Ep #154: What to Call Your Sales Calls

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 154. Are you all ready today? I’m going to riff a little bit. I have a topic near and dear to my heart that has been posted and asked about many, many, many, many times in 2K. And I always the same answer. So we’re just going to do a podcast so we can start linking the podcast because I think this question’s going to keep coming up which is some form of what to call a sales call.

Alright, so I’m going to read a couple of ways that this has come up in the 2K program. And then I’m going to go on my little rant. Are you all ready? Okay, so this is one way that it’s been asked before. So one of our students asked, they said that a very well-known marketer said, “Never use the word ‘consultation’ in your offer.” And so the student was asking other students, what do they call it? Having fear that oh my gosh, this other marketer, very well-known said that you should never use the word ‘consultation.’

One of my other clients said, asked, posted, and asked the 2K students what they call their consultants. She said, “Do you call it a consult? I’ve been calling mine clarity calls, or relationship breakthrough sessions.” She said, “I don’t want people thinking that this is a coaching call. I want them to be prepared that I will let them know what it would look like for us to work together at the end of the call, which I do make sure to make clear at the beginning of the call. But I have the thought that is if I call it a straight up consult they won’t want to book because they don’t want to be sold.”

And so this conversation has taken place, I just pulled two examples. There are probably 100 for the course of the years of 2K program. There are lots and lots of questions about this. I pulled just a couple. But this is a topic that we need to dive into so are you ready? Here is my answer, here is what you call a sales call. Ready? Here it is. You call it a sales call or a consultation. Those are the two. Listen, if you call it a mini session, fine. But I’m going to tell you my thoughts about anything that isn’t calling it a sales call or a consultation.

Now, a few episodes ago we did an episode on, episode 150 on how to market yourself as a professional coach. So if you have not listened to that episode yet, please go back and listen to it. But one of the things I talk about is thinking about yourself as a doctor, or a therapist, or a lawyer, someone that is considered a professional that does their job professionally. And thinking of yourself as a professional coach who coaches professionally. Someone who gets paid well to do what they do. I want you to think about this.

Therapists do not call their sessions a life discovery session. If you get plastic surgery they call that first meeting that you pay for, a consultation. And people go in there knowing that’s what it is, and they pay for it. You pay, I think, I’ve never had plastic surgery, but I have seen shows and I assume from what I’ve heard, you pay for that first session, even if you don’t it’s still called a consultation. So many of you are so afraid to call it anything that sounds like a sales call or a consultation.

And you jazz it up so much with fancy words that make it not sound like it’s a sales call that your client gets on the phone and has no idea that they will be discussing a decision to buy. And you cost yourself the sale when you’re afraid to call it a sales call. Your client has no idea, they’re literally getting on the call thinking, some of you even do this, you call it a free session, free coaching session. So they expect to just get coached for free. They have no expectation to decide to buy anything, or for you to talk about money at all with them.

I want you to really think about if your intention is for your client to not know it’s a sales call. Really think about it and be very honest especially those of you that have very fluffy named intro calls. You want them to think it’s something fancy, in your mind something with lots of value. You think you have to fancy it up because a sales call isn’t valuable. So your intention is to hide that sales part behind something fluffy. And then you get on the call and if that’s your main thought, to hide a sales call behind a fancy name, then I want you to think about the model.

Those of you that follow the model, there are circumstances, and then our thoughts about the circumstance create the feelings around it which drive how we show up, how we behave, what we do. And then that creates our results. So the circumstance is a sales call. And if you think a sales call isn’t valuable and you think it needs to be hidden because people don’t want it and they don’t want to be sold, and you think you have to make it fancy and make it valuable. And then add that little sales part just at the end. What’s really happening is your feeling is discomfort, it’s inauthentic.

Think about how it feels for you and how it has you showing up and behaving and what it has you doing. You hide a sales call behind a fancy name. If that is in your A-line, put that in your A-line, see what feeling is driving that, see what thought is creating that. The one specifically for you, not just the ones I’m telling you that my clients tell me. But find it for you specifically, put that in your A-line of the model. Hide my sales call behind a fancy name.

Find the feeling and the thought driving that because if that’s what’s in your A-line, then what you do is you hide selling. You hide the main purpose of the call. And maybe we should call it, you disguise. Because I don’t think that you guys will intentionally think you’re hiding it being a sales call. But I do think that you could resonate with disguise. You’re disguising the sales call, you’re fancying it up. But think about if that is your main action or even a subtle action behind a lot of your main actions is that you’re disguising the sole purpose of the call.

You’re disguising the main result you want at the end of the call. If you want a client on the call to make a decision and say yes to you to buy, if that’s the result you want then that has to be the whole purpose of the call. And if it’s not, that’s when you’re going to get a lot of I need to think about it, scheduling second calls. There’s going to be a lot of discomfort when it comes to talk about money, it’s going to seem out of place.

Your client’s going to be a little bit confused, why are we talking about money? Why are you pushing me so hard to make a decision? Why am I expected to say yes? I haven’t even considered money. I haven’t talked to my spouse about money. If they’re confused about having to make a decision it’s likely because of how you marketed your sales call to them, not because of anything that happened on the call but because of what happened before they got on the call. They weren’t even thinking about making a decision to buy.

And when this is happening I want you to think about your entire sales call and your behavior on your sales call, or your discovery call, or your mini session. When you guys call it discovery calls and mini sessions what you’re doing is selling the main purpose of the call to be coaching and discovery. No, that’s what you’re selling. That’s what you do after they buy.

So just notice, again, if your people are there and they’re not really there to talk about money and they’re not really there to talk about buying, and they’re not really there to make a decision. It’s likely because you’ve told them they’re getting a free session, a mini session, a discovery call, a life assessment call. You’ve told them they’re getting something other than a sales call. So they don’t expect to buy. They might be window shopping. They’re going to try it on, try out a little session, see how it feels.

Then think about it for a couple of weeks, then maybe come back to you and ask you about your pricing and be ready to talk about it. But they’re definitely not there to talk about making a decision to work together. So go back and think about your behavior on whatever you’re calling it. First of all, what are you calling it and what is the main intention you’re selling there when you’re marketing it.

When you’re marketing a mini session, when you’re marketing a life discovery call, a life assessment call, a relationship assessment call, whatever it is. When you’re marketing that, what’s that main intention you’re really selling there? What are you really preparing your person on the other end of the phone to be doing on the call with you? And then when you both get on that call, having been sold a discovery session, what’s your behavior on the sales call when you don’t want your client to think it’s a sales call? And when you’re trying to disguise and decorate it.

Think about your energy, talking about what you do, how you spend your time on that call, how you approach the sales conversation that you’ve been disguising and decorating the whole time. Really see yourself from a completely different lens when you’re not willing to call it a sales call or a consultation. Take a really long minute to think about what your client experiences.

So once you’ve done it and you’ve really gone through and thought about how you show up and behave, when you’re not calling it a sales call or a consultation, and you’re not selling it and marketing it as a time to come together to talk about working together. That’s not your main purpose when you’re marketing it. Once you’ve done that for you, you’ve gone through and saw how you behaved, then go through and think about every moment what your client experiences.

One thing they experience for sure is they experience you trying not to make a sale and not in a good way, not in the way that’s positive neutral and there for your client the best decision for them. It’s you trying not to make a sale even though you really, really, really want to. You’re not realizing that you’re trying not to make a sale. You disguising the result that you want by the end of the call.

I want people to know, if we get on a call together what I want by the end is that you are working with me, that we’re getting you help, that we’re both committed and we’re moving forward. And we have our first call on our session, or our first call booked. You don’t need to disguise that. I bet 90% of the reason those of you who aren’t selling on consultations, on sales call, if you looked closely I bet 90% of the reason is because you’re not being clear with the intention of the conversation. So an unclear intention ends in an unwanted result always.

And think about this, how can your client feel safe to buy when they weren’t prepared to buy, when they had no idea really what would be taking place on the call with you? Many of you are so desperate for consults that you would rather get mass volumes of people on the phone thinking they are getting a free session and then hope they will be so enticed by you and the coaching that they receive that they will just buy.

Hell, you might even be hoping that they bring it up, they just loved your free session so much. And you’re so desperate for this that you end up just giving away 1,000 free sessions. And you’ve equated how many free sessions you give or how many consults you get with you doing it right. And that’s misleading. I talk about this in higher converting consults.

We sold that as a small, limited offer that you could do with us and then we put it inside 2K for 2K. So when you join 2K for 2K you will have access to higher converting consults, it’s an almost four hour masterclass on consultations. And this is something I talk about there. That the amount of consults you get doesn’t necessarily equate to the amount of success you’re having. And sometimes you guys have that, if I have only a few consults, I am not successful and it’s not working. And if I have tons of consults that I am successful, and it is working.

But consults mean jack, truly, they mean nothing, buyers mean something, sales mean something. Clients who say yes, the amount of people saying yes and paying you money, matters. And I would personally rather get only one person on the phone with me who knows it’s a sales call and wants to have that conversation with me than 1,000 people who think they came for a free session. Listen, I have a lot of experience with this, so much experience. I’ll tell you all a story.

When I was pitching, when I was selling mops in Walmart and slicers in grocery stores, we made these announcements. We would go on the intercom, and we had three sets of announcements if they let us. They were very annoying so sometimes they didn’t let us do all three. But three sets of announcements where we would announce that we’re giving away free gifts. And so here was the line that was in the script that the company and the trainers put together that works the best.

We would say, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? In two minutes from right now we will be handing out free gifts to all of our shoppers in the store today in order to introduce and advertise brand new merchandise never before seen in stores. This is the first time, you’re seeing them here first.” Then we’re going to be handing the free gifts and then we would go on, something like that. I might have adlibbed a little bit.

But here’s what agents in the field would start doing if they weren’t getting people to the show. They would adlib and they would say, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? In two minutes from right now we’re handing out free gifts to all shoppers in the stores. That’s right, we’re handing out free gifts to all shoppers in the store, it’s happening right here.” And they would give the location. And they would say nothing about introducing and advertising new merchandise into the store.

They would get hundreds of people to their counter every time, every time. And they could feel really, really, really good about themselves. I got so many people to the stage. And none of those people would buy because those people were just told there were free gifts.

So either they would take the free gift and then immediately leave because they hadn’t been told there was products being introduced into the store. Or they would stay and think the product was free as well. And be very angry and confused and they would say, literally say, “Wait, that’s not free too? I thought that was free.” So the result, the money at the end of the day would not change.

So what I did instead, which made me the best of the best at doing my job is I changed my thoughts. And I changed what I was believing and the way I was feeling when I said the announcement the way it was supposed to be said. Before I even knew what coaching was, I coached myself on my thoughts about the people in the store, my thoughts about the announcement, my thoughts about the show.

If I had thoughts like, these people are just going to come, all they want is a free gift, they don’t want to watch the show, that is going to carry an energy when I go to make the announcement. When I think people really want to see this product, they’re going to be so excited, they love watching these shows, they think it’s so entertaining, it’s something new, it gets them out of their day, it allows them to have a little bit of fun as adults. They’re going to be excited about the free gift. They’re going to be excited about the product, they want to buy it. They can’t wait to the next show.

When I had those thoughts and I did it, people came. And if they didn’t it was for me to figure out how I was saying it that was making them not come, not change the words to manipulate them and misinform them to get them to show up. Because then you have an entire audience of 100 people misinformed, that are now stuck for 20 minutes thinking I was misinformed and now I’m stuck. And now they’re mad.

So I really, I can’t stress it enough, you might get more consults jazzing it up, you might get more people enticed. And the opposite is true if you’re honest that it’s a sales call and a consultation, you might get less. But you’re going to get more qualified people and we talked about that on how to market yourself as a professional coach. You want qualified people on the call.

Who are qualified people? People who know that they’re there for a consultation or a sales call. People who want to be there for a consultation and a sales call. People who are actively looking to hire a coach or are curious to hire a coach and are thinking of hiring you. They’re actively thinking about purchasing from you, those are qualified people. You want less of those people over more of less qualified people. I want you to think about this.

If you’ve done 100 consults to unqualified people who think they’re there for a free gift. It means nothing about your skill for consultations. If you’ve gotten 100 no’s from 100 people who thought they were there for a free session, their free gift, a life discovery call, it doesn’t mean you’re bad at consults, it means you marketed badly. Literally if someone’s not there to buy you can’t give a real consultation. You can’t exercise your skills in a consultation because the person wasn’t a willing participant. They’re an ignorant participant at best.

And some of those people, some, 10 to 20% of those people you might get on, they might sign up with you thinking it’s a free session or a life discovery sessions and still end up buying from you just because they would have always said yes. And then again 10 to 20% would say no, whether you said it was a free session or it was a consult. But that 60 to 80% in the middle, those people, they have to be aware, they have to know what they’re getting into. And then you have to match them knowing what they’re getting into with you delivering a good consult.

Those two things both have to align for you to have a result worthy of evaluating. If you’re in 2K we do evaluations on our consults. You can evaluate a consult to death, if the problem was bad marketing you’re not going to learn a whole lot from the consult. You could try to fix all of the other little things that happen in the consult, but the main issue was they were misguided on the call. They weren’t fully qualified, that was the problem from the very beginning.

And when I was pitching, if that happened, it didn’t matter how amazing your show was. You could deliver a solid perfect delivery fully present show, but it was doomed from the beginning. And it was always fascinating to me how you could have a 20 minute show that could be literally the result is going to be zero from the very beginning and there’s nothing you can do to change it along the way because of this right here. Very little can be changed when the people there are only there under false pretenses.

I feel so passionately about this and I’m preaching so strongly because I know so deeply in my bones that so many of you are not getting the opportunity to learn how to do a good consult. You’re not getting the opportunity to show for even yourself, to believe in yourself, to know that you can do a good consult. And then you’re not getting the opportunity to coach paid clients only because of your thoughts about a sales call. I’m here to change them.

So you want your buyers at your table on the call prepared to buy. And if you can get yourself to this place of understanding this and agreeing then you get to do the real work that will make you money, of coaching yourself on your thoughts about that. Coach yourself on your discomfort around calling it what it is, around being honest with your intentions, around your client knowing what’s really going on. What do you need to think they will be thinking to want to get on a sales call with you, to want to get on a consultation, to want to talk about buying?

Maybe start with, they want to buy. I know, this one’s tough for you all. We coach on it in 2K all the time. People want to buy. What? It’s crazy, nonsense. Nonsense. People will come, I know this, seven years. People will come for 20 minute shows knowing there’s going to be a product that’s demoed. You might not be one of them, if you’re listening right now and you’re like, “I would have never gone to one of those.” You might not have. That’s fine. There are people who also will never buy coaching and that’s fine too.

We don’t make our decisions thinking about those people. What? We don’t sell trying to please those people. We sell thinking about the people who want to come to the 20 minute shows knowing you’re demoing a product. The people who want to get on consults knowing you’re going to sell them. They want to know how to buy life coaching. They want to know how it works, how much it is, when they can start. I’m not sure why so many people believe that people don’t want to buy things with how much people spend in this world.

Why do we think people don’t want to spend money? Of course they do. Listen, I just text my staff, you guys know I fly private. It used to be every once in a while and now I’ve gotten very booshy about it and I don’t like to fly commercial for many reasons. A lot of pandemic reasons, I don’t like to wear the mask on the plane and all those hours. I don’t like it, especially now that I’m nauseated. But I also don’t want to deal with, we flew commercial to Cabo and mainly because last time we flew private to Cabo we ended up being stranded for three days and couldn’t get there.

And I couldn’t take the chance of that happening for my live event last August so we flew commercial thinking that would be safer. And then on the way home we ended up on the tarmac or whatever you call it, for four hours. And it was a disaster. And then we ended up having to, in order to get home I chose, we didn’t have to, I chose to book a private flight from Dallas to Louisville. So we ended up spending – I don’t know – a ridiculous amount of money, almost the same amount of money if we had just flown private both ways.

So anyway, so now I’m really committed that I just don’t want to fly commercial, there’s too many shutdowns, too many cancellations. When we were sitting on the tarmac, all the planes, they shut all of Dallas down for five hours and then every plane coming into Dallas had to be grounded. And then all of those people had to reschedule their flights. So you couldn’t even get out the next day. It wasn’t like, I’ll just say the night, get up the next morning and fly home. It was, no, you’re there for a couple of days now while they figure out all of their issues.

So I really don’t like it now. So we’re going to New York. We’re going to book a private flight and I went to New York with one of my friends in March and it was, listen, bear with me, I’m going to tell you how much it was. Take a deep breath, we can all handle it. It was $20,000 to fly to New York in March and now in December it’s $40,000. It’s literally double. And I was very cranky about it. And so I messaged my team and I’m like, “Why is it literally double what it was just a few months ago? How is that possible that the price just doubles?” So annoyed.

And they were like, “All of the demand of people flying private?” What? Why do we think people don’t want to spend money? There are people dropping $40,000 on a flight. So many of them that we have to compete, and the prices keep just rising, and rising, and rising. What? Of course they do. People want to spend money. Think about how much people spend.

One of my clients, Catherine Morrison posted on her Instagram, and she said, I don’t remember if it was just in the US or if it was in the world. But she was talking about Christmas shoppers and that it’s predicted that in the month of December, I don’t remember if it was Americans alone or what, but she said that people will spend $850 billion just during the month of December, shopping. Why do we think people don’t want to spend money? They do. And they want to spend it on better things than purses, and toys, and blankets, and coffee mugs. They want to spend it on life coaching.

How we know this is the life coaching industry is I’m sure at this point a multibillion dollar industry. How we know is because there are coaches making millions, and millions, and millions of dollars. Because thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people want to buy coaching. And they want to buy it from the person that introduces it to them. Did you know that? You. They don’t want to buy it from me. They don’t know me. They’ve never heard of me. They want to buy it from you, the person who introduced it.

So I want you to consider that, just that right there. And then I also want you to consider why do you think that people aren’t capable of knowing the truth and handling it? What do you believe about your people that makes you think you need to disguise or decorate the truth with them? Why do you need that decorating and disguising? What are you thinking about selling? Literally relisten to this episode and write these questions down and answer them. And join 2K, we’ll ask you lots more questions just like this to blow your mind and open it all the way up.

And you’ll never think of selling or consultations ever again the same. Why do you think they can’t handle the truth? I just asked my agents in the field that, why do you think they can’t handle knowing that it’s a show?

People would also – we called them hecklers, but they would come to the show right after the announcement. And as soon as you walked up they thought they were so cute. And they would say, “Is this a demo?” And I would look at them and go, “Yes.” And just stand there and look at them. They thought it would break me and I would just melt into a puddle onto the floor if other people knew the truth. And sometimes the best remark was, “Yes, I think everybody here knew that. That’s why they’re here.” We all know what’s happening here.

Assuming, I would just assume that people knew that’s what they were there for. I would assume they weren’t stupid. I would assume they would see a giant stage, and a bucket of water, and a whole thing of produce, and a giant light, and a flatscreen TV, with a camera pointing onto the surface of the stage. They see the getup, they know what’s happening. They’re not stupid. So why can’t you trust your people with the truth? What don’t you think they’re capable of handling? These are such good questions to think about.

What are you thinking about all of it? What are you thinking about the value of a consult, of a sales call? I tell you what, if you don’t have thoughts that sales calls and consultations are extraordinarily highly valuable you’ve got to get in 2K right now. I will teach you how to do the most compelling valuable consults of your life. And your people will think that too, 100%. It’s why my closed rate was so high. I didn’t have a million consults. I wasn’t doing 30 and 40 consults a month. I was doing one consult a month.

There was a period of time where I did 16 back to back over a couple of weeks but that was rare, extraordinary, most of the time it was a couple of consults here and there, I was just closing them. I was getting highly qualified people on the call who were not confused about why they were there and then I was selling them. And we both knew what was happening and we were both ready to do it, we were both in agreement. I want to be sold, I’m selling you.

This is what I want you to spend your time doing instead of trying to come up with a magical unique name for your sales call. I want you to consider, it is the worst way you could possibly spend your time. I want you to consider that this is an area of drama you can literally just set aside. It’s un-useful, do not spend any time trying to come up with a name that’s different than what other coaches are doing, that’s unique, that’s so fun, that’s enticing, call it a sales call or a consultation. Choose and then come up with thoughts that support you being able to do that authentically.

And I’m going to ask you this question too. I want you to answer this question for yourself, it’ll be very interesting. What about a sales call isn’t enticing? What? That one is going to really trip up some of you. It’s okay. I know my thoughts are so different about sales, it’s why I make millions and millions of dollars doing what I do. I’m just inviting you into my world on this podcast, just inviting you in. What about a sales call isn’t enticing? The answer to that one alone will reveal a lot to you about your own beliefs about sales and what you believe others are thinking.

And I want you to consider that most of our life models, if you look at the model, our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, our results, most of those are about us trying to control what other people are thinking. In fact almost everything we do, we do to control what others think about us, about the world, about coaching.

So it’s really helpful when you, number one, in sales and just life, when you, number one, stop trying to control what other people are thinking. Gain awareness around when you’re doing that, when you’re trying to control what other people are thinking, and what they’re perceiving. And how you are doing that and why, it’s always to try to get sufficiency, to create safety for ourselves. So stop trying, grow your awareness around that. And if you grow your awareness you will stop trying to control it so much.

And then number two, give yourself the safety and sufficiency so you don’t need them to think anything. I didn’t even need to be, a lot of the times when I was pitching and when I’m selling coaching, I don’t need to be in what my potential clients are thinking. I’m in what I’m thinking. It doesn’t matter. To me, I’m just going to go find enough people who are thinking what I’m thinking in this moment to hit my numbers. Not I’m going to spend a bunch of time trying to convince everybody to agree with what I’m thinking.

When I had shows I just ignored the people who were curmudgeons. I would imagine red dots and green dots above their heads. I don’t pay attention to the green, green for go, I want to be sold to. I’ll just do my entire show, sometimes just to one person, I’ll do my entire show to you. You’re the only person I’m interested in right now. Everybody else with their pooh, pooh attitudes, and their arms crossed, and their hips cocked to the side, and they’re huffing puffing, how long is this going to take. I just forget about them completely.

I don’t need them to agree with me to enjoy the show, I just focus on the one person who is. So many of you need to implement that in your coaching. Give yourself safety and sufficiency, choose your own thoughts about what you’re doing and how you feel, or you want to feel about consults and then don’t need your client to think anything.

And then just for fun, number three, is believe people think amazing things about what you’re doing. It’s so much more fun when you just believe people love your selling. It’s one of my number one thoughts. You will have seen me sell so effortlessly and have so much fun selling and it’s because I believe that people love when I sell them things and they want to buy. People love when I sell them things and they want to buy. It’s really that simple, folks.

Alright, that’s my sermon. Thanks for coming today to the sales church of Stacey Boehman. I love you all so much. I hope this breaks your brains and gives you some freedom, and releases some drama, and I really hope you join 2K because this is one tiny little slice of the way that we think inside this program. And it will rock your world and change how you show up in the industry forever, how you do consults, the value your clients truly get from them.

Okay, here’s my last thing I will say, when you’re disguising and decorating your intro session because you think a sales call isn’t valuable, I want you to consider that when you’re doing all of that, that you’re actually not giving them value. When you’re decorating and disguising, if that’s your A-line, how can that deliver value? When you’re purposely misleading, when you’re falsifying what’s happening, whenever you’re getting people on the phone under a false pretence, how can that ever be valuable? Okay, I’m really done. I could talk about this all day.

I love you all. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you next week.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first $2,000, the hardest part, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2Kfor2K. We’ll see you inside.