Module 6
How to Speak Like an Upmarket Professional
How you speak is the most visible signal of whether you belong in the room. This module covers the vocabulary that signals tier, how to discuss price without defending it, and the writing a client reads before deciding.
Vocabulary
- 6.1 Words That Raise the Tier, and Words That Lower It Replace the words that sound like a shop with the ones a professional uses.
- 6.2 Concerns, Not Objections Call pushback a concern, and you and the client can look at it together.
- 6.3 What to Say When Asked Why It Costs That Answer with one fact about the work, and then let the client speak.
- 6.4 Formal or Casual, and How to Tell Which the Client Wants Match what the client called you and how they signed, and you will sound right.
Conversation
- 6.5 Why Small Talk Fails and What Works Instead Open with something only this client could answer, and the first minute is about them.
- 6.6 Anchor, Reveal, Encourage Give the client one short fact about yourself before you ask the next question.
- 6.7 Listening Is the Skill That Makes You Interesting Let the client do the talking, and they leave the meeting trusting you.
- 6.8 Adapting to the Person in Front of You Hear how the client talks in the first few minutes, and talk that way back.
- 6.9 Questions Without an Interrogation Build each question from the client's last answer, and say something before the next one.
Writing
- 6.10 What Your Emails Say Before You Do Write every email short enough to read on a phone and plain enough to forward.
- 6.11 The Follow-Up That Adds Something Write again only with something new for the client, not to say you are waiting.
- 6.12 Text, Message, and Phone Answer where the client wrote, in fewer and warmer words, and within the hour.
- 6.13 A Proposal That Wins Without Selling Open with what the client told you, offer one plan, and leave yourself out.
- 6.14 Answering a Curt or Demanding Message Answer what the message asks, not how it was asked, once you have stopped reacting.