In this 8‑week live‑coaching kickoff, Frances Pratt (Speaker A) greets a Facebook audience and outlines the purpose of the series: to help participants overcome fear of sales and become more effective. She emphasizes three core ideas for week 1. First, sales success hinges on authenticity—being yourself (whether analytical, bubbly, or cheeky) builds credibility and reduces perceived “bullshit.” Second, she urges participants to break their revenue targets into concrete numbers: determine desired sales, translate them into the number of clients needed, and then calculate the required outreach activity, thereby lowering pressure on each conversation. Third, she highlights the simplest growth lever—selling more to existing clients and actively requesting referrals, noting that referrals come with built‑in trust. She assigns three “homework” tasks: practice authenticity, map August sales goals into client and activity counts, and ask existing contacts for referrals. The session ends with an invitation for feedback, questions, and a promise to return next Thursday.
Chapters
Good morning, beautiful people of Facebook world. How are you? So for those of you who've listened to my lives before, you will know that I have this thing about doing them in the car. And someone said to me the other day, I hope you're not driving. So I just wanted to assure you I'm definitely not driving. But this is the first of 8 lives that I'm going to do every Thursday morning around 9 o'clock. And what I'm going to do is, because I've got an 8-week program, I'm actually just going to give you some tips and and ideas about the things to be thinking about this week to help you conquer your fear of sales and become awesome and connected with what you do. So this is week 1, and I'm so excited to be sharing these ideas with you. And if anyone's got any questions or comments or has found this helpful or hated it or any reaction really, please let me know. And if anyone's got any questions that you would like me to cover in future weeks, I'm very open to doing that and to helping you all. So let me just get started. When I start coaching people in sales and selling, you know what the first thing I do is? I actually tell them that everybody— I haven't met a person that I can't teach how to sell. So lots of people go, I suck at sales. I'm no good at it, blah blah blah. Well, I'm here to tell you, you can all be awesome at sales. It doesn't mean you need to be like me or need to be like anybody else. It just means actually to be yourself. And what I do when people start is get them to complete a questionnaire, which just kind of helps them and helps me see where that difference is. Because often our perception is that when we go into a sales situation or go to start talking to a potential client, that we have to be something that we're not. So if you're highly analytical, then be analytical. Show people that beautiful analysis. I don't mean bore them to tears, because sometimes analysis can be boring. Not highly analytical. Um, but, but be yourself. Be yourself. So just what I want you to do is have a think about some things where you're not being yourself, um, and have a think about some ways that you can be more you. So if you're bubbly and outgoing, be bubbling and outgoing. I'm a bit of a ratbag and I'm a bit cheeky, so when I'm selling, I'm a ratbag and I'm a bit cheeky. And the reason that that's so important is because the number one thing about sales is your believability and how people perceive you. So when you're being yourself, you're so much more believable because you know what, people's bullshit factor isn't going, this isn't right, this isn't right. So what you'll find is if you give yourself the courage and permission to be yourself, then when you get out there and, and have a look at things and experience it, you will notice that people react more positively to you, I promise. Okay, so that's thing number 1. Thing number 2 is to think about your numbers. By numbers, what I mean is, you know, when people are setting budgets or, you know, thinking, okay, it's August, what I'm gonna do is sell, you know, $10,000 or $2,000 or $200 or whatever it is, we need to actually break that down. We need to break that down into individual clients, but then we need to break that down into activity. So if you are gonna sell $5,000 and each of your packages is $2,500, you've gotta talk to more than 2 people. Because if all you're talking to is 2 people and you've got this thing in your head about selling to 2 people and you're only talking to 2 people, then every single conversation with each of those people is going to feel like you're on tenterhooks. And because you've got that emotion around it, that'll come across in what you're saying. Whereas if you know you want to get 2 new clients and you're talking to 8, wow, the pressure is off. So now we can allow that person nicely to say yes or no, and it doesn't mean that we've failed. So reframing and actually having a think about how many people we need to talk to— not to scare yourself, I don't mean go and talk to 1,000 people and, you know, cold calling and all of that sort of stuff— but just think logically about Well, if I want to sign up 2 new clients and I'm only talking to 2, then maybe I should double that. Maybe I should find 2 more to talk to just to keep the pressure off. And the 3rd thing I'm going to say to you is, you know, the biggest and easiest way to make sales— so this is thing number 3— and when I start working with people is to sell more to existing clients or to ask for referrals. And referrals are so awesome because they're so much easier because you already, when someone refers you in, so if someone refers someone to me, that person already trusts what I do. They understand much more about me than someone coming in cold. So have a think about a way that you can go and talk to some existing clients and ask them for a referral. So, you know, back to the numbers game. If you've got— if you want to close 2 new clients and you've only got 2 and you're thinking, ah, how do I find another 2? Then my first thing to say to you is go and ask. Ask people that you know, ask people that you've worked with before, and ask existing clients for referrals. And you'll be surprised, um, when we ask, we actually get, um, some responses. And when we don't ask, we get nothing. So beautiful people of Facebook world, I'll be live again next Thursday, so looking forward to seeing you then. But between now and then, I've got 3 jobs for you. One, I want you to practice being yourself. So put aside any tips and tricks and ideas about what you think selling is and just try doing it like you. Number 2, I want you just to think about August and say, this is what I want to do in August from a sales perspective, and Just have a little tiny look at your numbers. How many clients does that mean? How many sales? And am I talking to enough people? And I want you to extend. And how I want you to extend and talk to more people is by thinking about referrals. I want you to go and ask people to help you because everyone is out there to help you. We are so shy about doing that because we think that suddenly when we're asking for help. You know, it means that we're a failure. Actually, that's not true. When we're asking for help, sometimes that's when we're at our most confident. So go out there with my love, um, be real, be you, be on purpose. And I really look forward to hearing your stories and seeing any comments. And please feel free to share with me anything that's going on for you in the world of sales. And until next Thursday, I'll see you around the traps. Bye. See ya. Bye.
