AO Works | Know what will close, when, and why

Sound familiar?

The connections feel genuine. But too few turn into contracts.

🦗They leave sounding interested… then, silence. Was it the price? The pitch? The fit? You can't tell, so you second-guess everything.

🤔You know you're supposed to have a discussion before you pitch. But you aren't sure what to ask, so you brace for objections or maybe even polish the deck or demo, never getting clear on what you need to learn live.

😬Real buyer, or polite "maybe"? You can't tell, so every follow-up risks feeling pushy or wasting time you don't have.

Interested people shouldn't add up to unpredictable income.

Before you blame the market or tweak your pricing, consider the part most in your control: the prospective client conversation itself.

In practice

When the toolkit clicks.

After working together, a solo founder and service provider says her client conversations feel less salesy and more meaningful. She learned to ask about each client's business challenges and tie the answers to her solution, and now uses stories, not just stats, to build a deeper connection.

“In one short conversation, Ana gave me practical tips that changed how I approach conversations with prospective clients. I could use them immediately, felt much more natural and confident, and landed my most recent client using her tips!”

Fiona, Career Strategist

Another leader, new to selling, closed her first corporate partnership of the year eight weeks after our first session. Her partner conversations had stalled for twelve months. In 90 minutes, she found a new way to use an existing tool to re-engage top partners, helping them clearly see what waiting to collaborate was costing them.

Some client details anonymized at their request.

What will be different

You'll adapt a toolkit built to uncover when and why a prospective client is ready to buy, and put it to work on your very next call:

1

The 4-part Diagnose to Decide framework. Move naturally from discovery to decision: tell a want from a need, size the problem, and get from "maybe" to "we're ready when…" so your follow-up fits their actual buying process.

2

Curiosity-based questions that qualify for you. Know the size and shape of their need in the first 15 minutes, and which parts of your offer, if any, are worth putting on the table.

3

A simple structure that frees you to listen. Tell a polite prospect from a real buyer, and get a clean no or a real yes without pushing, dropping your price, or burning the bridge you built. Plus the questions to unstick a true stall.

Ways to work together.

For people who sell what they built or deliver themselves

$900 · 90 minutesWhere most people start

1:1 Intensive

Like personal training for your client discovery skills. Focused time on a real conversation you're stuck on, live practice, and a personalized Discovery Question Toolkit built around your offer and your buyer.

If one client is worth $ to you, your next closed client covers this 2.2× over. And the toolkit is yours to keep, so every call after starts with more confidence and better odds.

Book an Intensive

Leave with a clear next move, or your money back.

$700 · 3 weeks

Learning Cohort

Semi-private group practice sessions to grow your discovery skills. Learn the toolkit up front, then get live reps on real conversations with up to 10 peers.

Founding cohort begins week of January 11. Enrollment opens December 1, and the waitlist gets first access.

Join the waitlist

Bring at least one live client conversation to work on.

From $2,000

Pitch Teardown

For technical founders whose pitch or demo isn't winning customers. We strip it to the studs, then work backward to turn it into a discovery conversation.

You leave with a clear view of what's working and what's costing you, priority fixes, and a custom discovery guide, so your pitch lands with the right buyers at the right moment.

Apply for support

By application, based on the current state of your pitch or demo.

Not sure which to choose? Send me three lines on where you're stuck and I'll point you to the right fit.

Outreach, minus the guesswork

Pipeline planner

Not booking enough conversations yet, or unsure whether your conversion rate is any good? Start here. Work backward from the clients you want to the outreach mix that gets you there.

Try the planner

Goal: 3 new clients in 10 weeks. Each week, that takes either:

Referral intros~2 intros from people who know you

Warm conversations~11 messages to people you know

Cold outbound~75 messages to strangers

Or mix them: ~1 referral intro + 5 warm messages

3 of 3 clients ✓

For groups

Discovery Workshop

Run a community, cohort, or accelerator? I teach curiosity-based discovery live to your members, so everyone leaves with the key questions and tactics to use on their next call.

Host a workshop

Tens of thousands of customer conversations. Hundreds of sellers. One simple toolkit.

🛠️ Built the method

Designed and deployed a new-business discovery method through learnings with my own team, which we scaled worldwide. That global adoption drove average deal size up 60% and multi-solution deals up 25% for medium to large clients, and earned a Google VP award.

🔄 Proved it adapts

Rebuilt Stripe's consultative sales method and coaching for the SMB segment, a key lever in growing revenue 62% with flat headcount and uncovering what holds across different buyers and company sizes.

🎯 Tailored for you

Now ready to support people who sell what they've built, so they can connect more deeply with customers, stop chasing the wrong prospects, and better predict their revenue.

Meet Ana

How I got here

For two decades, I've been the person people call when a sales motion is stuck, broken, or doesn't exist yet.

I got my first job in new-business sales at Google by taking on the one industry nobody else would touch, and found the angle that turned it into a top-3 revenue segment in twelve months. Later, I hired a crew of new college grads with zero sales experience to work the leads everyone else had written off. People thought I'd lost it. They became some of the best sellers on the floor. The same instinct later helped scale a product to $1B in annual revenue.

I'm best known for asking the right questions at the right time, and those questions are what drove the results: 120% attainment and forecasts I could trust within 5%, quarter after quarter. Discovery is what made the numbers reliable and repeatable.

What I learned the hard way

Shortly after stepping out on my own, I gave myself a real jumpscare. I caught myself trying to push off a smaller, ready-to-buy referral to hold space for a bigger prospect I'd pitched but who hadn't yet shown they were ready to close. I'd broken a cardinal rule in selling & forecasting! It was a wake-up call that selling something you built yourself is a different animal, and it can throw anyone off their game.

So I went back to the toolkit and experience that served me in corporate and pulled it into a system I could put into practice so I wouldn't make the same mistake again. As I shared what I was learning with friends and other founders, I realized how common this challenge is. Now I'm sharing it to help more people bring their entrepreneurial dreams to the bank and stay true to themselves in the process.

What I believe

The real key is understanding what's worth solving, before you promise if or how you'll solve it.

It takes staying human and helpful, not pretending there's a "perfect" pitch, and clearing the distractions that break a connection right when you need to build it. That's how you win the work without losing yourself, and it's the most learnable part of all. The rest, being yourself, you've already got 🙌

From conversations to commitments

Win the work without losing yourself.

Book a 90-minute intensive and leave with a discovery approach that fits how you actually sell.

Book an Intensive · $900

Leave with a clear next move, or your money back.

Not sure where to start? Send me three lines on where you're stuck and I'll point you to the right fit.

The connections feel genuine. But too few turn into contracts.

When the toolkit clicks.

Ways to work together.

🎯1:1 Intensive

👯Learning Cohort

👷Pitch Teardown