[00:00:00] EMMA: If you're talking more than you're listening, you're probably losing the sale. Here's what we're talking about. We are talking about sales conversations, and specifically, why so many of them go absolutely nowhere. You've had this happen. I know you have, because I've had it happen to me, and I have watched hundreds of women in business have it happen to them as well.
[00:00:20] You get on a call with someone who's genuinely interested, you have a lovely chat, you connect, you laugh, you like each other, and they say something like, "This has been so helpful. Thank you so much," and then they leave, and then you never hear from them again
[00:00:39] Guess what happened to you? You got friend zoned, my friend. And by the end of this episode, we are never doing that again. Yeah This is what I've learned. Most sales don't fall over because the offer was wrong, or the price was too high, or the person couldn't afford it. I mean, there are some instances.
[00:00:56] They mainly fall over because the conversation had no [00:01:00] structure. It wandered. It turned into a nice chat with no direction, no next step, and no clear offer. And a nice chat doesn't pay your bills. Just saying. So today, I'm going to give you a structure, a repeatable one you can pull out before every single sales call, or clarity call, or discovery call from now on, and we're going to cover four things.
[00:01:21] One, get clear on the offer before you open your mouth. Two, we're gonna map your client's journey on a little ladder. Three, the three-by-three sales map that runs your whole call, and four, your offer in three sentences, and the magic of what you do straight after you say it. PS, you close your mouth. So let us get into it, shall we?
[00:01:43] Whoop, whoop, whoop. Part one, clarity sells, so pick one thing. Before we even talk about a call, we have to talk about you because the first sale is always to yourself. You need to know that the big thing is the thing. The biggest mistake I [00:02:00] see is people trying to sell everything all at once. They get on a call, and they go, "Well, I've got this group program, and I've got this one-on-one option, and I run these workshops, and I do this retreat, and there's also a done-for-you thing if you prefer."
[00:02:12] And the poor person on the other end, their eyes just glaze over. You've handed them a menu with 40 items and asked them to choose while they're hungry and overwhelmed. Okay, let's stop doing that. Just pick one offer. Just one, and ideally based on the conversation you're about to have, right? Then I get asked all the time, "But Emma, I wanna give them options."
[00:02:35] I understand. I get it, but part of your job, actually a big part of your job, is to discern what the right thing is for the person sitting in front of you. That's the expertise they're paying for. If you've got a group program and a one-on-one thing, ask yourself which one would suit them the most. Which one is leverageable?
[00:02:54] It's normally a group one. Lead with the thing. Once you've picked your one offer, [00:03:00] get clear on two things, what problem does it solve and what outcome does it deliver? That's it. If you can't say those two things simply, you've got more work to do before you even get on a call because you can't sell with conviction what you're fuzzy about in yourself.
[00:03:17] You have to love your offer enough. That conviction is felt on the other end of the call, and so is your wobble. Part two is what I call the ladder. I have no other word for it, but we just wanna kind of build this up, so bear with me. I want you to picture a ladder with, like, five rungs. Your very bottom rung is your client at their worst.
[00:03:36] I don't know, they're stuck, they might be frustrated, they might be overwhelmed, whatever their version of rock bottom looks like. When it comes to the problem that you solve, and at the very top rung is that same client at their best after they've worked with you. They're confident, sorted, getting the results that they came for.
[00:03:53] Your whole job in a sales conversation is to understand exactly which rung they're standing on right now and to help them [00:04:00] see the rung they could be standing on instead. The offer, your offer, is the thing that moves them up the ladder. Yeah? So before you even do the call, sketch it out. Where does this person start?
[00:04:13] Where do they want to end up? And how does what you sell carry them from one rung up to another? You got to keep the language simple. You got to keep it focused on the transformation, not the features. Nobody buys 12 modules and a workbook. They buy the feeling of standing on that top rung. The ladder keeps you anchored in their journey instead of your deliverables.
[00:04:36] Part three, the three-by-three sales map. Boop, boop, boop. This should be able to be done on one piece of A4 paper, and this is the part I really need you to write down because this is kind of the engine of the whole thing. This is what you can pull out every single call and talk your way through it. I want you to think about your sales call in three stages, and in each stage, you've got three moves, [00:05:00] three by three, nine things in total in the order that they run.
[00:05:04] Stage one is the setup. Move one of stage one, you greet them, and you make them feel genuinely comfortable. You connect, warm, human, no rush Just curiosity. Move two, you set the scene. You let them know how the call is gonna run so they feel safe and so they know what to expect. And move three, and this is the big one, you lead.
[00:05:29] I lead my calls. I command the call. That doesn't mean I talk the whole time, actually quite the opposite, but it does mean I'm the one holding the structure. You are the CEO of this conversation. If you don't lead it, it drifts, and drift is where sales go to die. So we wanna do that. Stage two is about listening.
[00:05:51] This is where the real work actually happens. It's the part most people rush straight past because they're itching to get to their pitch. Please don't do that. [00:06:00] Move one, we ask thoughtful questions, at least four of them. Real questions that get underneath the surface, not "So what do you do?" But the ones that surface the fear and the frustration, the thing that actually is keeping them up at night, right?
[00:06:15] We care, so show that we care. Move two is we listen properly and we reflect their language back to them. Use their words, but thoughtfully. Don't just parrot it back, just sounds like you're AI, but draw out what they actually mean. When someone feels truly heard, something shifts, even in a virtual room, even on Zoom.
[00:06:35] Just how do you help people feel truly heard? And move three is for you to summarize what you've heard. So it sounds like, "So what I'm hearing is you're at this point and you wanna get to that point. This thing is the way we're gonna do it." And when you can say their problem back to them more clearly than they've said it themselves, you've earned the right to offer a solution.
[00:06:54] I'll say this loudly because it's the hardest discipline of all. Do not rush to the [00:07:00] solution. Understand the problem first. The temptation to hear the first sniff of a problem and leap in with your offer, resist that. The listening is not the warm-up act. The listening is the main event, and so often we miss it.
[00:07:15] And then stage three is to present the offer. So move one, match your offer to where they sit on the ladder. This is why we did the ladder work. You're not presenting a generic offer. You're presenting the specific bridge from their rung to the next one. Move two, show a little credibility. A quick client story, proof that you've walked someone else along this exact path.
[00:07:39] Not a 10-minute monologue about yourself, just enough to say, "I've done this before. You're in safe hands. I know what I'm doing." Here's proof, not trust me. And move three, make the offer clearly and briefly, which brings us to kind of part four, because how you make that offer [00:08:00] matters enormously. Part four is your offer in three sentences.
[00:08:06] I know, I know. Don't come at me and say, "I can't do three sentences." Yes, you can. This is where everyone comes undone. We over-explain. We're nervous, so we fill the space with words, and we talk ourselves right out of a sale and straight into friend zone. So I want you to learn to say your offer in three sentences, no more than three.
[00:08:26] Sentence one, where the client starts. Sentence two, where they get to where they wanna go. And sentence three, how your offer helps them get there. Let me show you one of mine, just so it's specific, right? We've all heard of the BD Sprint. I've put this together for you. This is what I would say, something like, "Based on everything you've told me, I'd recommend the BD Sprint.
[00:08:52] It's two weeks of focused development, business development, one hour a day with a clear plan, a tracker, and a [00:09:00] community alongside you. It's for women in business who want more clients but don't want to cold call, and it's $147 That's it. That's the offer. Notice I didn't keep going? I didn't add a sneaky fourth sentence in explaining the refund policy, and a fifth about the bonus workbook, even though they do get that, and a sixth apologizing for the price.
[00:09:23] Nope, three clear sentences. Because here is the magic, and I need you to really hear this. After you say your three sentences, you stop talking. You go quiet. You sit on your hands. You let the silence do the heavy lifting, and this will feel excruciating, especially the, for the first few times. Every cell in your body wants to fill the silence.
[00:09:50] Don't. The silence is where the sale happens. When you go quiet, the other person on the other end starts thinking. They start doodling. They [00:10:00] start nodding. They start circling back with the questions that tell you they're actually considering it. So if you talk over that silence, you rob them of the space to say yes.
[00:10:11] Say your three sentences, then close that gorgeous mouth of yours and let it land. A word here on pricing and conviction as a quick aside, because it kinda connects. When you're really good at what you do, you get fast, and when you get fast, an hourly rate stops making sense because you're penalizing your own expertise, right?
[00:10:32] You're penalizing your own expertise. And I wanna remind you, I had a client on a call, and she got everything she needed within 13 minutes. Now, some coaches would've kept her on the phone or the Zoom for the full 55 minutes just to justify their fee, but she saw enormous value in those 13 minutes because she'd hired me for the outcome, not the clock.
[00:10:54] And she said, "Now I've got 40 minutes to go and implement what we just worked out." And that's the whole point. [00:11:00] People pay for the transformation up the ladder, not for the time it takes you. So when you make your three-sentence offer, you're offering an outcome. Price it for the value of the top rung, and say the number without flinching.
[00:11:14] Always end with a next step. Don't just, "This has been lovely. We'll catch up soon." No, no, no. The last thing, and please don't skip this, because this is where so much money, like, leaks out of people's businesses and it freaks me out. We never end a sales call or a clarity call, a discovery call without a clear, agreed next step, ever.
[00:11:33] A booking, a proposal by Friday, a follow-up call, something specific with a time attached. "Great. I'll send you through the proposal by Thursday. We can lock in 15 minutes on Monday to talk it through." That's how you stop warm leads drifting off and going cold And the flip side, if someone isn't the right fit for you, it's completely okay to say so kindly.
[00:11:59] Not [00:12:00] everyone is your person. Not, you're not, you're not everyone's cup of tea. Telling someone gently that it's not aligned is a gift to you both. It frees them to find the right help, and it protects your energy. What's not okay is going quiet on someone after a clarity call and leaving them waiting.
[00:12:16] Don't ghost people. Just say, "Thank you, it's not quite the right fit," and let them get on with their day. Let them get on with their week. So we round this out with homework. I love a bit of homework. Here's what I would love you to do this week. Actually do it. Don't just nod along and say, "Yeah, nice, Emma."
[00:12:31] One, choose your one offer. Two, draw the ladder, bottom rung, top rung, three in the middle. Write out your three by three mat. Set it up. Listen. Offer. Nine moves. And four, write your offer in three sentences. Say it out loud until it's smooth. And then the part that matters most, practice it on a real human three times.
[00:12:54] Find one person this week, grab a coffee in real life or on a Zoom, and run the structure of the [00:13:00] actual conversation. Because if you're terrible at sales, the only way to get good is to practice, and if you're already good, the only way to get great is also to practice. There's no shortcuts around these reps, people.
[00:13:11] No shortcuts. Sales isn't about being pushy or loud or arrogant. It's about being clear. It's about being present, and it's being brave enough to make the offer and then shut the up. Sometimes you might need help establishing what you're doing wrong. When I work with clients, I get to watch the recorded sales call so we can work it out together and tweak it.
[00:13:34] This might feel really valuable to you because sometimes you're just too close to it, and you might think you're doing a really good job, and you actually suck. So let's fix that. Thank you for having me in your ears today. If this landed for you, come and tell me. Send me a message. Let me know which part you're going to use and how your first practice conversation goes.
[00:13:54] I genuinely love to hear that stuff. And P.S., if you don't have a human to try it on, do [00:14:00] it in the mirror so you can watch what you look like. Thank you for listening to Tea with the Queen. If you've enjoyed this episode, you know what to do. Thanks for listening to Tea with the Queen. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
[00:14:15] It really does help to get the word out. For more about me, please visit emmamcqueen.com.au, and I look forward to your company next episode.
