for every handful of giving posts keeps your feed reading like expertise.
The scheduling link isn't gone. It just comes later, inside the conversation, once someone has raised their hand and you're talking like two people.
Is it salesy to connect with people I want to work with?
No. Connecting with the people you want to work with is how a network gets built on purpose, and it only turns salesy when you pitch on arrival. The connection note has one job: be a friendly hello that sells nothing and offers nothing.
A few shapes that work:
- Simple: "I'd love to connect. Have a great day."
- Relevant: "Saw the piece about your company's new program. Nice work. I'd love to connect."
- A common thread: the same college, the same industry room, the same city.
The mistake to avoid is talking about yourself. Nobody cares about you when they haven't met you yet, and a note that opens with your services is a pitch wearing a hello. Connecting deliberately is getting in front of the clients you want in its most literal form, and there's a whole podcast episode on how the circle widens from there ("How to get clients outside your network").
If it still feels weird, look at the story underneath the feeling: you've cast them as the one holding all the cards. You're on the same level as anyone you're connecting with, and a friendly hello from a peer needs no apology.
Leah's take
Look, the way you market is a preview of how you'll work. I built this whole business without a single countdown timer, closing cart, or chase sequence, because I'm not going to pressure you, and I'm not going to chase you. I want the women I work with to sell the same way. Your LinkedIn can run on the exact same posture: show how you think, be generous with it, and let the right people come to the conversation on their own two feet.
And if posting still feels like selling, I want you to hear this: of course it does. Nobody taught you this, and everything corporate taught you about visibility was about promoting someone else. You're not a salesperson, and you don't have to become one. You're a consultant who needs a reliable way to get clients, and that's a different thing entirely.
The Academy is where I teach that reliable way, both systems, with a room of women doing the same work.
