Use these strategies to Close More Sales Calls With Confidence

Designers, it’s time to toss out those preconceived notions about sales! This episode will completely transform how you approach selling your services, discussing money, and guiding potential clients to say “yes.” I’m joined by the incredible Kirsten Schmidtke, a certified coach and sales expert, who is here to ease the pressure of sales, shift your mindset, and arm you with the best questions to sign new clients confidently. Dive into some of the best Sales strategies for Interior Designers!

Grab your notepad and settle into your favorite spot because Kirsten is about to drop a wealth of wisdom and actionable advice you can implement today. Her unique perspective on sales starts with mindset—she explains how the right outlook can influence every corner of your business. You’ll also discover Kirsten’s secret to successful sales: leaning into curiosity, active listening, and genuine connection.

But that’s not all—Kirsten dives into the nitty-gritty with powerful tools and strategies, including her one-of-a-kind approach to job interviews, networking tips, and the importance of crafting a killer 30-second pitch. You won’t believe the fresh insights she shares about building connections and positioning yourself for success.

And don’t miss her final piece of wisdom—it’s a game-changer! By the end of this episode, you’ll feel inspired and ready to elevate your mindset, your sales game, and your business.

This episode is extra special because it marks a major milestone: Kirsten is the *first* guest I’ve interviewed in person, right here in my studio! 🎉 Want to see the magic happen? Head over to YouTube to watch our conversation and catch all the behind-the-scenes vibes.

Episode Highlights

1. The Secret to Sales Success: Kirsten Schmidtke reveals the #1 sales secret—it’s all about asking the right questions. Discover her “three-question rule” to deeply connect with clients and uncover their true needs.
2. Overcoming the Fear of Selling: Struggling with feeling “salesy”? Kirsten shares her mindset shift for viewing sales as a service, not a pitch, and explains how to transfer your confidence to your clients.
3. Discovery Call Mastery: Learn how to transform your discovery calls with Kirsten’s guide to asking better questions, structuring your time, and setting the tone for a professional-client relationship from the start.
4. The Magic Wand Question: Find out how asking one simple, imaginative question can unlock a client’s deepest desires and help you tailor your pitch to their exact needs.
5. Real Metrics for Success: Think a 100% close rate is the dream? Think again! Kirsten breaks down why a 30–40% close rate is ideal and how it can lead to greater growth, higher rates, and better clients.

Episode Resources

• Learn more about Kirsten Schmidtke at her website and follow her on Instagram or LinkedIn.

• Watch our candid interview on YouTube

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

00;01;16;04 – 00;01;34;25
Rebecca Hay

Today I’m having a conversation with Kirsten Schmidt. She and I met at my studio on the couch, and we recorded this live in person, which was a first for me.It’s the first time I’ve had someone to the studio to record for the podcast. I frickin loved it. I’m so excited to do more of this in 2025, so stay tuned for that. Kirsten and I met through another coaching program and we got to know each other. She’s in Toronto. We would go for walks and it was clear to me that she is a sales maven.

00;01;34;25 – 00;02;02;25
Rebecca Hay
Truly, truly knows her stuff. She has worked in companies in the tech world, actually selling millions of dollars. And so she is coming with tons of experience. So essentially she is now a certified coach. She left corporate behind to become the certified coach herself, channeling her experiences into helping leaders and entrepreneurs create a life that feels fulfilling in every possible way.

00;02;02;27 – 00;02;23;12
Rebecca Hay
Today, her mission is clear to guide clients in breaking through barriers and achieving freedom in business, finance, and life. Through her story, Kirsten inspires others to see beyond what’s right in front of them, expanding into their vision of what’s possible in order to reach their full potential. Today’s conversation is so good. You will want a notepad. You just will.

00;02;23;12 – 00;02;46;23
Rebecca Hay
There’s a lot of things that she says that I at one point pulled up my notepad and started taking notes. She shares questions that you can use and ask when you were talking to a client in a discovery call. She shares tips on how to present yourself. We talk about the 32nd pitch. We talk about specifically how to structure the sales process.

00;02;46;23 – 00;03;05;28
Rebecca Hay
From the minute someone inquires about your services, she shares specific percentages and numbers of what is a good conversion rate. Like guys, this is juicy, juicy, juicy goodness. Please enjoy my conversation with Kirsten. Okay, Kirsten, welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

00;03;05;29 – 00;03;09;21
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, this is so fun. And we’re like, in person, in real life.

00;03;09;23 – 00;03;26;15
Rebecca Hay
In real life, if you are not watching this on YouTube, you might want to pop on over there because we’re here in the RHD studio. You’re my guinea pig because I might do more in-person interviews in the coming year. And so we’re still trying to figure out our set up. But, you know, this is what we had. So this is where we’re starting.

00;03;26;22 – 00;03;34;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. No. It’s great. I think it’s really fun to have these conversations in person. Like, let’s let’s get in front of people again. Totally.

00;03;34;01 – 00;03;47;12
Rebecca Hay
And like, you and I met on zoom through one of our coaching programs, through the Hannah Khan program, that I’ve been doing those morning calls. Actually, we don’t even see each other’s faces. I don’t think it was just through, like, names. I don’t even know how that happened. Then I moved to Instagram and they were like, let’s go for a walk.

00;03;47;12 – 00;03;49;25
Rebecca Hay
And so we started hanging out in real life.

00;03;49;25 – 00;03;50;14
Kirsten Schmidtke
And that’s right.

00;03;50;16 – 00;03;53;04
Rebecca Hay
Here we are today now recording the podcast.

00;03;53;06 – 00;04;12;22
Kirsten Schmidtke
Relationship building really was a I found to be a really big challenge during the pandemic. And I really believe that when we are in person, in real life, that whole process can be accelerated. Probably no surprise that we’re now here having a conversation face to face after getting to know each other. Yeah, enjoying the nature and during fall.

00;04;12;25 – 00;04;19;29
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. And so okay, before we dive too deep into everything today, can you just introduce yourself to our listeners today just who you are and what you do?

00;04;20;02 – 00;04;43;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
My name is Kirsten Schmidt Key. I’m a leadership and sales coach. I work with individuals and organizations to help them to accelerate their path to success, whatever that looks like, as defined by them. We work together to get really clear on their goals, and then really clear on the systems, the processes and the actions that are going to get them there without going too far back into my my past.

00;04;43;13 – 00;05;04;23
Kirsten Schmidtke
So what I can share is I’m a very left and right brain type of person, very creative, but also really love numbers. And so I believe when I work with my clients, we get to really bridge both sides, like get really clear on what might be getting in the way from a mindset perspective, but always support clients on the strategy, the execution, and the actions they can take to get to those goals faster.

00;05;04;26 – 00;05;34;00
Rebecca Hay
We want to get there fast. We do. Designers, women, humans are typically a little bit impatient. And I think especially as an entrepreneur, you’re like, get me to a million or get me to 100,000. Like, how can we get there? And so I really want to dive into this topic today with you, because sales is definitely an area that I struggled with early in my career, and I know a lot of designers do too, because there’s this idea that we don’t want to feel salesy, we don’t like selling our services or our products.

00;05;34;02 – 00;05;57;24
Rebecca Hay
It feels like we’re putting ourselves on the line and it’s super visible, and we want our art or our designs to speak for themselves. And the reality is, that’s not how people find you. You’re it’s I always say it’s not enough to be a great designer. You need people to know who you are. And then once they know who you are, how do you turn them into someone who’s interested to?

00;05;57;25 – 00;06;20;28
Rebecca Hay
And actually paying clients? And so I want to dive into this conversation today. Have you seen mindset like what I’m saying here is this I think I’m talking about mindset in its purest form of I’m afraid I don’t feel comfortable saying to you, this is my service. Will you buy it? That mindset piece I think I know has held me back, and I see it in other designers.

00;06;20;28 – 00;06;38;17
Rebecca Hay
Have you seen that in your career? We didn’t really get into your career, but I would like to go there a little bit. So I think your career is really interesting. Did that ever show its face in your career? This idea of like, I don’t know if I can, if I should, if I will, if I want to or do you see it with your clients?

00;06;38;24 – 00;07;01;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
Well, all of the above. I mean, I think you hit on something right off the bat like no one wants to be the best kept secret. That’s right. We want people to be aware of who we are and what we’re doing and what we’re up to, and it’s really a disservice to people if they don’t know, because they don’t know that we’re out there, that we can help them in a meaningful and impactful way.

00;07;01;12 – 00;07;25;24
Kirsten Schmidtke
That is kind of like a, I guess, a cornerstone of sales is really understanding that you are being of service when you are working with a client, when you are engaging them in a conversation to move them, like through the sales cycle, like it’s it’s coming from that place of service that you are able to help them. I don’t know, insert whatever challenge pain problem that they’re facing.

00;07;25;27 – 00;07;55;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
And I think from a mindset perspective, what I find with my clients, but also with myself, I will I’m, you know, working on my mindset constantly, every day as well is staying true and holding that belief that what you’re service is whatever you bring to the table, like holding that belief that you have value to offer and really believing truly in the value that you have to make a difference to bring.

00;07;55;19 – 00;08;17;25
Kirsten Schmidtke
Maybe joy to someone’s life, to improve their way of living, to make the world even. Let’s go there like a better place. Like just really connecting to that belief. I think that is the very first part of the mindset, part of sales, that if we don’t believe in our value, believe in what we do, we can’t transfer that belief to someone else.

00;08;17;27 – 00;08;22;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
I mean, we could even say sales is as simple as that. A transfer of belief.

00;08;22;22 – 00;08;48;18
Rebecca Hay
Whoa, I like that. What? I like that you said that resonated with me is this idea that we are offering a service. Obviously this when I say it out loud, it sounds stupid, but I’m like, this is an We are delivering a service that is adding value in is helping someone. So as a designer you are solving problems and pain points for your client who’s desperately needing your services.

00;08;48;25 – 00;09;05;11
Rebecca Hay
But what’s happening is, what I’m hearing you say is we get caught up in our minds and in our heads, and we hold ourselves back from really paying attention to those facts. The facts are, I have what you need to make your problem go away. And we need to maybe be looking at our service a little bit more like that.

00;09;05;11 – 00;09;10;14
Rebecca Hay
And that’s going to help us make those sales and make it easier to do that.

00;09;10;16 – 00;09;31;00
Kirsten Schmidtke
Well, and one way or one really simple, let’s say, tool that you can take away from today too, is to almost take yourself a little bit out of the equation. Let’s, you know, might not make sense right away, but selling is not about you. Sales is not about you. It’s actually about them. It’s actually about the client.

00;09;31;00 – 00;09;51;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like it’s about where the client’s stuck. What’s keeping the client up at night? What is the client maybe dreaming about at night that you could make happen for them? The client, you know, is maybe stuck in. How are they going to make this change or transformation or, you know, renovation happening? You could be the who that solves that problem.

00;09;51;07 – 00;10;18;12
Kirsten Schmidtke
So as soon as we take a step back and go, wait, it’s not about me. It’s not me standing up here and doing some, you know, song and dance to get their attention that they must buy. For me, it’s actually about me stepping into their world, getting curious about what keeps them up, what do they want, what gets them excited and going all of a sudden that also takes like, I think some of the pressure off of us and we can be in that mindset of, oh yes, I’ve got this value and I really believe I’ve done all these amazing things.

00;10;18;12 – 00;10;31;03
Kirsten Schmidtke
I can bring this stuff to the table, but it’s actually not about me, it’s about them. And as soon as we put that energy and focus on them, it can take a little bit of the pressure off of that focus on I must sell myself.

00;10;31;03 – 00;10;49;18
Rebecca Hay
So it’s like we need to get clarity on what it is that we’re offering or what it is the problems that we solve. Like how do we as a designer, as a business owner, how do you get that clarity of, okay, yes, that is my client, and here’s how I solve the problem, because everybody listening is like, well, I’m a designer.

00;10;49;18 – 00;10;53;26
Rebecca Hay
Obviously, I make their home beautiful. It’s clear. But is that what we’re talking about here?

00;10;53;29 – 00;11;15;23
Kirsten Schmidtke
Great question. I would challenge people to go a step deeper or maybe three levels deeper. Okay. So yeah, let me take just a quick, quick step back. So what can happen sometimes in selling is we can get really focused on the symptoms. Right. Like think that oh I know this is going to sound like a parallel that made me may like come up before, but I almost think of like a doctor diagnosing a problem.

00;11;15;23 – 00;11;40;28
Kirsten Schmidtke
Right. Like we hope that our doctor’s not going to just look at the symptoms and give us like a, I don’t know, over arching like, I don’t know, decision on how they can treat us. We’re hoping that they’re going to try and get to the cause. Right. Try to really understand what is under the surface. And so we’re in a sales process or we’re having conversations and wanting to help to close or move the opportunity towards, you know, a client signing on or committing to work with us.

00;11;41;05 – 00;11;59;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
We really want to ask questions to get curious. That level of depth, to understand what the actual cause is that’s causing maybe a problem, or maybe not even a problem, maybe just causing them to even have a conversation with you. Maybe there’s something that’s shifted in their life that they are really maybe excited about. Maybe it’s not a problem.

00;11;59;10 – 00;12;27;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
Maybe they’ve, you know, maybe they’ve bought a new home and they’re just really excited to bring their idea of a vision to life. But rather than just staying at kind of that face value of kind of the symptoms or what you’re seeing on the surface, like how can you get deeper? Because if we can get deeper into how the client’s feeling, how the client wants to feel, then you can start to really articulate how you can support and serve and help them in a way that resonates and like takes the pressure off of them.

00;12;27;08 – 00;12;46;09
Kirsten Schmidtke
And then it’s just a no brainer if you can make their dreams come true, if you can solve that problem, that’s keeping them up at night. So absolutely, like I encourage clients to always take the conversation like it’s kind of like the three question rule, so to speak. Like, can you ask three more questions? And they can be simple.

00;12;46;14 – 00;13;14;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
We do want to, you know, keep them open like, you know, how do you want to feel? What does that look like for you? What does maybe that mean to you. Right. Kind of opening. But see if you can take that as a tool to like you know, ask three more questions to see if you can really get to the root of maybe why they’re having the conversation with you, because then you can really connect to what again, problem they’re wanting to solve or what idea they want to bring to life, and see if that what you have to offer is a match to that.

00;13;14;10 – 00;13;16;22
Kirsten Schmidtke
And it also increases your your close rate as well.

00;13;16;27 – 00;13;38;08
Rebecca Hay
So you said something that maybe to you seems like everybody knows it. Okay. But you were like something like, oh, the three questions, you know, and I’m like, no, I don’t know, I don’t know. But as you’re talking, I’m realizing good sales people ask a lot of frickin questions. They do. Right? Like someone’s trying to, like, sometimes are better at it than other times.

00;13;38;08 – 00;13;59;05
Rebecca Hay
But someone gets you on the phone and then you can’t get off because they just keep asking you those freaking questions. So I just Bridgewater’s listening. If you’re like me and you’re like, oh, ask questions like, I know it sounds super rudimentary to someone like yourself, but is that the secret to landing clients is like asking more questions.

00;13;59;08 – 00;14;01;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
This is going to be bold, but I’m going to say yes.

00;14;01;13 – 00;14;08;01
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, like, why don’t I just crack the code? I’m like, oh my God, how did I not know that?

00;14;08;03 – 00;14;25;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
Because if you’re if we’re leaning into our curiosity and we’re asking more questions again, you’re getting into their world, right? Like, I mean, think about the last time you received an email with like, oh my gosh, these are 20 million things that I can, you know, offer to solve your problem. You’re like, I delete. Like, I can’t even go there.

00;14;25;04 – 00;14;45;23
Kirsten Schmidtke
But if you knew what was keeping me up at night and you said, like, I can help take that pain away, like, yeah, I probably I mean, I would look at the price, but I’m probably not going to think so much about the price because I’m like, no, this person can solve my problem. Like, let’s go. So absolutely, like more questions, more curiosity is going to get you into the world.

00;14;45;23 – 00;15;05;00
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’re going to build that relationship faster, and then you’re going to be able to align your offer and that that really your offer being the solution to their problem much, much faster because you know, that much more about them. The reason I say three questions, too, is because we tend to we want to we want to feel like safe and comfortable.

00;15;05;00 – 00;15;18;27
Kirsten Schmidtke
And when we ask one question deeper and one, we are starting to connect to that emotional part of where the client is, and we can really tap into that. Then you’re connecting to something really, really, really real.

00;15;18;27 – 00;15;40;19
Rebecca Hay
Okay, I’m smiling. I’m laughing because I feel like you’ve asked me questions in like DMs or taking this text. You’re like, tell me why is why do you feel this way? Rebecca I’m like, oh, wow. Well, Kirsten, I hadn’t thought of that. Like, I’m like, I’m seeing it. It’s so, so you obviously come by naturally and you just generally are an inquisitive person asking questions, but putting you on the spot.

00;15;40;22 – 00;15;41;23
Rebecca Hay
What are these questions?

00;15;41;23 – 00;16;02;29
Kirsten Schmidtke
Oh, yeah. I knew you were going to ask them what you ask. Okay, so I think the first question that I love to ask as a coach, you know, is just even asking the client, like, what do they want? Like, what are you dreaming of? Like what brings you to the conversation? What is something just to kind of open them up to share more?

00;16;02;29 – 00;16;23;23
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like, I know this idea of asking more questions right now might sound a little bit overwhelming, like, but I don’t know what to ask. What do I like? What do I say? But the truth is, everyone loves to talk about themselves. Like we love to share what we’re up to. We love to share our desires and what gets what we’re excited about and what we’re passionate about.

00;16;23;26 – 00;16;41;12
Kirsten Schmidtke
It’s just a lot of people don’t get asked those questions. So I think you’ll find by just starting with a question as simple as what brings you to, like the conversation or what do you want? Or what would you like love to see? Like this. This could really just you never know. That could absolutely lead to like ten, 20 minutes of conversation.

00;16;41;14 – 00;17;01;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
So I would start there. Another thing I love to ask people is like, how do you want to feel? Or how do you want to like experience this work together? Because in that two, you can get a lot of information from somebody about kind of what their expectations are, what their vision, maybe for a project or working together are.

00;17;01;17 – 00;17;19;26
Kirsten Schmidtke
And in all of this, you’re also starting to kind of filter through like, is my offer aligned and can I support them. So starting with asking them just like really like what are you like what do you want? Or what are you envisioning or something to kind of open up their imagination and then trying to connect to that emotion, like, what do you want to feel or what do you want to experience?

00;17;19;29 – 00;17;29;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
And another question that I really like to ask too is like, what would success look like for you? Or maybe the magic wand question, even like if you could, you know.

00;17;29;05 – 00;17;34;07
Rebecca Hay
Tell everybody that question because not everyone listening knows what you’re talking about. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. But let’s do for sure, for sure.

00;17;34;07 – 00;17;55;27
Kirsten Schmidtke
I love the magic wand question and really, really simple, yet really, really powerful. So even imagine yourself like if you had a magic wand, what would you create or what would you make happen or what would you see? So just asking that question again, the person is going to come to the table like they’ve got their desire. Yeah, they’ve got desires.

00;17;55;27 – 00;18;33;28
Kirsten Schmidtke
They’ve got ideas, they’ve got inspiration. Probably to that maybe. No. And probably no one’s ever asking those questions. So I absolutely would start with those three as a way to get the conversation started. And, you know, if you really want to take your question asking to the next level, it really starts with your listening. And this is something that we didn’t talk a lot about my my career, which was in sales, but for a long time I really spent time trying to master the art of like pitching or having the agenda and like sharing what I was trained on to sell when I actually wasn’t really listening to what the client was saying.

00;18;33;28 – 00;18;52;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
So I always, I was always in my head about, okay, what’s the next question I’m going to ask? What’s the next question I’m going to ask? But if you really listen to what the client saying, you can draw that question from what they’re sharing. If you’re listening to them and not letting kind of your own narrative and thinking take over.

00;18;52;10 – 00;18;58;18
Kirsten Schmidtke
The key to doing that. When you feel stuck on what the question is, you can just simply say, tell me more about that.

00;18;58;21 – 00;19;16;13
Rebecca Hay
It’s very interesting. Tell me more. I forgot what I was going to say. I keep going, I’ll reference my notes, but that’s a really good point. Question is, like so many of us, I mean, I catch myself doing this a lot as a podcaster because it’s a lot of listening, a lot less talking. Believe it or not, when I’m interviewing, obviously when it’s a solo, I get to do all the talking.

00;19;16;16 – 00;19;35;15
Rebecca Hay
I did a few of those already today, but is this idea that more often than not, and we talked about this actually in the calls with Hannah, we’re not listening to each other. We’re actually waiting for our turn to speak. And clients can pick up on that. My question for you would be, I love this idea. I love these questions.

00;19;35;20 – 00;19;54;06
Rebecca Hay
Would this be the type of questions that you would want to have in your first encounter with the client? What I advise designers to do, which is my process, is always have a discovery call like have an initial phone call before you go to their house, before they hire you for a consultation because you want to, like you said, we want to kind of filter through and assess.

00;19;54;09 – 00;20;01;16
Rebecca Hay
So because it might as you’re talking, I was thinking, oh, this would be great at a consultation. And I thought, wait, it should probably be at the very beginning of the relationship.

00;20;01;19 – 00;20;21;03
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, absolutely. To me, these are the questions for your discovery. Call this like you can take this and create your own. You can call it a script to to just like to support you. I think a script is when people think sales scripts, they think that they’re like reading a dialog that’s been written like a telemarketer. Yeah, exactly.

00;20;21;03 – 00;20;39;24
Kirsten Schmidtke
But really, every sales script is going to be unique to the person’s cell, like the business. Right? And so if you’ve got your own business, you know what those questions, even if you want to take or adapt what I just shared, that can still be your sales script, right. And like the discovery, the more you can learn in a discovery call, which again requires you to listen and ask good questions.

00;20;40;00 – 00;20;59;20
Kirsten Schmidtke
So yes, you may not talk very much because a discovery call again, it’s not about you, it’s not about you. It’s about them. Like you’re not pitching at the beginning of the sales cycle. We’re looking to understand more about them, to see well, they want to see if we’re a fit, but we really want to see if we’re a fit before we even spend any more time in the sales cycle.

00;20;59;22 – 00;21;35;20
Kirsten Schmidtke
And so the more questions that you can ask, the more information that you can gather. I absolutely would encourage people to use these questions as part of their discovery call. And if it helps and supports you, think about it as a sales script, like have those kind of questions that you always use, or you can leverage, and you’ll find the more that you kind of put those reps in in practice, they’ll feel more natural and you’ll likely come up with your own kind of versions of them that still get you to the same result, which is gathering as much information about the client as you can to also like, again, this information input kind of

00;21;35;20 – 00;21;55;28
Kirsten Schmidtke
takes you from the discovery call. The purpose is also to qualify like the next part of the sales stage. Right is to qualify hundred percent. Yeah. So the more information you’re gathering, you’re also able to take that away and essentially put them through your qualification filter. Right, so that, you know, if it makes sense to continue to move forward or maybe take a different action.

00;21;56;00 – 00;22;17;26
Rebecca Hay
This feels like one giant ad for my discovery call script, which is free, by the way. So I do have a discovery call script for designers. Amazing. You guys can download it. Rebecca.com/discovery. It is called a script, but you’re right, it’s a guide. What I give designers is a guide to take. And then you can add in what Kirsten saying today and like tweak it and make it your own is it’s making sure you don’t forget things.

00;22;17;26 – 00;22;33;01
Rebecca Hay
And the for me a script the way I treat the discovery call script is I want to have it in front of me so that I don’t kind of get caught up into my old ways of doing things, which is now I’m going to start talking and talking about myself and doing the projects, and then I hang up, I’m like, oh, shoot, I didn’t ask this.

00;22;33;01 – 00;22;54;25
Rebecca Hay
I didn’t ask, how did they hear about us? I didn’t ask what their timeline was or any any pertinent questions. So I agree that’s so important to have sort of a guide. It’s really more of a guide than it is a script. One question I have as it pertains to that is great. First, for asking these questions, how much does our offer have to do with it?

00;22;54;25 – 00;23;14;24
Rebecca Hay
Like at what point does that matter? Because I know a lot of designers just want to get on the phone and be like, okay, here’s how I work. So we do hourly and it’s $240 an hour. Is that okay? Because people were so concerned about the money? We can talk about that in a minute. But how important is it for us to talk about our offer or figure out, like, what to offer?

00;23;14;24 – 00;23;23;26
Rebecca Hay
Like maybe one client wants one thing and another client wants another thing. So at what point do we determine, okay, now is the time to talk about my service.

00;23;23;29 – 00;23;53;09
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. Well discovery call is exactly that is a is to discover the client, to discover where they are, discover where they want to go. I want to say the discovery call not to talk about pricing, but I think this is going to kind of depend on the size and scale of your business. Because some people, if you have enough work and you’ve got maybe a waitlist and you’ve got clients in the pipeline, like you’re going to want to find out in the discovery call if if their budget is in line with what you have to offer.

00;23;53;11 – 00;24;02;14
Kirsten Schmidtke
Now, that being said, if you’re a little bit earlier in maybe building your book of business, I encourage people to keep the pricing actually off the table in the discovery call.

00;24;02;16 – 00;24;28;03
Rebecca Hay
Interesting. Controversial because I always say you need to talk money upfront because I’ve had so many situations where I was burned. Maybe not in the beginning though. Maybe like midway into growing my business where I would get to the consultation and they were like, well, if we’d known or I said a proposal, they’re like, well, if we’d known it was going to be this much money, we never would have had you come to our house.

00;24;28;03 – 00;24;35;03
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. And so for me, I was like, oh no, I need to pre-qualify better. But this is interesting. Go on. I like having differing opinions.

00;24;35;03 – 00;24;40;17
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yes. Okay. Well, one way to also get ahead of that is asking the question like, do you have a budget for this project?

00;24;40;20 – 00;24;43;16
Rebecca Hay
No client ever says yes. Knows how to answer that.

00;24;43;19 – 00;24;49;27
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. And do it. And I mean no client. I’ll tell you right now, the technology industry and the coaching industry like, you know, you’re right.

00;24;49;27 – 00;24;51;08
Rebecca Hay
And they don’t know what they’re.

00;24;51;08 – 00;25;01;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
Rarely people have an answer to that question. Now they’re getting on a call with you and imagine that they’ve thought about that. This is going to cost money like they’re they’re it’s not free.

00;25;01;01 – 00;25;01;12
Rebecca Hay
They know.

00;25;01;12 – 00;25;18;28
Kirsten Schmidtke
It’s free. No, it’s not free. Okay. So discovery call. We’re going to keep it nice and tight and short. We make it 30 minutes. It’s 30 minutes. And you’re on and off the call because calls are super super effective. But we also don’t want to stretch and allow okay I’m going to take one giant step back okay. How do we do one thing is how we do everything.

00;25;18;28 – 00;25;27;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
So if you are really, really effective in your discovery call, you’re also already creating some container and like standards around how you operate, right?

00;25;27;11 – 00;25;39;03
Rebecca Hay
Yes, yes. Guys did you hear that? Stop. That’s so good. It’s what I talk about all the time. It’s like set that expectation. Yeah. From the beginning, from the get go you are in charge, not the other way around.

00;25;39;06 – 00;26;02;18
Kirsten Schmidtke
Absolutely. So now we’re stepping like a little bit into like the leadership aspect. Right. Like you as the expert again go back to the beginning of this conversation. You believe in the value that you have, which means I’ve only got 30 minutes to see if this is a fit. You don’t gonna to say that to the client, but you’re channeling that belief and this value value you have, you need to lead the client because they have no clue.

00;26;02;18 – 00;26;22;18
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like you said, they’ve no idea what this costs. So they have no clue about the world that you’re in. So you need to lead the conversation for sure in the discovery call and set expectations right off the bat. What they can expect now again, depending probably on the stage of your business, I found when people are really newer, you might still be also experimenting a little bit in the background with your pricing.

00;26;22;18 – 00;26;43;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
And so what I found is when you get a discovery call 30 minutes, you can say, you know, as a next step, I would love to take the information that you, you know, shared with me today and come back to you and provide an idea of what it would look like to work together. Now, I’m going to go back, as you said, I say money upfront and then you’re like is when they send a proposal and they say it’s too expensive.

00;26;43;10 – 00;26;47;14
Kirsten Schmidtke
So my question to you, though is do you present the proposal on a call or do you just send a proposal?

00;26;47;14 – 00;27;06;15
Rebecca Hay
So there’s one more step. Okay, I do have a discovery call. And from there I schedule and book a paid consultation. Okay. Which is a two hour on site meeting. After that two hour on site, I do present a proposal to them and I do what’s called what I call a circle back call. I do it on zoom.

00;27;06;24 – 00;27;08;00
Rebecca Hay
Some people do it in person.

00;27;08;06 – 00;27;08;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
Okay?

00;27;08;14 – 00;27;12;23
Rebecca Hay
I used to just send it into the ether and I would get quick.

00;27;12;24 – 00;27;13;27
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yep. Yeah.

00;27;13;29 – 00;27;30;09
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. So that’s what I was. So I don’t think a call like, if you’re going to invest $60,000 with a design firm, I don’t feel like a phone calls enough, at least not for me. And so then I’m like, okay, they need to pay for me to go to their house because I’m not going for free because those are the tire kickers and they never hire me.

00;27;30;12 – 00;27;51;08
Rebecca Hay
And so if they’re willing to pay, my consultation fee is $750 plus tax HST in the province of Ontario, if they’re willing to come do that, then they’re that already is pre-qualifying them and making them more committed. Yeah. Then I really ask more questions, get a sense of the scope of work, because what we do is very contingent on what walls are we moving, which room are we decorating?

00;27;51;08 – 00;28;01;22
Rebecca Hay
How much millwork do you need? Are we going to, you know, dig up the basement? Like what? Let me give you my thoughts and my feedback. And then I will put together a detailed, customized proposal on how we work together.

00;28;01;22 – 00;28;03;24
Kirsten Schmidtke
Okay. And then that you would deliver in that.

00;28;03;24 – 00;28;04;19
Rebecca Hay
I like to deliver on.

00;28;04;19 – 00;28;21;26
Kirsten Schmidtke
Zoom. On zoom. Perfect. Okay. Love it. You know, on the on the topic of proposals, I hope you’re all presenting your proposals on a call or face to face. I was talking to a client about proposals like, I just send them, I just send them. And I was like, hey, well, what’s your close rate? Or like, what is the well, it’s pretty low, right?

00;28;21;28 – 00;28;41;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
This is where like the mindset piece comes in. Because when we can just send our proposals, it’s like out of sight, out of mind. It’s like again, you’re kind of disconnecting from that belief in the value where if you’re standing, like having a conversation with the proposal in front of you, you’re standing firmly in the belief that what you’ve put in there like like in the proposal, the number, all of it is aligned to the value that you provide.

00;28;41;16 – 00;28;50;07
Kirsten Schmidtke
So I feel it’s a it’s also a mindset to present proposals in person, not to send them into the ether. So I love that that’s part of your process. I think that’s really important.

00;28;50;13 – 00;29;05;24
Rebecca Hay
I don’t think that’s the majority of the people listening today. I think there’s a few of you listening who are like, yep, I know that. Or yep, Rebecca, you told me. So I do it. But there’s a lot of designers listening who do not do that and who are just sending the email because it feels like less friction, less confrontation.

00;29;05;24 – 00;29;09;27
Rebecca Hay
It’s less nerve wracking. But you’re also less likely, I guess, to get the out.

00;29;09;28 – 00;29;33;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. I mean, I would encourage you to ask yourself, like, what would you need to believe to be true that setting, having a conversation for the proposal would be a better process, better use of your time. Because chances are, I have a feeling people listening are ambitious and are excited about what they’re doing. I don’t think they’re sending proposals because they’re lazy.

00;29;33;08 – 00;29;46;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
I know, I think proposals are often sent because there’s something blocking our thinking. There’s something that’s saying, oh, the client is going to say no anyway, or I charge too much money, so I’m just going to send it like you’ve already kind of cut your skin to send.

00;29;46;19 – 00;29;48;17
Rebecca Hay
It and hope that they say yes.

00;29;48;17 – 00;30;03;29
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, yeah. So what would you need to believe to be. So I would check in like what are you believing is true? You might be believe it. Yeah. Like I’m just going to kind of on a wish and a prayer versus what would I need to believe to be true? Okay. Well, I would need to believe that again.

00;30;04;02 – 00;30;21;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
I’m actually like, I have a my rate is really aligned to the value I provide. I go above and beyond for clients and like my clients say, yes, where do I sign? Right? And then you set up a proposal with that. Think that proposal? Sorry conversation with that line of thinking. And I just yeah, your close rate will absolutely go.

00;30;21;05 – 00;30;22;10
Rebecca Hay
Up close rate.

00;30;22;10 – 00;30;24;26
Kirsten Schmidtke
I know, I know we got a little bit off I know that’s okay.

00;30;24;26 – 00;30;33;15
Rebecca Hay
This is super valuable. Everybody listening is like shoot I wish I wasn’t driving right now I want to take notes. Can you just also walk us through what is a close rate?

00;30;33;15 – 00;30;57;10
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yes, I okay, so the one thing that I think is really forgotten about, I guess, let’s just say for small business owners is having some kind of metrics and measurements, right? Sometimes you can get really excited about the different dashboards that, you know, different maybe social media platforms or whatever provide us. But it’s also good for us to know, like is our effort leading to what we want, which I am guessing if you’re listening to this, you want more revenue.

00;30;57;18 – 00;31;16;20
Kirsten Schmidtke
If we’re talking about sales, it’s because we want to see more revenue coming into our business. So what a close rate is, is when we look at the amount of opportunities or proposals we’ve put on the table versus the amount that have actually led to a signature to a client saying, yes, a client paying an invoice. Right.

00;31;16;20 – 00;31;41;14
Kirsten Schmidtke
So maybe you send 12 proposals a year, ones one a month and six people sign, so your close rate would be 50%. There’s also a lot of, debate on what a good close rate looks like. Right. Everybody’s probably sitting going, oh, I just I have to get 100% right. Is it 100% close rate? The goal I would argue no, I don’t think 100% close rate is the goal.

00;31;41;14 – 00;31;47;27
Kirsten Schmidtke
I think that if you’re closing 100% of your clients, you need to raise your rates. Yeah. Did you hear.

00;31;47;27 – 00;31;51;21
Rebecca Hay
That and say that again? Let’s say that again. I want everyone to hear that that.

00;31;51;26 – 00;32;06;15
Kirsten Schmidtke
So if you are closing up 100% of your clients. So that means every proposal, the proposal you’re sending, people are signing off and saying, yes, it’s time to raise your rates. You want your closed rate to be closer to 30, 40%.

00;32;06;19 – 00;32;18;05
Rebecca Hay
Oh, I like this. I love that you’re giving us a percentage. People always ask, yeah. So like actually that sounds a lot lower than I would expect. Yeah, that’s actually really refreshing to hear.

00;32;18;21 – 00;32;38;28
Kirsten Schmidtke
I don’t know. I think the 30, 40% close rate, it just it gives you the opportunity to continue to grow and expand. And I mean, ultimately we want to be raising our rates year over year. Like, okay, also, yes, you should be raising your rates year over year, whether it’s even just 5% for inflation or however you know, you want to look at it.

00;32;38;28 – 00;33;14;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
That being said, don’t forget that every year you’re in business like, you know, even just by listening to this podcast, you’re investing in yourself, you’re growing your skill set, you’re delivering an even higher value to the client. So you should always be assessing your rates, I believe year over year. And that yeah, 30 to 40% close rate. So again looking at deals like on the table versus deals signed or proposals signed, it gives you an opportunity to maybe be a little bit more critical or analytical so that you can almost give yourself permission to, to say, oh yeah, I need to up the ante.

00;33;14;22 – 00;33;33;28
Rebecca Hay
So for those who don’t want to do the math, that means for every ten proposals you send out, we’re really hoping that 3 to 4 of them turn into projects. Yeah. And I think that the designers listening are going to feel like a huge weight’s been lifted off their shoulder because we are we can be so hard on ourselves when we put out a proposal.

00;33;33;28 – 00;33;45;19
Rebecca Hay
Why didn’t they pick me? What’s what’s going on? Why not? Why this? So that is really just wonderful math. I love math now.

00;33;45;21 – 00;34;08;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
You know, if you do get stuck in that thinking of, like, why didn’t they pick me? Why didn’t they sign? This is also the power of having that proposal conversation over a zoom meeting. Two. Right? Like, you know, if you really want to close hard versus close soft, what are the questions that I’ve, like I’ve asked in the past is like, have I left you with any questions that would keep you from saying yes?

00;34;08;21 – 00;34;14;25
Rebecca Hay
Oh, stop, say that again. That’s so good. Everybody write that down. I’m going to listen to this so I can write it down okay.

00;34;14;25 – 00;34;35;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
So when you’re at the end you’ve, you know, gone through the entire proposal. You just ask them, like, have I left you with any questions that would keep you from saying yes? So good. Because then like now, we now we might get into objection handling, which we’ll probably not have time to talk about today. But now you’re getting into like really understanding why it’s not 100% yes right now.

00;34;35;19 – 00;34;53;18
Kirsten Schmidtke
And I mean, again, our 3,040% mark, we’re hoping four times out of ten people are going to you right, are going to are going to say, yeah, I’m in, where do I sign? But what I will offer and probably not a lot of time to get into objection handling, but if you do find people start to ask questions, those are nuggets.

00;34;53;18 – 00;35;15;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
Okay. So if people end up saying no okay. But they when you ask that close question or did I leave you like what are any questions I can answer that. Would you know any questions that are going to keep you from saying yes, if you can start to record them or keep track of them, or at least have a note about them, chances are that that’s something that you want to address actually earlier in your sales cycle.

00;35;15;19 – 00;35;16;17
Rebecca Hay

00;35;16;20 – 00;35;45;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
Because if there’s an objection coming up that it’s maybe because we missed something, if there’s an objection, we’ve missed something earlier on in the conversation. So even though we may not get into like how to, you know, handle objections that could be gold for you going forward to help support, to improve your sales conversations. If you just start to, you know, gather what people are sharing as feedback with you are what’s keeping them from saying yes in the moment so that you can maybe tweak or pivot or do something differently next time.

00;35;45;13 – 00;35;50;11
Rebecca Hay
So good, so good. What if they say you’re too expensive?

00;35;50;14 – 00;35;52;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
That’s the best, right?

00;35;52;16 – 00;35;55;06
Rebecca Hay
I mean, not that it’s ever happened. Well, I mean, if you want to.

00;35;55;06 – 00;36;07;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
Be like, okay, so so some of this might be, you know, really new and really uncomfortable, which is also really okay. But you can simply ask, you know, the first question that came to my mind was compared to what?

00;36;07;03 – 00;36;11;23
Rebecca Hay
Oh, God, would you ask? Would you ask that? Oh, I mean, maybe not with attitude.

00;36;12;00 – 00;36;16;25
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. I was going to say definitely delivery matters here but like compare. Well, and.

00;36;16;27 – 00;36;19;09
Rebecca Hay
You’re a lawyer. I don’t think so. Yeah.

00;36;19;12 – 00;36;29;20
Kirsten Schmidtke
Well and compared to, I don’t know, compared to the cost of their house, it’s probably mean their house will cost more than your quote to renovate like you’ve lived in this home. Like, do you want to enjoy being in this home?

00;36;29;20 – 00;36;31;22
Rebecca Hay
Here’s what I feel like that takes balls to ask that question.

00;36;31;28 – 00;36;34;17
Kirsten Schmidtke
I was going to say I knew this was good. I was going to say, that’s the first question.

00;36;34;22 – 00;36;37;18
Rebecca Hay
That’s my question.

00;36;37;20 – 00;36;57;17
Kirsten Schmidtke
Well, in the end, if you guess so, you could say, like. And I guess I’m also thinking from a, that might also uncover if they’re getting multiple quotes too, right. If you ask, like compared to like so it depends. Yes. It depends how bold you want to be. So you could ask them compared to what you could also ask them like did you have a budget in mind?

00;36;57;17 – 00;37;21;02
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like you know, if they had an answer to that question earlier. Again, see objections. We’re hoping we get that information earlier in the sales conversation. But you could say like, did you have a budget in mind or was there a place that you felt comfortable starting? Right. Because maybe it’s even simply working backwards? I know that some projects you’re not gonna be able to, like, parse out into parts, but maybe it’s working backwards or coming up with a plan.

00;37;21;28 – 00;37;43;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
What I what I do find is often it’s not money, right? Right. Like, are you is it too expensive or is something else actually holding them back from committing? Definitely. This comes up in coaching. People get a little bit, oh, if I’m going to commit to coaching then I actually have to do the thing I said I was going to do, right.

00;37;43;16 – 00;37;46;00
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. I’m sorry. Why am I making a change?

00;37;46;03 – 00;38;19;26
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, exactly. Or make the change or put in the effort or put in the work or go after that really bold, audacious goal that I haven’t told anybody yet. Like. Right. So there’s an accountability part. You know, you and the audience would know better than me what may come up for somebody that’s looking for design services. But it could be asking them, you know, again, getting curious and asking them a question of like, you know, what other priorities you have right now or what, you know, maybe asking to understand a little bit, is it the cost, or did they just get worried about where, you know, they’re going to keep their dog like, yeah.

00;38;19;29 – 00;38;25;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
Oh, like if they’re gonna put their dog during renovations. Or maybe you don’t need like something else might come up in their brain that actually doesn’t have anything to do with money.

00;38;25;22 – 00;38;46;03
Rebecca Hay
I love that. And even if it does have to do with money, it’s interesting. I’ve been working with a few one on one clients this year, helping designers with their business, and there’s just one designer I was working with. We had a call, I think it was just last week. She was saying how I was helping her with a proposal, and she proposed a fee of, I don’t know, it was like $35,000 for the design, for the scope that this family wanted.

00;38;46;06 – 00;39;04;17
Rebecca Hay
And and they were like, no, it’s too expensive. And that there was no further conversation. Then a week or so later, the client came back and said, you know, we really do want to work with you. Is there any way you could find to work with us? And so that’s when she was able to say, well, like, absolutely, let’s have a conversation.

00;39;04;17 – 00;39;22;13
Rebecca Hay
And they got on a call and the designer asked the woman or whoever was in charge, man, and said, how much did you budget for a designer? Like, how much were you prepared? Because initially when she’d ask that question, they were mum. They didn’t say anything. And they said, well, actually, we’re really hoping, you know, to only spend about 20,000.

00;39;22;16 – 00;39;39;16
Rebecca Hay
She’s like, well that’s great. Now that’s a number I can work with. Let me look at the scope and see where we can trim it, because we’re not negotiating to do the same thing for less money. Everybody. So she’s like, let me see where I can, you know, tweak the scope. And they came to an agreement on a lesser scope.

00;39;39;16 – 00;39;45;25
Rebecca Hay
So prioritizing what the homeowner really wanted to prioritize. And so she still got the job.

00;39;45;27 – 00;40;11;25
Kirsten Schmidtke
I love what you just said at the end there. But they came to an agreement. I think that really has power. When you are presenting the proposal that could help somebody, if they do get into the question, the objection of like, oh, it’s too expensive, right? If you start the conversation, the proposal conversation with, you know, the purpose of this call is to come to an agreement on how we can work with you or make your dreams come true or make this project happen.

00;40;11;25 – 00;40;28;11
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’ve also kind of created some space for the client to go, oh, this isn’t a hard, fast number. We’re going to come to an agreement at the end, and maybe that can also help to put them a little bit at ease. So when that number comes up again, if you can ask like the your three questions might look different.

00;40;28;11 – 00;40;51;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
Right. But in this case if it’s too expensive okay. Well yeah. Did you have a number in mind. Well what’s your top priority. Like maybe it’s only one bathroom. Not all the bathrooms right now. Right. Like what? What what would feel good to you? You know, what had you hoped for? And just asking some questions to get a few layers deep so that, you know, in this case, hopefully they share that number right up front and you don’t miss all that time.

00;40;51;08 – 00;41;08;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
You can actually get, you know, redo the proposal and get that project going right after that, that sales call. So I love that language around. Right. Like the purpose of the proposal is to come to an agreement on how you can work together and how you can help one another or not help one another, I guess. But yes, you are.

00;41;08;16 – 00;41;14;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’re helping them as well. To make sure that the client feels that it’s. Yeah, it’s aligned for them.

00;41;14;08 – 00;41;31;08
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I love that. It’s so true. It’s amazing how often we get sort of caught up in our own heads about. Well, I put out a number and they didn’t want it, so I guess that’s the end. It’s like, no, let’s have an open conversation. And sometimes it is the end, but sometimes there’s actually opportunity to to find a way to work together.

00;41;31;12 – 00;41;48;24
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, yeah. All the it’s all about the questions though guys. If we’re taking anything away today it’s ask a lot of frickin questions. Got a lot of questions I love it. What else do you have for us? Woman I loving this conversation. I feel like we’ve already like we’re about we’re like, halfway in and it’s like, oh my God, there’s so much information already.

00;41;48;26 – 00;42;17;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
You know, you’re just we’re talking about pricing. So, you know, I know that that can be a really challenging part of the sales cycle. And I’m kind of going back to that discovery call. Question two. Right. Do we do we share our pricing. Do we share our numbers in the discovery call. And I think one thing that can be really helpful when you think about your pricing is just really getting clear on what your, your revenue goal is and kind of what standards are required to help you get there.

00;42;18;00 – 00;42;38;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
And, you know, like, it sounds like you have a standard in that your consultation is $750. Right. And so that’s something that in a discovery call, you could say, like my process starts like $750 consultation. Well, I know that these projects can get to be five, six figures, but the client at least knows that the next step requires skin in the game.

00;42;38;11 – 00;42;58;29
Kirsten Schmidtke
Right? So at least we’re getting the number part going and not leaving it. Kind of like open that we work for free. Again, the client’s aware of that. But I think setting, you know, knowing what that standard is and sharing that with a client can be really, really helpful and powerful. Again, for you to help, to kind of qualify if the client is a fit for you and then the kind of the second part of that is starting to really.

00;42;58;29 – 00;43;17;21
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. Get clear on like what is your revenue goal? Okay. You know, getting clear on your offers, getting clear on the standards, which would include your pricing on, you know, what what standards get you to that goal as well, can be really helpful to take a little bit of heat off of you because the numbers are just numbers.

00;43;17;21 – 00;43;42;07
Kirsten Schmidtke
I actually heard someone say once, like practicing your numbers out loud is like the best thing you can do for yourself as a entrepreneur, solopreneur, sole proprietor, whatever. However, your business is run because every time you speak them out loud, they just start to carry less and less weight. And then to take it one step further, just repeat those numbers as if you’re like memorizing someone’s telephone number, like they’re just numbers.

00;43;42;14 – 00;43;57;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
It doesn’t matter if there’s like a dollar sign at the front or what the area code is or whatever it might be, but just getting in the practice of saying 4500 or 30,500 or whatever it is, that they just kind of start to kind of like, yeah.

00;43;57;13 – 00;43;58;01
Rebecca Hay
Fall.

00;43;58;01 – 00;44;21;24
Kirsten Schmidtke
Off the tip of your tongue versus you feeling they get caught in your throat when the time comes to, say, pricing out loud. Because that’s something that I, I believe I might have taken for granted moving from a corporate sales career. There’s a there’s a mindset piece here, too, but moving from talking in hundreds of thousands and tens of millions was like normal in the technology industry.

00;44;22;01 – 00;44;43;12
Kirsten Schmidtke
So then to move here, okay. Like they’re just numbers because you’re talking tens of millions. Like it’s just it was a little bit arbitrary, just was what it was. That being said though, again, there’s there’s a different weight and connection to those numbers. When you’re selling your creativity, your strengths, your skill set, right, when you’re when you’re an entrepreneur or a sole proprietor.

00;44;43;14 – 00;45;08;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
So I find that for me, the number thing wasn’t really scary. But it’s like attaching it, so to speak to my value is a little bit scary to speak out loud, right? So the more I could just talk those numbers out loud and practice saying them out loud, even if it was in like, well, to myself, whether it was in a peer to peer conversation where I just practiced with other coaches to say them out loud.

00;45;08;10 – 00;45;17;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
Then when the time comes with the client, yeah, you don’t get that, that fear. Like it’s just so much more natural because you’ve been saying these numbers forever.

00;45;17;03 – 00;45;34;24
Rebecca Hay
I love this. It’s the idea that we have our own sticker shock. And so we put together a proposal and yep, it all makes sense. We’ve looked at the number of hours and I’m going to have to pay this person or the square footage or whatever your pricing model is, but then it’s like, whoa, $15,000. I’m just picking a number out of a hat.

00;45;34;26 – 00;45;56;10
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. Oh my gosh. And we think I’d never pay $15,000 for that. Duh. Because you could do it. But we do have our own sticker shock. And sometimes we forget, especially early on in our careers, that the person that we are trying to serve has a different sticker shock. Yep, they are at a different level. That’s how they can afford a professional service.

00;45;56;13 – 00;46;21;06
Rebecca Hay
They are not a student, right? And if that’s your audience and that’s a very different situation, but it is that sticker shock is getting over that. And I love what you say about repeating it. And I’m thinking I should do something like this in designers room, where, similar to the sales practice calls that I did this summer, I did the same thing where every, every other day I was on the phone with someone and we were practicing our discovery call so that when the time comes and a real life client comes, it’s like old hat.

00;46;21;06 – 00;46;48;04
Rebecca Hay
You just say it and you’re present and you’re not stressing over the number or whatever it is that you feel like you need to say, or the questions that you feel uncomfortable asking. And the more you practice it, even in the mirror probably, or even just in your car, talking to yourself, saying it out loud and hearing yourself say a big number of 40, 500, $12,000, $30,000 or this is our process or whatever, it is hard for you to say.

00;46;48;07 – 00;46;53;17
Rebecca Hay
If you practice it, it’ll become easier and then it’ll look more natural. And so you’ll probably do a better job selling well.

00;46;53;17 – 00;47;16;24
Kirsten Schmidtke
And that’s you’re kind of reading my mind too, in that that practice helps you to be like, be prepared. Like there’s a preparedness that again, if we go to the leadership aspect, right, like sales requires leadership, you need to lead the client like the client doesn’t know what they don’t know. That’s why they want to hire you. They want an expert.

00;47;16;24 – 00;47;39;26
Kirsten Schmidtke
They want to pay for that professionalism. They want to pay for someone who can do it right and do it well, and that they don’t have to stress or worry. And when we come across as confident, grounded, aligned to our numbers like the client feels that like they feel that clarity, you’re clear. They’re clear. You feel confident, they’ve got confidence in you right.

00;47;40;02 – 00;47;57;15
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’re prepared. They’re they’re going to come to the table prepared. You know, I said before in the discovery call, like how you do one thing is how you do everything. So you set the tone in those first 30 minutes with that client, like, I have 30 minutes. We start at ten, we end at 1030. Now, the client knows that like they need to show up to calls on time.

00;47;57;15 – 00;48;18;25
Kirsten Schmidtke
They need to be prepared because you’re coming prepared. Right? So that level of preparedness can be, I guess, almost like amplified and grown if you. Yeah, you put in the practice of maybe even I mean, we’ve all got devices we can record ourselves speaking. You can delete it later. But I find hitting record, it puts a little pressure on me that I’m like, oh no, I have to like, try and say the thing.

00;48;18;26 – 00;48;19;03
Kirsten Schmidtke
Sorry.

00;48;19;03 – 00;48;20;29
Rebecca Hay
Like video like you record yourself on video.

00;48;21;00 – 00;48;42;09
Kirsten Schmidtke
I did that actually for a job interview. When I actually for my, when I, when I was applying to Amazon Web Services, I’ll never forget a one of the job. I always say plan was to get the job at AWS and plan B was there was no plan B, there’s only planning. And that’s what I did. I practiced my response to, why do you want to work here on video?

00;48;42;14 – 00;48;44;17
Rebecca Hay
Good for you. That’s clever.

00;48;44;19 – 00;48;47;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
And then we’ll watch it back and then we’d practice again.

00;48;47;05 – 00;48;48;28
Rebecca Hay
And spoiler alert, you got the job.

00;48;49;05 – 00;48;53;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah I did, yeah I worked there for five years. So yeah.

00;48;53;21 – 00;48;55;09
Rebecca Hay
That’s wild. That’s amazing.

00;48;55;09 – 00;48;58;13
Kirsten Schmidtke
I didn’t have to submit a video or anything. I mean, those interviews obviously were in person.

00;48;58;20 – 00;49;20;14
Rebecca Hay
So wait, so would you go back and watch the video of yourself, or did you just record it just to feel like, okay, I mean, this is like pressure situation both. So you like watch it and be like when I used to do like film and television like classes when I was at Vancouver Film School, you would film yourself doing an audition and then you would watch it, like pick yourself apart and then figure out, okay, well, I have a weird tic.

00;49;20;15 – 00;49;23;02
Rebecca Hay
Would I do that or like, let’s fix it. Is that what you did?

00;49;23;05 – 00;49;45;18
Kirsten Schmidtke
Well, I did, but these were this my goal was to like there was like 32nd pitch essentially. So they weren’t really, really, really long videos. But I would watch it back more for my language. Like did I pause or did that make sense? Or is that the word I wanted to say? But definitely just hitting the recording button just, I don’t know, puts you into a different level of accountability that now I need to say the thing that I’m going to say.

00;49;45;18 – 00;50;04;11
Kirsten Schmidtke
So yeah, if you don’t have someone to practice your sales numbers with, like, yeah, I encourage you just to, yeah, hit record on your phone and just practice yourself saying it. And if you don’t want to watch yourself back, that’s totally cool too. That might be like, you know, the next step or the next level of, but growing that.

00;50;04;11 – 00;50;22;22
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, that sales like that strengthen your skill sales skills. But it just yeah. Speaking it out loud again. It just gets you into the habit of of and honestly the pressure I find to record yourself or like to talk to like a peer is actually way more difficult than talking to a client sometimes.

00;50;22;25 – 00;50;36;18
Rebecca Hay
Well, it also, if you just do phone calls like my discovery calls are not zoom, they’re just on the telephone because I find I can focus a lot better. You could then, if that’s how you do it, just do a voice memo, record your voice and play it back and hear how you say things. Do you say like a lot?

00;50;36;18 – 00;50;53;28
Rebecca Hay
Do you pause? Do you say, a lot, a lot of us are not aware of how we speak unless we’re podcasters and we hear voices all the time and I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe I said that again. Oh my God, I laughed. So crazy. Oh, that’s a great tip I like that.

00;50;53;28 – 00;51;12;19
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, yeah. And you can do that for your 32nd pitch, so to speak, to not to put a lot of pressure on the word pitch, but it is really great exercise for you to take away. You know, just some feedback from if someone asks you like what are you up to? Or what do you do or what brings you to this event?

00;51;12;19 – 00;51;21;15
Kirsten Schmidtke
By the way, my favorite networking question what brings you here? I love that question versus I am all about the questions. I mentioned that before to.

00;51;21;17 – 00;51;23;05
Rebecca Hay
Always discovering something new about.

00;51;23;05 – 00;51;40;11
Kirsten Schmidtke
Our, But that is my favorite question, that we’re like, what brought you here? Right? Because there’s not that pressure to identify ourselves with our work. But, in any event, I do I do encourage people to already know that know that 32nd, you know, what are you up to? And it’s always such a simple formula, right. Like, who are you?

00;51;40;11 – 00;52;02;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like, you know, who do you serve? You know, how or how do you help? And then how can people work with you or find you is kind of the formula I work with clients on. But that that’s another way to kind of use that, like recording camcorder, you know, watch it back method. It’s just knowing that 32nd or we call them elevator pitches or the cocktail line conversation.

00;52;02;25 – 00;52;16;08
Kirsten Schmidtke
Or recently with someone we were talking about. It’s like it’s the airplane landing pitch, right? When you’re, like, landing in the airplane and all of a sudden you’ve been a flight for like five hours, but you decide to talk to the person side.

00;52;16;10 – 00;52;18;02
Rebecca Hay
It’s so true. What can we do that?

00;52;18;02 – 00;52;33;00
Kirsten Schmidtke
Would you tell them, well, if you know your 32nd pitch, like you never know that could be your next client. Or they could refer you to somebody or you could write. But there’s always like, it’s like the baggage carousel or it’s the it’s that like weird waiting time where we’re all like, you know, the plane is like getting to the gate.

00;52;33;00 – 00;52;37;05
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’re everyone’s waiting to get off. Like, you might have a 32nd opportunity to share what you’re up to.

00;52;37;05 – 00;52;54;02
Rebecca Hay
So, okay, I feel like you need to come into designer’s room, and you need to teach us how to craft a 32nd, right? Because I would also, like, run. So that’s gonna happen. And before we, like, kind of start as we’re starting to get towards the end of our time together, I just want to circle back to this conversation on goals.

00;52;54;05 – 00;53;21;00
Rebecca Hay
I love setting goals for my business, both financially and otherwise, but I’m super curious about how much emphasis do you put on setting sales goal is our sales goals or revenue goals? What drives you as a sales person like? Is that something to push you forward? I’m speaking for myself anyways. As a designer, when I was initially starting my firm, yeah, I wanted to make money, but I never thought of it that way.

00;53;21;00 – 00;53;39;01
Rebecca Hay
I never thought sales goals. I definitely never thought about conversion. I didn’t know what that was. Yeah, and I didn’t think about how many people do I need to come through on the phone to go to their house to get to so many projects and what size? And I do all of that now, and I teach a lot of that to designers.

00;53;39;04 – 00;53;56;19
Rebecca Hay
But I was so focused on, I want to get in a magazine, I want to get a bigger project. Yes. I want to make more money. I’m wondering if it’s better for your self-esteem, for the growth of your business, to be more focused a little bit on the sales goals. I’m just curious your thoughts and experience with that.

00;53;56;19 – 00;54;18;15
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, I love a sales goal. I do love okay, I’ll tell you this goals need to be measurable. You know, actually, if you I know we’ll talk a little at the end. You can where you can find me, but if you actually if you send me a DM on Instagram and just DM me goal, I do have something that can help support you in this process.

00;54;18;17 – 00;54;42;02
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like kind of like a worksheet, something for you to work through. But you know, with goals, it’s so it’s important that they’re not arbitrary because they need to be measurable. So we can also see progress. And I think that that’s a big thing that gets missed in business ownership or entrepreneurship. When we’re building something is we can get really caught up in like where we aren’t like we get no, absolutely not.

00;54;42;02 – 00;54;43;26
Rebecca Hay
I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

00;54;43;28 – 00;55;04;17
Kirsten Schmidtke
We can really get caught up in like, but I’m not where I should be, should right, or where I thought I would be or where whenever. But when we have a goal that’s a measurable, then we can we can actually measure our progress towards that. And a sales goal absolutely is measurable, right? It gives us a number. It gives us something that we can break down into parts.

00;55;04;17 – 00;55;34;06
Kirsten Schmidtke
We can look at it from a monthly perspective. We can look at it from how our offers are maybe kind of balanced to pursuing that goal. What we need to do more of, what we need to do less of. So while a sales goal might sound a little bit overwhelming that you need to commit to a number, I find that it can actually really support in creating clarity in all sorts of other ways, in your business, to really propel you forward in your decision making, in your budgeting.

00;55;34;08 – 00;55;57;17
Kirsten Schmidtke
I know financials can feel like a really big, daunting left. Yeah. And I’m not going to sit here, too and pretend I’m a finance expert. I’m not a CPA by any means. Or someone from the finance industry, but just knowing how you’re driving cash flow, like having a sales revenue goal, and starting to break that down in a meaningful way.

00;55;57;17 – 00;56;08;11
Kirsten Schmidtke
Like I said, it can just provide such clarity on where to spend your energy, where to spend your time, and essentially where to spend your money. Right? Where to invest in different parts of your business to.

00;56;08;14 – 00;56;27;16
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I think that if more designers and creatives, myself included in the early years, thought more about that, we would be very different on how we spent our time. I think a lot of creatives, we do love the craft, and so we do get caught up sometimes a little bit in that, and we just want to do that.

00;56;27;26 – 00;56;46;24
Rebecca Hay
And then we hold back from maybe hiring in a support role so that could free us up to have these phone calls, to free us up to do the networking and do the sales. And I think if we were really thinking about sales goals or thinking about revenue, it would probably change our behavior in our business. I know it would have for me earlier than than I did.

00;56;46;24 – 00;57;12;09
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s there is for sure a mindset piece around this too, right? Like being open to what is possible for growth in your business, being open to receiving someone, saying yes to the, you know, $50,000 project when the only project you’ve done is 5000 to date. Like there is a mindset piece to required to keep yourself open and available to access those.

00;57;12;09 – 00;57;26;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
Those bigger numbers. But creating the space to do that and and having again, at a really high level, understanding how the parts and the cash flow is moving can really empower you to grow your business.

00;57;26;19 – 00;57;42;25
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love this. I would love to talk more about sales goals, but we have definitely gone over time. So we will we will reserve that for another podcast or we’ll have you come to designer’s room so that you can teach and preach on all of the things sales, because I know as designers it’s not our favorite topic.

00;57;42;25 – 00;58;01;29
Rebecca Hay
We know it’s important and we know that oftentimes and I’m I’m generalizing, of course, I based on my own experience that it can be a little scary, it can feel a little overwhelming. And unfortunately, it’s necessary. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending where you come from, it’s necessary. So thank you for having this conversation today. It’s been so nice. So fun to have you here in my studio.

00;58;01;29 – 00;58;17;19
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, this is fun. Next time we’ll have you back and we’re going to have, like, a whole set up. It’s going to be way nicer, way fancier. But before we go today, I would love for you to share a last nugget of wisdom with all of our listeners today in.

00;58;17;22 – 00;58;25;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
The business, your sales cycle, your sales process, your sales communication, it’s all one big experiment.

00;58;25;23 – 00;58;27;14
Rebecca Hay
Yes, I love that.

00;58;27;15 – 00;58;58;06
Kirsten Schmidtke
There’s no right way. There’s no wrong way. We’re all out there trying to do our best at what we do and serve powerfully. Whatever way that that means, and contribute in a meaningful way when we are, you know, sending that proposal to a client, maybe after this call, you felt inspired the next time you’re going to do it in person, or you’re going to do it on a zoom meeting instead of sending it an email, like, remember that you’re experimenting with your approach, you’re experimenting with the language you use.

00;58;58;06 – 00;59;23;01
Kirsten Schmidtke
You’re experimenting with maybe some of those questions when objections come up, maybe you’re going as far as you know, they’re asking for referrals, asking for test. And what like anytime you’re reaching out to a client, like it’s always an opportunity to experiment. So that’s what I would leave you with is, is if you see sales as an experiment, that you’re running in your business all the time, it can actually make it kind of fun.

00;59;23;04 – 00;59;42;19
Rebecca Hay
And it takes the emphasis on having to get it perfect. Yeah, it takes the emphasis off. Did I say for myself, it takes business off of the need for perfection because you will not get it perfect. It doesn’t exist. It’s progress all day long I love that. Thank you so much, Kirsten, for being here today. It’s been so wonderful.

00;59;42;22 – 00;59;44;23
Rebecca Hay
Where can everyone find and follow you?

00;59;44;26 – 01;00;04;25
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yeah. So my favorite places to hang out are Instagram and LinkedIn. Both my full name. So Kirsten Schmitt key. Lots of vowels, not lots of consonants. But yeah. So at Kirsten Schmidt Quay, you can find me on Instagram and on LinkedIn and that’s where I like to be. So let’s connect. I’d love to to meet some of you.

01;00;04;26 – 01;00;10;04
Rebecca Hay
Fantastic. And I will also link all of that in our show notes. Thanks again for being with us here today.

01;00;10;04 – 01;00;15;16
Kirsten Schmidtke
Yes, we did it. Yeah, well.

01;00;15;18 – 01;00;37;15
Rebecca Hay
All right. That was incredible. Kirsten, thank you so much for showing up in my studio in person, looking fab in your hot pink sweater. So guys, go see it on YouTube. She looked amazing. But more than that for sharing such specific takeaways with my audience. Truthfully, I did not know where our conversation was going to go. I just knew I wanted to talk to her about sales, that she had a ton of knowledge and she did not disappoint.

01;00;37;17 – 01;01;02;08
Rebecca Hay
My biggest takeaway is questions questions, questions, questions. It’s all about asking more, but asking the right questions. I hope you took notes on those questions. And the best part about this conversation with Kirsten is we kept on talking and I invited her to come join me. Inside designer’s Room in 2025. She will be joining us for the first quarter to talk about sales.

01;01;02;08 – 01;01;27;03
Rebecca Hay
She’s going to teach her technique or method for creating a 32nd elevator pitch. I cannot wait for that. I want that for myself and how to set sales goals, what matters and what to look for. It’s going to be an incredible 90 minute workshop with Kirsten inside designers room. If you’re not already a member, you’re going to want to run on over and join us before the doors close at the end of the year, December 31st.

01;01;27;03 – 01;01;44;24
Rebecca Hay
We are closing the doors for the first time in a long time to Designers Room, and you won’t be able to get in until the end of Q1. So if you want to hear all the incredible sales tactics, if you want to have a hot seat with Kirsten, ask your questions inside. Designers room is the place to be.

01;01;44;27 – 01;02;10;19
Rebecca Hay
Head on over to Rebecca hair.com/designers room and you can join Kirsten and myself in that call. I hope you guys enjoyed this today. I hope you are off to a great Christmas Hanukkah festive celebration and whatever floats your boat and that you’re enjoying the winter season, but that you are also ready and excited for the new year because 2025 is going to be a good one.

01;02;10;22 – 01;02;20;06
Rebecca Hay
I’ll see you soon.