Renee Hribar [00:00:00]:

Welcome back to selling your expertise. It's Frey. Yay. And if you've been following along, you wrote down a money goal earlier this week, and that money goal has been walking around with you on a piece of paper. You've been looking at it, thinking about it. And with all that thinking, I bet you started thinking differently about the people you already know. Yeah. And the places you have already connected with them, these potential clients, these potential connectors, these potential collaborators.

Renee Hribar [00:00:37]:

I'm excited about this. That is the magic of this mindset shift that I'm bringing you on. When you start seeing sales as something you're already doing, it stops feeling scary. Alright. So if you've listened on Monday, let's go back to Sally, our business coach from Monday's episode. Once she wrote down her money goal, she had a purpose. She wasn't just scrolling. She was scanning for opportunity.

Renee Hribar [00:01:08]:

She intentionally looked through the Slack channel and her WhatsApp group. She took notes about the topics they were already talking about. And, you know, sometimes when you get into these groups, even if you took a group program together or you all were out at the same conference and you're all sort of in the same industry or complimentary industries and you're just talking about the same content, there's still vernacular jargon that people throw out there that you I I definitely have to, you know, look up. So she was able to listen and not rush and not feel pressure. She knew she was already in there. She didn't have to do anything to find new people. She already had people she was connected with that knew her, that were already aware of her, that were already having a conversation where she was present. So she researched the topics.

Renee Hribar [00:02:01]:

She came up with some little things to add to the conversations. So her name was popping up, but not with a big fat pitch. No. Instead, it was simply her chiming in and adding to the conversation so that when they saw her name again later, maybe under a different context. Right? It's kinda like when you see your teacher at the grocery store, you're like, hey. You leave the school? So even though they met her or were chatting with her at the conference and then continued the conversation in the WhatsApp group called, let's get coffee, they see her in that context, but then her name pops up on LinkedIn. We don't want them to be like, who's this? Right? So that's why having her name in there, joining the conversation again, these were active channels, so it was very easy for her to listen in. And then she did go connect with them over on LinkedIn, and they did recognize her.

Renee Hribar [00:02:53]:

Like, oh, hey, Sally. It's you. Another side trick that she did is this is a total color psychology. She put a background behind her profile, a picture of bright yellow, and that really stood out. So it matched her profile picture on Slack. It matched her profile picture on WhatsApp, and it matched her profile picture on LinkedIn. So it was just a quick visual cue. Even if someone doesn't remember her name specifically, it was easy to have that visual cue.

Renee Hribar [00:03:23]:

And whether they were conscious or unconscious of it, it just allowed the person that she wanted to find a deeper connection with outside of the WhatsApp group or outside of the Slack channel. When she wanted to pull the conversation over to LinkedIn, it they weren't like, oh my goodness. Who is this stranger? Stranger danger. No. And here's the other part. She wasn't trying to start conversations to go straight to a making a pitch or dropping a link to her sales page. No. No.

Renee Hribar [00:03:51]:

No. No. No. No. But she didn't stop at just recognizing them. She didn't stop at just joining the conversation on the topics they were talking about. And, PS, these topics, some of them more about pets. Like, what kind of dog is that? Other conversations were about running shoes.

Renee Hribar [00:04:09]:

Like, oh, I use you know, I'm using New Balance. What about you? Oh, I'm an a six girl, or I'm a Nike guy, whatever. Right? And so it doesn't always mean that just because she was in this Slack channel from that group that she had paid for a year ago doesn't mean that they were just talking about their businesses and themselves. Right? And so I just wanna encourage you that it the conversations that I'm gonna encourage you to start to consider having don't always have to be about business. First, it might just be about getting to know them as a person. And then whatever you do for a living, they're gonna care more about because they care about you as a person. And you're not trying to bait and switch them. You're not trying to lead them on.

Renee Hribar [00:04:55]:

You're simply trying to have a genuine conversation with a few people every single week. And that is the only thing you have to worry about outside of delivering on whatever promises you've made for your business and probably your life too. So she didn't stop there. She kept looking people up. So here's the other part that I a lot of people miss, unless they've been in sales for a while or they just have learned it from someone. So here's a part. This is the bridge, and you'll see you know, it's funny. When I teach this to my students, and you're gonna hear it right now, they'll go out into the world after learning this, and they'll say, did you teach so and so? I'm like, no.

Renee Hribar [00:05:34]:

I didn't teach that person. They're like, but they're doing that exact thing. I'm like, right. Because that is what people do who make money. So you can do it too. That's the best part. So here's what it is. Let's picture Sally again to give us context.

Renee Hribar [00:05:47]:

She's in the WhatsApp group. It's called Let's Get Coffee, and it was from a conference she had attended over a year ago. She's looking. She's seeing the conversations. She's chiming in here and there, but not a lot. She's not trying to become an expert on whatever conversation they're in. She's just showing her face, like liking, commenting, saying a couple words, very short, keeping it easy. She's, again, she's just identifying these people as potential clients, connectors, or collaborators.

Renee Hribar [00:06:15]:

So she looks at their name. Let's say it's, you know, John Smith. Okay. Great. So she sees John Smith. She thinks she remembers having lunch with him at the conference. So she takes his information, whatever's available there, and she looks him up, types his name into YouTube. Does he have a YouTube channel? Has he ever been on YouTube? Chances are people have.

Renee Hribar [00:06:36]:

The weirdest things are on YouTube. I I did the same kind of, I call it, recon on somebody just because I was interested. I'm interested. Right? Just like I would if my brother's dating somebody. I'm gonna look her up too. Okay? So I one time found somebody had, like, a, like, a cat clothing channel on YouTube. I was it was fascinating. They were otherwise a very introverted person.

Renee Hribar [00:07:01]:

But if you ask them anything about cats, they lit up like a lightning bolt. It was amazing. So, anyways, looked them up on YouTube. That's what Sally did. She also looked them up on Amazon to see if they were published. And a lot of people have a lot of things, like, maybe they were in an anthology. Maybe they had an ebook on healthy eating back in, I don't know, ten years ago or something. So the other part she looks at, she goes to Spotify.

Renee Hribar [00:07:29]:

She goes to Apple Podcasts, and she looks up their name because maybe they were a guest on a podcast or they had a podcast. So all that to say, she does this, and then she gets a better picture of who they are. And she also has say, hey. I I looked you up. I saw your conversation, and I looked you up. There's no need to be secretive about it. It's not stalking your it's nothing nefarious. It's, hey.

Renee Hribar [00:07:54]:

I saw this person, and I wanna check them out. Right? And so you check them out, and you look them up to gain information so that you can continue to establish common ground and continue the conversation, not because you're trying to sneak in a big fat pitch to some offer, but because you're genuinely trying to get to know them. And that is that is what every good salesperson needs to do anyways, qualify people. How do you qualify them? You ask them questions. What are they saying? How are they saying it? It's gonna help you match up any offer that you could ever make to make sure that it is the right match. And here's the other part. If you are listening to this because you are selling your own skills and your own expertise, you don't wanna sell somebody something that's not qualified because the worst thing is dragging them through a program or anything, dragging them through delivery of the offer, and they're not into it. Right? Like, you want somebody who is more excited than you are about getting this out to them.

Renee Hribar [00:08:57]:

Here's what she found. She found out one of the people in the channel was YouTube famous, which was super cool. She's like, oh my gosh. I hadn't heard of the person, but she sent it to me. She's like, oh my gosh. I didn't even know. It was so cool. And I've had that happen as well before with other clients who were like, oh my goodness.

Renee Hribar [00:09:14]:

I'm in a, you know, whatever, a messenger thread with this person. Oh my word. It's easy to get starstruck, but here's the fun part. They're in there too, just like you. Level playing ground. Right? So that's one thing I really wanna impress on you is that you won't know who you're in that channel with or who you're around or who's in your digital Rolodex. You won't know them outside of the context you met them in unless you look them up. Just like seeing your teacher outside of school when you were in elementary school, you see them at the grocery store.

Renee Hribar [00:09:48]:

You're like, what are you doing here? I barely recognized you. It's because of context. So I I wanna say this again, and I wanna say it slow. The fact that she identified people of interest, the fact that she went and looked them up on different platforms or, you know, perplexity, AI, looking at the looking people up is not hard anymore. Everybody has a footprint. But the fact that she did that and was open about it opened up other doors. But the real part here is that most people don't look anybody up, either because they're just busy or they're tired, and they don't think it's gonna help, but it does. It does help.

Renee Hribar [00:10:23]:

And the other people, though, aren't most likely looking you up. So they won't know what you do or how you do it, or you don't have content that you're publishing, so they couldn't find much about you. And that's okay too. But the reality is is we cannot prejudge someone based on a singular context. So we cannot prejudge someone because we've just seen one thing that they've done or one conversation in a Slack channel. So don't prejudge. And other people, since they're not looking you up either, we need to make sure that we're not letting them prejudge us. And so your next step in this, just just like Sally's, her next step was reaching out on her preferred platform, which in this case is LinkedIn, to connect over what they were already talking about in the other channel or the other place.

Renee Hribar [00:11:15]:

So you could meet someone anywhere, in person, online, and find them and connect with them and talk about something that maybe isn't related to business, but still conversation. And then look them up and say, hey. I was so interested in our conversation. I looked you up. I'm reaching out to you over on LinkedIn now. Are you did you see my request? And they're gonna be like, oh my gosh. Thank you. They will be flattered.

Renee Hribar [00:11:39]:

And you can say, this is why I looked you up. I'm I'm curious. I'm wondering about this. That's a connection strategy. It's it's what questions would I ask? And, you know, with AI today, we don't have to really think of what questions to ask. I still have clients, you know, that don't use it as much, but it's it's there for us. It's a tool, like a calculator. Right? I remember going to school with my calculator and teachers being like, don't use the calculator.

Renee Hribar [00:12:06]:

You need to learn how to do the long division. You know what? I've never had to do the long division without a calculator, so I was safe. And same thing goes for the tools around you. Use the tools and the resources that you have. So having said that, she did not go into LinkedIn and then immediately start pitching them there either. And so if you're listening to this, you're thinking, well, when are you gonna get to the sales part? Well, this is the sales part. Getting to know someone, it's called discovery. It's called getting the full picture.

Renee Hribar [00:12:35]:

It's called qualifying them so that you can give them your best advice, not just whip something out and say, hey. I pulled this off the shelf. Here's a package. You should get this. No. It's a more of a consultative approach, especially for high ticket project based service providers and consultants. That is so important. I just really wanna clarify that.

Renee Hribar [00:12:58]:

She was having these conversations where she had already been talking to them. So there's no cold DMs, no shady character energy. She was taking the time to read and listen to their existing conversations, and then she joined in. And she researched what they were talking about, thank you, Internet, so that she could chime in intelligently. And those small actions, they led to big results. Right? If you remember from Monday's episode, she closed a six k deal in two weeks. So it feels slow up front, but that's where people go fast, and you're gonna go slow because now you know better. You're gonna front load your efforts because there's so much ease and automation that you can lean into and rely on reliably, effectively once you get through that first honeymoon period.

Renee Hribar [00:13:51]:

And that's why I also only recommend really connecting deeply with a handful of people each week. And if you do that genuinely, consistently, even when you don't feel like it, you will, by the this time next year, have the business of your dreams. You'll have the biggest you'll have more than you imagined ever was possible, and it will not feel hard. It will not feel like you're chasing anyone. So she started small. She wrote down her revenue number. That was your homework on Monday. Today is Friday.

Renee Hribar [00:14:23]:

So you've been holding on to it, looking at it, dreaming about it, thinking about it. And at the time, this is something that Sally had shared with me and it I hear it quite often. She says it felt like a lie. It felt like I was never gonna make that money. I felt like it wasn't possible, but she stayed open to all the possibilities, and she had a massive mindset shift. It was really that thinking part. And she trusted that even these tiny actions, when done with the right intention, create momentum. So here is your action step.

Renee Hribar [00:14:58]:

I want you to ask yourself, did I even take one small step toward my goals this week? If yes, celebrate it. Celebrate it. And if you didn't, start today. Start right now. Where are your people? Look them up. Join the conversation, and continue the conversation where you want it to be privately one on one. Right? Start start in the pub and then pull them to the to the dartboard like I did in my book. And at at the end of the day, I know that listening to this, you're probably coming up with more questions.

Renee Hribar [00:15:33]:

So if you're really ready to make selling feel more natural, just join my email list. That's where I give you all kinds of support to help you stay in the game. So next week, we'll be talking about how to turn that momentum into an actual sellable offer. Alright? Until then, keep going. You're doing great.