Most business owners walk into a sales call with an agenda. They want to be impressive, they want to sound smart, and they want the person across from them to want what they're offering. Amanda put it simply on this episode: "We want people to want what we want them to want." The trouble is that looking good and sounding good usually get judged by personal preferences, or the preferences of a friend group, and much less by what is actually happening in the business in black and white.

In this Double Kaufman episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, co-host Rebecca Kaufman (Amanda's sister, who has also worked on her team) puts Amanda in the hot seat on the skill underneath every winning sales call: listening. Amanda, founder of Clairvenu, covers how real-world feedback rewrote the story she told herself about being seen, the gap between prediction and observation, what a sales call is really for, the point where client trust is most likely to break, and the sales message that pushes buyers away.

Winning Sales Calls Are Built on Listening

The common thread in a winning sales call is attention on the buyer. Rebecca frames it this way: "your goal should be to understand the person across the call from you, not make yourself look good."

How It Matters: Amanda sees the priority of looking good or sounding good play out a lot. It shows up as working so hard to impress people, when a deeper, more meaningful, more connecting conversation is what moves things forward. Rebecca adds that it starts long before the call. When people first design an offer, it is often built around what they want to offer and what they think would be helpful, instead of what the market is looking for and actively engaged with.

How to Do It: Get to feedback early. Rebecca's point is that the quicker an idea meets real people, the quicker it becomes something someone else sees value in. Listening shows up in market research, in sales calls, and in fulfillment, so every conversation is information about what buyers actually need.

Common Mistake: Ideating in isolation. Rebecca names the trap of building an offer alone, "or with the help of AI who's always going to tell you that you're right."

Real-World Feedback Can Rewrite the Story in Your Head

The story most people tell themselves about how they come across gets built in isolation. Amanda only learned hers was wrong by going out into the world and paying attention to how people actually responded.

How It Matters: Amanda didn't see herself in the image of the successful businesswomen she saw online (she describes herself as "five foot three soaking wet"), and it held her back. In her words: "I was scared to be seen online. I was scared to sell. I was scared that I wouldn't be taken seriously." Her self-talk was negative and isolated, an echo chamber that kept reinforcing a downtrodden identity.

How to Do It: Get out and be in the world. Amanda went on camera, had conversations, went to events, and connected and networked with people. They responded to her differently than she expected, and the old story stopped lining up. "And so then I was able to release the story because I went out there because I was listening." Rebecca's summary: listen and get the data to refute the story your brain is telling you. Three million dollars in sales later, with a personal brand built out of her suburban home, Amanda's conclusion is that "the real skill is listening to what people need, what they want, what they say, what they do, what their behaviors are."

Common Mistake: Listening to everyone equally. Amanda learned to be careful who she listened to, and she applies that to her own show. People speak with incredible conviction about their perspective, so it pays to consider the source and ask whether that person has built something you actually want. If the answer is no, her advice is warm and clear: "Then I love you. Go find someone who has built those things that you really do respect."

Most People Listen to Predict, and the Best Sellers Listen to Observe

Listening is hard because the brain is wired to anticipate. Amanda explains that the better we are at predicting the future, the safer we feel, so we finish other people's sentences in our heads to confirm we were right.

How It Matters: Once the brain moves into "prediction as opposed to observation," real listening stops. On a sales call, that means missing the very information that would help most.

How to Do It: Listen for the thing that isn't said. Amanda breaks that down practically: tone of voice, conviction, and (more advanced) the variability in someone's behavior, so you notice when they are getting uncomfortable or emotional, or when they might be deceiving you. When a conversation gets close to a nerve and the trust isn't there yet, that is super useful information, and it comes from paying closer attention.

Common Mistake: Reading deception as bad character. Amanda is clear that people don't do it because they're "moral trash." All humans do it. Rebecca adds that it is usually a coping mechanism, sometimes as simple as trying to look better in the moment, and people are often not even aware they're doing it. Amanda's take is that it signals discomfort, which points to better questions.

Sales Is Raising Awareness So Buyers Can Make an Informed Decision

Amanda defines sales as raising awareness of the factors that are important to the person in front of you, so they can make "an empowered informed decision." The goal is to gain clarity together about what they would like to do moving forward.

How It Matters: Getting there often means talking about uncomfortable things with someone you don't have a ton of rapport with yet. That kind of conversation requires a level of trust on both sides.

How to Do It: Ask the real questions. Amanda's examples: How long have you been struggling with this? How under supported are you really? What have you tried that's failed? What's making this so important to you in your life right now? Then look for patterns across all of your conversations. When you say a certain thing, or use a certain tonality or kind of language, how do people respond? Rebecca adds that analyzing your calls gets you out of theorizing and shows you what buyers are genuinely struggling with.

Common Mistake: Hoping the call goes well. Amanda's newest saying is "when you care, you need to care about how you care." If you really care, you care how your sales calls go on average, instead of blindly going in and praying it works out.

Client Trust Is Most Likely to Break After the Sale

A lot of businesses stumble after the sale, during onboarding. Amanda learned through listening that "the trust is the most likely to be shaken after the sale."

How It Matters: Many business owners, especially at six-figure levels, treat the conversion moment as king, because that's where the cash flow is. Meanwhile, clients are hearing noise from so many directions and sources that it's hard to blame them for not remembering the curriculum, where to find the login, or what the next step is.

How to Do It: Design the program so clients get a win as fast as possible, one that reinforces their decision, and then build bigger wins over time. Rebecca shares a mentor's framing from a program they were both in: leave as little unknown as possible, so clients always know the next step and the next win they're working toward. Amanda's rule for communication is simple: "expect to tell them 10 times."

Common Mistake: Listening only to complaints. Amanda's insight came from the data. She expected people to log in, they didn't, and she got curious. Very often they meant to and simply got busy. Sending a login once at the height of that excitement and never following up isn't, as she puts it, "respecting their reality."

Judging Your Buyer Is the Worst Sales Message There Is

Messages that tell a buyer what they lack push people away. Amanda describes the message that amounts to "I judge you for not having this, this, this capability that I'm really good at and you should totally hire me" as "literally the worst sales message ever."

How It Matters: There is a tendency among a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in services, to blame the client for not wanting it enough, not being educated enough, or not having the right priorities. Amanda's response: "That's the reason they hired you, bro." The reason they hold those priorities is valid. If you know better, it's your responsibility to create a conversation that lets them challenge that perspective, "and that is literally what you are paid for."

How to Do It: Keep extending offers, and communicate them extremely well: the benefit to the person, and the cost of waiting to activate your service. Shape what you put out there to align with what buyers need, want, and desire. Amanda says you'll know it's working when the response you get from people improves, and when it feels almost like you're not convincing anybody.

Common Mistake: Begging for attention. So many business owners feel they have to be visible, post all the time, and pitch, pitch, pitch, which turns into asking people to pick them. Amanda's verdict: "that convincing is exhausting because it's ineffective." Slowing down to listen can feel like a cost you can't afford, and she would argue the bigger cost is to keep making poor pitches.

Conclusion

Winning sales calls share one habit, and that habit is listening: to the market before you build the offer, to real feedback over the story in your head, to what a buyer leaves unsaid, to the patterns across your conversations, and to the data after the sale. Rebecca sums up the payoff: the better listener you are, the less you care about how you come off and the more you care about what that person genuinely needs, and your close rates and products both improve. Amanda adds that you get better clients too. Start with the next conversation on your calendar. You'll hear more than you expect.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Episode 383 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do winning sales calls have in common?

They are built on listening. Rebecca describes the goal as understanding the person across the call from you instead of making yourself look good, and Amanda adds that listening to what people need, want, say, and do is the real skill behind her sales.

How can I become a better listener on sales calls?

Shift from prediction to observation. Amanda explains that the brain is wired to anticipate and finish people's sentences, so practice listening for what isn't said: tone of voice, conviction, and changes in behavior that signal discomfort. Then look for patterns in how people respond across all of your calls.

What is the real purpose of a sales call?

Amanda describes sales as raising awareness of the factors that matter to the person in front of you so they can make an empowered, informed decision. That usually means asking uncomfortable questions, like how long they've been struggling and what they've tried that failed, with care and trust on both sides.

How do I keep client trust after the sale?

Plan for onboarding as carefully as the sale. Amanda found that trust is most likely to be shaken after the sale, so give clients a fast first win, leave as little unknown as possible about the next step, and expect to tell them important information 10 times.

Where can I get help building a sales and acquisition system that converts?

Amanda's free live training, How Serious Service Businesses Build High-Converting Funnels & Acquisition Systems That Run 24/7, walks through how service businesses build funnels and acquisition systems that bring in the right buyers. Register at https://clairvenu.com/training. If you want an outside perspective on your own sales process, apply for a free Revenue Clarity Conversation at https://clairvenu.com.