I was making dinner — a veggie stir-fry — when my phone rang. Nobody calls at that hour except telemarketers. Sure enough, within seconds: “Madam, do you prefer red or white wine?” I politely declined and hung up. What struck me wasn’t the annoyance of the call, but the fact that in 2021, this model was still alive. Someone had calculated that making enough calls would yield enough sales — and that the math worked out even accounting for all the people like me who immediately said no. The quantity model. The one we need to leave behind.
In Selling Like We’re Human, Part 2 closes with a chapter that might be the most practically liberating of the whole book: a frank conversation about sales energy, what “enough” really means, and why protecting how you show up to sales conversations matters more than stacking more of them.
More Calls Don’t Automatically Mean More Sales
Emma-Louise, a Business and Mindset Coach, was once known for a 100% close rate — and shared something honest with me when I invited her onto my podcast to talk about it. She’d recently had three people say no in a single week. Why? Her coach had encouraged her to get on calls even with people who weren’t ideal clients. Two of those three, she knew going in, probably weren’t ready to invest. The closes dried up — not because she’d gotten worse, but because the quality filter had been removed.
Lynn, an Advisor and Mentor, shared a similar story from the opposite angle: a client who was clearly not a good fit, whom she’d said yes to anyway because “a butt in the seat is better than an empty seat.” The relationship was difficult from the start, the client accused her of being more focused on money than on helping her, and Lynn had a clear-eyed realisation: those two assumptions — that she should help everyone, and that any paying client is better than none — had to go.
And then Cathy, from our Sales Lab, put her finger on a third truth: her close rate when she actually got on calls was excellent. The problem was she wasn’t having enough of them. So what these three stories collectively tell us is that talking to more people doesn’t automatically produce more sales; talking to the wrong people produces no sales and a lot of drained energy; and having no conversations at all produces no sales either. The sweet spot is the right conversations, with the right people, at the right time.
What’s Your Enough?
Before you can think clearly about how many sales conversations to have, you need to know what you’re actually working toward. Not an aspirational six-figure target someone else set for you. Your actual number: the monthly income that covers your real life — rent, insurance, food, transport, a rainy-day fund.
My enough is higher than most of my friends’ because I live in Switzerland, where everything costs more. Our longer-term plan includes spending part of the year at our place in Sicily, where the same lifestyle costs about a third of what it costs here. Everyone’s enough is different, and pretending otherwise is one of the more quietly harmful myths in the entrepreneur space.
I love the concept of the “upper enough” that Andy Mort shared with me, originally from Paul Jarvis: the number at the other end of the scale. When you hit that number in a given month or year, you redirect your attention from revenue-generating work to whatever matters most to you — surfing, painting, time with family. The upper enough is a direct challenge to the scarcity mindset that insists you should always be earning more. A 2010 study backs this up: beyond roughly $75,000 per year, additional income doesn’t meaningfully increase reported happiness. That’s not an argument against ambition — it’s an argument for clarity about what you’re actually optimising for.
Install Energy Gates
Here’s my own cautionary tale. In the early LinkedIn consulting years, I talked to anyone who reached out. No intake form, no clear criteria, no limit on availability. Eight out of nine times, they thanked me warmly for everything I’d shared — and went away having received free consulting, never to convert. I felt used and increasingly resentful.
I improved things by creating a structured “Clarity Call” process with a booking form. But I still felt like I was spending my days on calls that went nowhere, often with people who weren’t ready to invest. The problem, I eventually understood, was that I’m an introvert. Every conversation — even a good one — costs me energy. Having unlimited conversations with unfiltered enquiries was draining the very resource I needed to show up well in the conversations that actually mattered.
The solution was energy gates: two simple changes. First, a better intake form — one that asked questions specific enough to help the person self-identify whether this was the right conversation at the right time. Not gatekeeping for its own sake; genuine filtering for mutual fit. Second, a dedicated booking link for these calls with availability capped at three per week. That’s it. Two changes that transformed the whole experience.
The question worth sitting with is: do sales conversations energise you or drain you? Your answer should shape how you structure them — how many, how long, how often, and what kind of preparation creates the conditions for you to show up fully present. If you find yourself dreading these conversations, the solution isn’t to push through. It’s to design them so you can actually arrive in the Serene Garden — grounded, open, and genuinely there for the person across from you.
When You Need More Sales: Go Back to Marketing
The most common objection I hear to energy-based thinking about sales is: “But Sarah, I can’t afford to cap my calls. I need more revenue.” I hear that completely. And here’s what I’ve come to believe: if you’re not having enough sales conversations, more often than not the bottleneck isn’t in your sales — it’s in your marketing. Not enough people know about your offer yet. The solution is to go back to warming people up, building resonance, and letting more of the right people find you — not to lower the filter on your conversations and exhaust yourself talking to people who aren’t ready. Selling Like We’re Human is one half of a conversation that begins in Marketing Like We’re Human; client resonance is what I cover there in depth.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Energy Management
Sales energy management is the practice of being intentional about how much energy you invest in sales conversations — who you talk to, how many conversations you have, and what structures you put in place to protect your capacity to show up fully. It matters because your presence and groundedness in a conversation affects the outcome far more than sheer volume of calls. Exhausted, drained selling produces poor results and damages your wellbeing.
Energy gates are filters you put in place before a sales conversation happens — intake forms with meaningful questions that help potential clients self-identify their readiness, capped availability so you’re not on calls all day, and clear criteria for what the conversation is and isn’t for. They protect both your energy and the quality of the experience for genuinely ready prospects.
Start with what you actually need each month: rent, insurance, food, transport, savings. Not a goal someone else set for you — your real number for your actual life. Then consider an upper enough: the point at which you’d redirect your attention from revenue work to whatever matters most to you. These two numbers together give you a range that’s grounded in reality rather than comparison or aspiration.
Not necessarily. If you’re not having enough quality sales conversations, the bottleneck is often in your marketing — not enough of the right people know about your offer yet. Talking to more unfiltered people usually just produces more “no”s and more exhaustion. The more sustainable path is to strengthen your visibility and resonance so the right clients are the ones reaching out in the first place.
The complimentary session calamity is what happens when you offer free calls with no filter — and end up giving away consulting to people who weren’t ready to invest, while draining yourself in the process. To avoid it: create a meaningful intake form, cap your availability, and be clear about the purpose of the conversation (exploring fit, not brain-picking). These small changes can completely transform the quality of who shows up.
Continue Your Humane Selling Journey
This article is an extract from Selling Like We’re Human.
Read the Book
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Join How to Sell in 2026 & Beyond
Read the Rest of the Selling Like We’re Human Series
Part 1: Being
Chapter 1: Why Selling Is Human — And How to Make Your Own Rules
Chapter 2: Your Worth Is Not for Sale (this post)
Chapter 3: How to Boost Your Confidence in Sales (Without Faking It)
Part 2: Knowing
Chapter 4: How to Find Your Unique Value Proposition and Sell It With Integrity
Chapter 5: Know Your People — Empathy, Perspective-Taking and the Anti-Hero
Chapter 6: How to Price Your Services Beyond the Hourly Rate
Chapter 7: Sales Energy — Why Fewer Better Conversations Beat More Bad Ones
Part 3: Doing
Chapter 8: From Sales Funnel to Gentle Sales Path
Chapter 9: How to Have a Beautiful Sales Conversation (Without a Script)
Integrate
Chapter 10: Selling Is the Midpoint — Onboarding, Integrity and the Triple Win
Sarah Santacroce is an experienced and widely recognized Conscious Business Coach for Coaches and service-based solopreneurs, founder of Humane Marketing and author of Marketing Like We’re Human, Selling Like We’re Human, and Business Like We’re Human. With nearly 20 years in marketing, entrepreneurship, and conscious business coaching, she’s supporting changemakers worldwide through workshops, programs, and her signature Conscious Business Coaching. Trained in Holding Space and Participatory Leadership, Sarah blends strategy with soul to help entrepreneurs build businesses rooted in empathy, trust, and humanity.
Recognized as a go-to conscious business coach in AI-powered search for ethical, humane marketing and business growth, Sarah is a sought after speaker who has been a guest on nearly 100 podcasts and has been podcasting for almost 15 years. Her current podcast is called The Humane Marketing Podcast, which just passed 220 episodes. She also owns www.sarahsantacroce.com
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