[00:00:00] What if they don't realize you are the one they need right now? Oh, that's a hard one, right? Especially when it comes to follow up. But welcome back. You are listening to the Selling Your Expertise podcast, and my name is Renee Hribar, your hostess with the mostess. Last week I shared, I was thinking about hostess cakes, by the way, whenever I say that, and I really want one now.

Okay, so last week. Although I don't remember the last time I had one last week I shared about Sheila. That still feels like Sally sold seashells by the seashore. Anyways, so the story I told you last week was about Sheila, the bookkeeper, and I'll be honest, I got lots of responses. Thank you. I really appreciate it when you share the podcast and I really, really, really appreciate it when you leave a review, uh, that is so helpful to get this out to more ears.

There are. Millions of women out there that have never heard of me, and that's fine, but this information, if they could just hear it, they might finally be able to crack [00:01:00] their own fears about following up and about their own business and how they share about it. So Sheila, the bookkeeper taught us something great and that was that follow up isn't so bad and that good things can happen.

All different kinds of good things can happen when you just follow through on the conversation. the responses I got last week were a lot of like Me too. And it feels like you were describing me. Well, it's because I've talked to a lot of people and as much as we all believe our story is so unique and there are unique pieces, we all suffer from very much the same themes.

And so. One person in particular though really stood out to me and she got me thinking about what to do. You know, it's dangerous when I start thinking right about what to do if you've been following up and making offers, but no one is jumping in. Dun dun. You're following up Renee. I am following up.

You're [00:02:00] making offers, Renee. I'm making offers. Ah, but no one is jumping in. It's okay. It's still fixable. It's actually not that big of a crusher. If you were to tell me that, I'd be like, cool. I know what to do, and I'd ask you a couple questions and then we would make a plan and we would make some money.

That's how things work. I love that about us. So let me work with you on this. So she's like Renee. I feel like when I follow up, I'm forcing people to pay attention to me in a way that they don't wanna give me. Their attention. I mean, does that sound familiar? Right. You feel like when you're following up, you're sort of forcing attention?

Well, here's a massive shift I want you to embody. Following up is not about forcing their attention ready. It's about continuing the conversation. Lemme say that again. Following up is not about forcing attention, it is about continuing a conversation. So think about it this way, if you texted a friend and they forgot to reply, which happens all the time between my best friend and I honestly like it could go weeks, but I don't [00:03:00] think, oh my God, she hates me.

I just. She probably picked up her phone, saw it, and was like, I'm gonna text her back in a minute. And then whoosh was taken down the river of life and all of the things that are pulling at us. And so when I send another text, I'm not like, oh my goodness, I'll just send another text.

I won't even necessarily say, Hey, do you want to answer that question above? I might often just send a. Totally separate question or totally separate. Mostly it's memes that we share. Let's be honest, that's our communication. Different weird things we see on the internet. So I don't even need to necessarily nudge her.

Like I don't wanna be like, Hey, just wanted to ask you again the same question that I asked you already, but no, uh, what, what I usually do is what I teach people to do anyway, even though it's not always your friend you're talking to, which could just be someone who is a colleague or a peer. And the reality is, is that I wanna ask a different question a lot of times.

So here's how it goes. It is [00:04:00] another approach to this whole thing. Okay? There's a whole other. Side of this. When I talk to you in this podcast, I'm giving you very specific advice on very specific scenarios, and so my goal is that you'll hear a piece of this and either think, holy moly, that's exactly me.

I'll grab all of it, or, Hmm, parts of that feels like me. I'll take some of it and put it into action. That's why I always make the action steps as streamlined and simple as possible. Because the real transformation comes when we work together, most likely. most people aren't going to be able to do a self-guided tour through sharpening their sales skills, at least not to the same speed that they could if you were in one of my programs or courses or working with me privately.

So here's the approach that I just had a client work on and it worked like a charm. So if you are making. Follow up invitations and no one is jumping in yet, and you feel like you're forcing their attention to something that they don't wanna give attention to, and it is about [00:05:00] continuing the conversation.

What do I do, Renee? I'm about to tell you. Don't worry, I've held you up enough. Here it is. It's one edit. Honestly, it's one edit. I'm gonna use this one example here. So I have a client. She is so smart. Like so many of you listening, she can do so many things. She's like, what do you need? You need a website?

I got you. Oh, you want a social media campaign? Written and created and and published. No problem. Oh, ads. Perfect. Google ads. Meta ads. What do you need ads for? I, I can run ads Funnels. Perfect. What platform do you need to funnel on? You need it on ClickFunnels funnel. Gorgeous. You need it on high level.

What do you need it on? I got you. Email sequences. No problem. Wherever you've got 'em, I can make 'em. SMS campaigns a hundred percent. Got your back. AI builds. No problem. Like she is so smart. She teaches at a university. She also has, uh, different types of silos in her business. I, this woman is so smart that I feel dumb just giving her advice, but the [00:06:00] reality is she's never had to really be the one to go out and sell for herself.

So that's what put us together, and I'm so. So glad, so jazzed is what I wanna say, but I felt like that was gonna date me. But whatever I am, I am the age I am. I was so jazzed because I really, really, really love what she does and I respect what she does. So here's what we did. This one edit when she was saying, 'cause she was consistent, she was doing consistent follow through and she was consistently saying, Hey listen, you can just book a call to talk more about that.

But people weren't taking her up on it. Here is what we did. Instead of saying, Hey, I can help you with websites and social media and ads and funnels and email sequences and SMS campaigns and AI builds. What do you need? Because that, it's a lot. I mean, I think you can see the problem already, right?

What we decided to do is something that I call the front window. So here's the one edit. The one edit, especially if you're listening to this and you can relate to the fact that [00:07:00] you could do so many things. I want you to think about your business as if it were a business, a physical business on Main Street.

You know the ones with the big display windows. I want you to think about what you might feature in that front window during a set. Timeframe. So whether that's a week or 10 days or 30 days, what is that timeline, that timeframe that you can feature? One thing. Now, as soon as I recommend this to people, they immediately go, oh, well, if I put my website in the front window, then my social media, my ads, my funnels, my email sequences, my SMS campaigns, my AI builds, they're all gonna be.

Put to the side. I'm like, well, it doesn't matter right now because no one's taking you up on anything. But I mean, that's what I wanna say. But what I say instead is, well, you're not stopping them from buying those things. You're just giving everyone one thing to chew on one thing to see and go, oh, I need that.

Oh, that's what I [00:08:00] need. That's all I wanna do that. That's something that I've been having a problem with, so that instead of trying to talk to everybody, you're talking to very specific people again. In my client's case, she has contractors, but she could not, if she could not handle 50 new clients in one month.

Right now at the point, her business is right now, if she got 50 new clients in one month, it would put her outta business so. We don't want that. We want two new clients a month right now. That's what she's like. Yeah, two new projects a month would be fantastic because she does know how to follow through and keep inviting people, but getting them in, getting fresh new clients in that are paying her at a higher rate as her expertise has grown across all of all the areas that she's great at.

So we decided this one edit was gonna be, let's establish a front window and a timeframe for each. Thing that you're great at, that you do for your clients. Each thing gets its day or its timeframe. Its spotlight [00:09:00] in the front window. So let's say it's websites. So then she spends that timeframe, let's call it two weeks, talking about all the problems that websites have.

I'm like, if you could just riff on all the things that you see people are doing wrong with their websites, how many things could you tell me? Could you talk, could you talk about it for like. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. She's longer hours. How much time you got? I'm like, okay, so here is what I want you to do.

Open up your phone. I always say get the Otter app. I'm not sponsored by Otter. I just use it. I'm just a customer. I open it up. I don't even, it's free. I'm pretty sure. I think there's a paid version. It doesn't matter. I otter like, uh, the animal ai. Just download it on your phone. You can use it anywhere. I am very.

A DHD. So I need to move so I, my brain can smooth out. So I'm walking a lot and thinking and talking to myself. I know it doesn't sound surprising at all. I'm basically talking to myself right now. You're, you're listening at the moment, but I'm alone right now. There's no one around. It's just me and my microphone.

Okay. So now that you know that, it's kind of [00:10:00] weird, right when you think about it. Okay, sidebar. It is weird, but it's okay. You can be weird with me. Open up your phone is what I told her and just talk about all the problems that you see. Do your public service announcement. Tell everybody what you think they should be doing, what they should be watching out for, the questions they should be asking themselves and the problems that will be caused if they don't about their website.

She created a, a transcript that was like, I don't even know, I think it was 38 minutes now. I did not listen to it all. I don't need to. We have AI workflows for that. So she was able to pull out an email for her email list. She also has, a LinkedIn newsletter, which as we know, doesn't capture a lot of data.

It doesn't capture the data we we own, but it does communicate with people and through that we can get. Other things, other data, so. She picked a timeline. It was two weeks. She focused on her front window. She decided on choosing her website. I had her go and do a [00:11:00] long talk to herself about all the problems that websites have, and that created the email that created social posts, and it just called out the website people.

Then she went back, we did a third layer of this to everybody she had spoken to and said, listen, I'm focusing on demystifying SEO and websites. I am opening up three spots. This is personal dms by the way, so there it's not a mass thing. She did I think like, I don't know, 10 ish. I'm open, I'm focused on websites.

For the next two weeks, I'm looking to demystify websites. I've got three spots open where I'm gonna do a free one-on-one website evaluation. Do you want one of these three or do you wanna give one to a friend or a client? Every single one of those three was taken up. I don't know how long it took her. A couple days maybe.

'cause she didn't do it all at once. And those were three calls booked on her calendar right away, just from the dms. Now [00:12:00] again, might there be more people down the road after the traction happens with her email list and her social posts? Sure. So all three of those were, Immediately scooped up. And those three people, ultimately, now they're in discovery calls.

Those are in essence discovery calls. Hey, let's look at your website. Okay. Lemme give you some homework. All right. Here, let's come back in a couple days and let's see how you did. Oh, I can't do it. Okay, great. Do you wanna hear what it might look like for me to start that with you? Sure. Okay. Well, let's book up a strategy session.

Let's get that all mocked up, and then we'll do a VIP day, and then we'll go from there. Now that client, let's say one of those people turns into a VIP day for their website edits. Let's call that three grand. And then if you're working with me, you're not gonna be like, cool, thanks. Bye. Not only does she do lots of things, and if you don't, that's fine.

It doesn't matter. There's still gonna be lots of other things they need that either you can refer them or you can do them. I mean, you [00:13:00] and I both know that everything needs. Work over time. So we've talked about this before. The goal, the metric that a lot of my clients work toward is, let's get 20 ish clients a year and let's make sure that each one of those clients through the course of the year.

Through multiple touch points. I call them progress opportunities, next steps, meetings that you have with your existing clients that those lead to the next project, even if it's a few months down the road, they're always either paying you for an upcoming project. So again, the first VIP day was three grand.

In this case. I'm hypothesizing here, but this is 'cause it's happened so often. Okay, you need four more VIP days over the course of the next eight months. Let's book those now and then that person can just start paying in a monthly installment for those other VIP days. They don't have to pay one price to get that bundle.

It's in essence bundling things you're already doing, even if it's. Quote, unquote, just VIP days. So [00:14:00] I, I hope that I'm opening your mind to the possibilities here. I had a client, she had all these things she was doing. She was talking about all those things all the time. But when we decided on making one edit and just picking one thing to feature at a time during a set timeframe.

It opened up so many options. And guess what? The next, the next timeframe in the front window will be something else. So it'll be, let's say her social media that she offers, and then the next front window rotation could be all about ads, and she'll do the same process for funnels, email sequences, SMS campaigns and AI builds.

So that's. Ultimately 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 weeks of content if she does it every week, but she was doing it every two weeks. That's 28 weeks, or 14 weeks. 14 weeks. Thanks for the math of of content. She could pre-schedule, pre-write, pre-do, and just show up for the calls and just focus on that one thing as the starting point [00:15:00] for anyone who comes into her world during that timeframe.

Again, knowing that it's a long game. We're not just coming in to fix one thing. We're gonna start. With that one thing, knowing that it'll be more and more and more over time, and so I just can't say it enough. You have so much opportunity all around you, so if you have been thinking that following up is forcing attention and you've been following up and still making offers and still not getting leads or people to follow through and buy from you, there are ways through this.

I, I, I just can't say it enough. I want you to make money, okay? That's what this is all about. You are, you have a particular set of skills. You are in business. It's time to make money. So here's my action step for you today. I want you to reframe the story in your head. The next time you hesitate on following up, I want you to say to yourself, I'm not pushing.

I'm continuing the conversation. And then consider [00:16:00] what you could put in the front window that is time bound and specific. If you've heard me talk about offers before, that's. The litmus test, I want you to run 'em all through. Is it time bound and specific? 'cause the truth is silence usually means they're busy.

It doesn't mean no. And if you can remember that that following up gets you a lot closer than you were before and it gets a lot easier over time, then you are going to do great. That's it for today. Reframe the story. Send the follow through messages, make things time bound and specific in your front window.

You have a new thing. You can do that one edit. Instead of talking about it all, choose one and let's do this. Let's make some money.