[00:00:19] EMMA: I love sales Little Little bit louder. I love sales. I said it there. Not tolerate, not manage, not do, because I have to.
[00:00:28] I genuinely, wholeheartedly
[00:00:30] absolutely love sales there. I said it from the age of 11, I was selling cordial on my driveway. I was then listing unwanted furniture on Facebook markup place with the precision of an auctioneer to creating offers in my business that actually sell sales.
[00:00:48] Has always lit me up. And this year more than any other, I decided to lean fully into that love, to build offers around it,
[00:00:57] to coach around it,
[00:00:58] to teach it
[00:01:00] and to help women also fall in love with sales in a way that feels
[00:01:04] natural, human
[00:01:06] and completely free of ick. Wouldn't you love a bit of that? So today I want to take you through how I became the person I am in sales, why it has become such a big part of my work this year, and why it matters so deeply for women in business.
[00:01:23] It sits at the center of every successful business, every confident entrepreneur, and every woman who is ready to level up. Yep. Sales. to make this episode really practical 'cause you know I'm here for it. Here is what we are going to do today. Firstly, the beginning. My love story with sales, where it started, why it never left, and why your sales mentor should actually love selling.
[00:01:50] Number two, or secondly, I will take you behind the scenes this year which has really been our year of sales, we've run BD sprints, we've done a hundred nose Challenges, we've done 10 [00:02:00] K in 10 days. I've created custom GPTs to help women sell. We've had master classes and events and content and coaching all around building sales confidence.
[00:02:11] Whew, that's a lot, isn't it? Thirdly, I'll tell you about the full story of the BD Sprint. I haven't told it publicly. It was my accidental offer the one that exploded, created massive results and changed everything about how we serve our community. Fourth, we're going to talk about
[00:02:29] why women struggle with sales
[00:02:31] and why it's absolutely not their fault.
[00:02:34] This alone might shift something for you today. And finally what comes next? Because I am stepping fully into this space of sales for women, and I'm writing the book I know we all needed 10 years ago. So grab a cup, woo, settle in, and let's talk sales in a way that finally makes sense for you. PS if you have already stopped listening to me, because I used the word sales, come on back.
[00:03:03] It's okay. It's okay. My love of sales did not start in a strategy workshop. It started on my driveway. I was 11 years old setting up a plastic table with a jug of cordial paper cups and a handwritten sign.
[00:03:18] I also then moved on to icy polls. It was the best deal. My mom paid for all the ingredients. I kept all the cash. Beautiful. I wasn't doing it to make millions. I loved the moment when someone stopped the smile, the transaction, the tiny spark of, I'll try your cordial. Never left me. Absolutely never left me.
[00:03:39] Fast forward a few decades later and you're still Find me thriving during a Facebook marketplace sale. My husband's like, can you put this on Marketplace? I'm like, sure can. I love the listing. I love the negotiation. I love the outcome. And in business, it's exactly the same.
[00:03:54] Sales is not a transaction. Sales is the moment someone [00:04:00] says, I trust you. I believe you can help me. And that is the greatest compliment anyone can give you. This year, I let myself step fully into that part of me, the part that loves selling, the part that loves creating offers. that loves helping women learn how to sell in a way that feels like them.
[00:04:23] This year we went big. We built a sales ecosystem in the business that I'm incredibly proud of. Here's what we did. Four public BD sprints, four private BD sprints, I'll talk about that later. A 100 nose challenge with clients that's trying to get a hundred nos. Just in case you're wondering, a $10,000 in 10 days challenge.
[00:04:49] Talk about getting the wind up, you woof. We created three custom chat GPTs that have all the Emma Love in them to help our thriving women with business development, messaging and sales. A stack of master classes, a stack of events behind the scenes, coaching countless pieces on sales content. It was a lot, but it also lit me up.
[00:05:14] Yeah. Every time I run a BD sprint, everyone always comments, Emma, you look so energized, and I am because I'm bloom and love it. Something just clicked. Women were ready to learn sales. They wanted the support. They wanted the scripts. They wanted the confidence, and they wanted the accountability. And they wanted a method that didn't make them feel like they were manipulating anyone or being pushy.
[00:05:39] We've all had those sales experiences and watching them step into that space has been one of the highlights of my year. I wanna talk about the happy accident that changed the entire direction of our business, or this piece of our business. It was the BD Sprint. It was November last year, so we're going back [00:06:00] 12 months.
[00:06:00] We were in the middle of a Thriving Women launch. Oh, there's a theme here. We're in the middle of the Thriving Women Launch. And I ran a simple free challenge to help our thriving women build a business development habit. Uh, I expect maybe a few to join, and the premise was really simple. One hour a day, 10 days focused business development, not creating content, not hiding behind your computer.
[00:06:26] Picking up the phone, building relationships, et cetera, et cetera, and I thought to myself, I need to test this now. If you know anything about me, you'll know that my thriving women are like my VIPs. So I'm like, let's do this together. So I tested it with my thriving women gang. We did it on our own in a private group.
[00:06:43] was done. I shared some of that in my email list and my inbox exploded. Ladies, it exploded. People were begging to join in and I'm and I'm like, I finished that one. Can I go again? Can I go again? Immediately? Anyway, within 48 hours, I created the program structure. I opened the enrollments, and 50 women signed up.
[00:07:05] Bang, easy. When it's there, it's there, and what I insisted on is a clear plan. So that they didn't show up on the day and go, what am I doing? One hour a day? Show up on our messaging app, which is called Marco Polo, to share your wins and your learnings, and basically your F ups, because that's where we all learn, right?
[00:07:24] And here's what I promise to the group. I promise that I would provide three plans for them to choose from. I would provide a morning sales tip, I would do an end of day wrap, and I would provide accountability. I also provided gold stars 'cause people are so competitive. Gold stars is where the magic happened, right?
[00:07:45] We track some of that data. Now. The data that we tracked, this is the data we tracked a year ago. It's probably come a long way since then, but this is the data we tracked over the 10 days, 50 women, 1500. New LinkedIn connections, [00:08:00] 402 New Instagram followers, 322. Phone calls made and answered. 97 meetings booked, 26 proposals sent, and 103 pieces of new business secured in 10 days.
[00:08:20] The numbers don't lie, but there are only one part of it. Confidence skyrocketed. Momentum built. Community strengthened. And the creme de la creme. Everyone had fun. Yay. 'cause you know what? Sales can't be fun. Who would've thought? Who would've thought the BD Sprint felt really easy. It was the easiest thing I have launched in eight years, and here's the kicker, running a launch while doing the sprint actually worked in my favor.
[00:08:52] There was 10 women who joined the Sprint and then joined Thriving Women simply because they saw the power of daily sales effort. They got the micro wins and the confidence, so we decided to make it a thing. As we do, we priced it. We built it into the calendar properly. We've run it four times publicly this year and four times privately.
[00:09:08] Now, let me talk about that. Four times publicly is awesome, but four times privately because this is what happened. People got wind
[00:09:17] of what we were doing and they already had their own memberships, all groups, and so I had some sneaky little reach outs to say, can you run it in my community privately? And I'm like, sure, no problems.
[00:09:28] So we've been doing that. We have just come off the back of running one in North America. Now, the timing was really interesting for me, but I thought, why wouldn't we? We've gone global. So we've run it four times publicly. Four times privately. It is the thing that we do. It has become the cornerstone of what we do, and it has raised some really big questions and it raised some big questions for me.
[00:09:55] Is your market asking you for something and you are not paying [00:10:00] attention? ' cause that was happening with me. They were like, yeah, we want this. And I'm like, ignore, ignore, ignore until no longer can you ignore. Like smash me in the face, do this thing. My second question is, are you actually listening? ' cause when you listen, you'll find out what your clients need and what could you create that is ease, useful for you and helpful for them.
[00:10:21] There's a lot of logistics that goes with the BD sprint. I don't mind that because it's awesome. The BD sprint was sitting there right under my nose and it changed everything for not only me and our business, but also for these women who now it means we've got bigger impact. 'cause they're making more money, more financial security, more stability.
[00:10:39] All the things like that is perfect. I wanna talk about why so many women are scared of sales and this is important the. Here's some of the things that people tell me, especially women. "I hate sales."
[00:10:54] "It feels icky."
[00:10:56] "I don't wanna annoy anyone."
[00:10:57] "I'm too busy delivering the work."
[00:11:00] "I don't wanna be pushy."
[00:11:01] "I don't know what to say."
[00:11:03] "What if they say no?"
[00:11:05] "I'm not a natural salesperson."
[00:11:07] And it's not their fault. Women sell differently. We connect, we build trust. We nurture relationships. We listen deeply. We understand context and we care about the long game, but we have been taught that sales in a way that was never designed for us.
[00:11:28] We've all had those experience, the high pressure. The hard clothes, the push harder, the more calls, the more hustle, more make people feel uncomfortable until they buy. No wonder women avoid it. No wonder women avoid it. But it doesn't have to be that way. When women are given a structure that works with their strengths, not against them, everything shifts.
[00:11:51] That's why the BD sprint works so well. PSI hate the name, but I can't think of anything else and I don't wanna be clever. It's just a BD [00:12:00] sprint. It's for 10 days. Right. So, you know, we work with that. This one was built for female brains, for female strengths, and for female working styles. Women are. Bloom and brilliant sales.
[00:12:12] They just need a playbook that fits them. Now, I did mention something else, which I know my beautiful podcast producer Brianna's gonna pick up, which is the Hundred No's Challenge. What the heck is the Hundred No's Challenge? It's a great question. Great question. One of my clients came to me. It was a Monday night.
[00:12:30] I will not forget it. We had changed her pricing. We had doubled her prices, and she said to me, Emma, it's not working. The offer's not working. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's just back up a little minute here. What's not working? Is there not enough budget with your target market? Is it that you haven't made the calls?
[00:12:46] What is not working? And she said, the offer's not working. Because I haven't done the work. I said, okay, it's time to do the work. Let's do a hundred challenge. And she's like, okay, now she knew what it was. I will explain it for you. You basically get a little piece of paper happen to have one here, get a little piece of paper with a hundred circles on it.
[00:13:08] You probably can't see, but if you get, if you can get the gist a hundred circles on it, you need to make a hundred offers. And you need to get a hundred nos. No one has ever completed the challenge. Do you know why? ' cause everyone gets yeses. I'm in the middle of this. I said to one of my clients, I'll do it with you.
[00:13:27] I'm in the middle. I've got five no's out of 20 calls.
[00:13:31] I've done this a hundred no's challenge with a lot of women. And what it does is we just go, yep, get the next, no. Get the next, no, and move on. Now, of course, your offer has to be good. You need to deliver, well, all the caveats that go with this. But if you are aiming for a hundred nos, it's a very different conversation than if you are.
[00:13:50] Desperate for a yes. Can you feel the energy shift? Like the a hundred nos is just like, it's a no, let's go. It's a no. And I have been laughing at myself 'cause I'm like, is a not [00:14:00] yet a no? How am I gonna get the no? How do I get the no? And you care less about the outcome and you gamify yourself. And so the a hundred nos challenges was great.
[00:14:08] Now, this particular client, at about day five, she said, I've got 21. No. I'm like, awesome. And how much have you sold? And she's like, $56,000 worth. And I'm like, yep, it works back on track. Right. We just like to play the game. It's a numbers game. I don't mean that people are numbers. I think the a hundred no challenge is just a numbers game.
[00:14:29] Yeah. So here is what I am stepping into. I feel so called to do this. It's. Time for me to own this space. It's the space of sales for female founders. The space of simple, practical human sales that actually work the space of scripts and rhythms and recipes that suit how women sell. This is my lane. This year has absolutely confirmed it.
[00:15:00] The BD sprint, the challenges, the GPTs, the events, all the things have led me to this moment. Women want this. More importantly, women need this and they're getting ready and I can help. So, so what now? Now I step even deeper into this space now. I write the sales book for women, the one that I needed 10 years ago.
[00:15:27] The one that explains sales without the ick, the one that gives women a rhythm, a recipe, a structure. The one that shows women how freaking capable they actually are. A book that says you can learn sales, you can get good at sales, you can enjoy sales, you can have fun with sales, and you can build a business that gives you the life you want.
[00:15:49] This book is going to be a game changer. For women who have been stuck, scared, or simply unsure about how to do it, and I cannot wait to bring it to [00:16:00] life. I'm sure you can hear my energy through this podcast. So if you take away one thing from this, let it be this. Sales isn't necessarily something that you're born with, but it is something you can learn and once you learn it.
[00:16:16] Everything in your business changes. You become more confident, you feel more secure. You know how to generate leads, you know what to say. You stop relying on luck. Sales gives you freedom, and that that is what we all deserve.
[00:16:32] next time, remember this selling is not icky. Selling is service. Selling is connection and selling can become your superpower.
[00:16:43]
