—>>https://www.askmecoach.com/

One sale is a fluke. Ten is a business.

Renee Hribar breaks down why so many B2B service providers and consultants stall out after selling an offer just once, mistaking early doubt for proof the offer doesn't work. Pulling from a people-watching afternoon at a Barcelona cafe, Ford's two-year road-testing process for new car models, and a story about the devil selling doubt at a yard sale, she argues that offers only become real through repetition: sell it, deliver it, refine it, ten times minimum. She also walks through a recent client call with a "web designer" who was underselling her real strategic expertise, and why she still hasn't systematized her delivery with SOPs or automations.

Renee closes with a challenge to protect your time as fiercely as your income, and to keep practicing an offer on real people instead of second-guessing it in your head. The throughline: growth comes from reps, not perfection.

She wants to sell more of it. And here's the thing. Her other business coach never told her she doesn't have a selling problem. She has a you've done this one time problem. And those are not the same thing. It's kinda like judging me on my paddleboard skills after one outing, right? Like last week, I did take my family for a sunrise paddleboard out into the Mediterranean.

It was beautiful. I have not been paddleboarding in years, like with a capital Y. Like, since my teenager was, I don't know, four. So I got up on the board, yay, like a baby seal, but yay, and splashed around, just happy to see the sunrise. So do I wanna do this again? Yes. Do I have everything figured out? No.

Will I get better, faster, more efficient every time I go? Yes. So what if I went out 10 times on the paddleboard in the next month? Do you think I would be ready to, like, buy my own paddleboard or at least decide if this was just a phase, and I can go to the rental place whenever I want? or should I actually make it a thing, right?

Think about it. We've all been there, excited about something, did it one time, wondering if it's the thing. It's like dating as well. You don't... I mean, some people have, I get it, but most people need to date for a while before they can decide if they wanna m- have a commitment, right? Yes, I believe in love at first sight and all those things, but that doesn't mean that we don't stop, that we don't keep dating.

We don't just stop dating. Oh, that's it. I feel like it's love at first sight. No, we wanna test it. We wanna make sure, right? All right. Well, if you're new here, welcome. If you're not new and you've heard me before, welcome back. This is the Selling Your Expertise podcast. I'm Renee Hribar, and I help B2B service providers and consultants sell their expertise without complicated funnels or being pushy or weird or without working 24/7.

So whether you found this podcast from reading my book, thank you, Amazon loves you, taking my free sales mini course, which is a great, great tester, or maybe you heard one of my talks, like the one I did for TEDx. I'm so excited you're here. Here we are connectors. Whether you have gained access to the librarian, my AI twin who has been trained on all my frameworks and is at your service 24/7, or if you've taken my 21-day sales boot camp or experienced my 12-week immersive sales program, Permission to Sell.

Maybe you even attended one of my Experts Connect events in Vegas, California, New York, Detroit, Texas, Florida. To a city near you coming soon. You are a connector. Once you've listened to today's episode, go to askmecoach.com and check out the invitation I have for you to share your business with the global podcast audience.

All right, I'm recording this morning from Barcelona. I've got an espresso in front of me the size of a thimble, the way it's meant to be. The dogs are under the desk asleep, so if you hear the older one snoring, she's, like, 120 in dog years, all right? So give her a pass. Yesterday, I was doing the thing I love most in this city: people-watching.

Who's with me? You like people-watching? I love, I love people-watching. It is so fascinating, especially since I don't speak Spanish, and everyone here in Spain, naturally, you know, they speak Spanish. So I don't really understand what they're saying. I have to sort of go by what I believe they're saying, and it's more...

It's really a fun story. I think it's more fun. So especially sitting in an outdoor cafe, I was just watching, and there's thousands of them here. I mean, you can't throw a stone. Every place has an outdoor seating area. I love it. They are committed to sitting outside, even in the winter. So watching this woman, for example, she was arguing with whoever was on the other side of the phone and ver- very emphatically.

I couldn't tell if a- if she was, like, lovingly mad or, like, mad mad. There was this other guy who's sitting at the table next to me. He orders a cortado. Mm. That's their favorite. It's very good. , And he tips the w- waitress like he is in love with her. Or there's this other couple- A couple tables down that they clearly just met, like awkward sitting.

Anyways, real people doing real things in real life. I want you to really hold onto that because that is what this episode is all about. All right, let me go back to the story of the client who came to me asking for sales help, who had sold her new offer once. So here's what I believe, and I'll say it plainly.

An offer is validated because it's been sold and delivered 10 times. It's not validated just because you made it. It's not validated just because you love it. It's not validated because AI told you it was a good idea in the middle of the night or in the, during the day. It doesn't matter. can't say it enough, an offer is only validated when you have sold it and delivered it 10 times at least.

10, T-E-N, at least. And I don't say 10 to be cute. I say 10 because of what happens in between. Because every time you sell it, you adjust a few words, just a hair, right? Because the prospect in front of you needs it said slightly differently than the last one. That's called messaging, right? You're refining your messaging.

And every time you deliver it, you tighten the delivery just a little bit more, right? Until it becomes like a rhythm, until it's on a project board with timelines so you know how long it takes, until it's the kind of thing you could hand a piece of it off to a person or an automation or an AI and it would not fall apart.

That's the flywheel that I helped her build. We sold it, delivered it, and refined it. So these are things I talk about constantly. If you're listening and you're one of my clients, you're probably rolling your eyes because I say this all the time: document, review, refine. So sell, deliver, and refine is the same practice.

Refine the words, refine the offer, refine the boring stuff in the back that nobody claps for, right? No one's like... No one else is gonna know, "Oh, yay, you got your project board done. I'm so proud of you, and you synced it with your calendar so you know when you have to do things. So good." But that's the, that's the work, right?

And then you sell it again, and you get better, and then you deliver it again, and you get better. So you cannot get to that point on paper. You cannot get to that point in your head. You get to it by putting it in front of real human prospects and watching what happens, which brings me back to the cafe, right?

Like, that is what happens, real people in real life. Some of you know I've lived in Detroit for years, five minutes from world headquarters for Ford Motor Company. And living in, the Motor City, you see a lot of cars on the road that, that you've never seen before, and Ford has all the data, all of it, every model, every simulation, every number a person could possibly want.

But why do you still see these test cars on the road? Why? Because they put the test car on the road to make sure that they got it right, and they don't just put it on the road for, like, a month or, you know, couple months. The average car, before you'll ever see it on a showroom floor, from Ford Motor Company has been tested on the road for two years They cover the whole car, and it's kind of awesome actually.

They cover the whole car in these tarps with Velcro so the other car companies can't steal the design. I'm sure it's very, like, important to them, but I'm just laughing 'cause it's very cute. ideally, this is something that you would do, too, right? You would test your offer under the radar. I call these duck launches.

If you've been hanging out with me for a long time, you know what I mean. If you're not sure, email me. They paint the cars in this black-and-white dot camouflage so you can't photograph the lines. It's really cool. And then they let people drive it, like the people that work there. I don't know, sometimes they're executives, sometimes they're administrators, all different people.

Part of the, you know, sever- whatever, not, not severance, but like part of the package of working there, part of the benefits, thank you, of working there is, like, you might get a free car. Okay, cool. Like, not forever, but to borrow. But you've got... It's got tarps on it. It's painted in dot matrix. Hey, do I care?

No. So these real people that work at Ford drive it back and forth to work, carting their kids to hockey practice, dance lessons, the occasional date night, I don't know, in the rain, over potholes. Yeah, I almost said chuckholes 'cause that's what they call them in Detroit, but I call them potholes 'cause I'm from New York.

So with coffee in the cup holder. Is it gonna tip? Is it gonna spill? Two years of reality before Ford does anything in production, because Ford knows something most other businesses forget. Data and reality are not the same thing. Data is the plan. It's information. Reality is the pothole, right? The one you didn't see, the one that's covered in God knows what liquid, maybe ice.

It's Detroit. It's cold 10 months of the year there. And your coffee doesn't spill, and your kids are safe, and you didn't slide. That's the car that gets put through, right? So yes, I can help you build an offer in five minutes, just like CAD can help you design a car in five minutes. I really can. It's easy.

To me, creating offers is easy. The offer isn't real yet, though. It's just a plan. It's just an idea. It becomes real the first time you sell it and deliver it and find out what you got wrong. It becomes more real the second time and the third time and the fourth time and so on and so forth. You've got to be willing to practice.

But most women I work with, you know, they do. They have offers, lots of them. They're pivoting, they're evolving, and figuring out how best to create a business that supports the companies and the mission they dreamed of all those nights before they finally made their business official. More time doing the things they love and not chained to their desk, their laptop, or their phone, right?

Remember those days. I want you to think about, remember the dreams you had before you made this profession, this thing you're so great at, official So I'm gonna take you on a side quest for a second here. Not surprising. I need to talk about something that I am very passionate about, and I see it over and over, so I'm gonna share it with you.

You take AI's word like it's carved in stone, like it's the gospel raining down from heaven above, as if it knows you or your business or your clients better than you. You give your power away, and this goes for AI or business coaches in general, and then you'll doubt your own real, lived in the room experience.

You'll trust a machine or somebody else over your own eyes, and I understand why. Because doubt lives in all of us, and I beg you not to give your power away. Remember who you are. Remember what you've seen. Remember what you've experienced. And when you have that great offer, don't be afraid to continue to practice it.

So let me take you on a little more side quest. I used to tell this story. It's a great story, and it's about this. It'll take a few seconds here. I used to tell this story back in the day to my sales reps when I had my agency. And so as you know, I had B2B sales reps. They'd go out in the field every day, and they would have to make new friends and get appointments on their own.

This was not a call center. This was going out in the field business to business and going into a place that you had no appointment, connecting with people that did not wanna talk to you, and helping them understand why it was important for you to have some time with them. So these amazing individuals were developing super tenacity, super tenacity.

And so this story is one that I was told when I was first starting in the field, 'cause I did start as a B2B sales rep just like them out in the field cold calling, and I'm passing it down to you now. Feel free to share it widely. So here it goes. The devil decides he's retiring. Yay. He's done. Woo-hoo. Out of the game, kaput.

So he puts all his tools out in the yard for a yard sale, as one does, especially in the Midwest. And all the ghouls come by, Grim Reaper, you know, the whole crowd. Grr. And the tools are laid out, shiny, gorgeous, sparkling in the August sun, and there's one little thing. Looks like a worn wooden doorstop, beat up, clearly used the most out of anything that's set out, and it's the most expensive item there.

So one of the ghouls asks the devil, "W- what's the deal with this ratty little triangle? Why does it cost more than anything else?" And the devil says, "Oh, that's doubt." And then he says, "The rest of these? Honestly, I keep them for show. They look cool. I barely touch them But this one, I tap it once into the heart of a human, and they do the rest.

I guess the devil has a British accent. Maybe I don't have one. Once they have doubt, they cannot move. I'm channeling my inner Harry Potter narrati- narrator. They stop dead in their tracks. okay, enough with my impersonation here. Doubt, it's a killer. It will kill more dreams than any bad offer or internet troll or lack of sleep ever will.

So here's what I want you to see. False evidence appearing real, F-E-A-R. What does that spell? Fear. Doubt creates fear. It creates lack of movement. It creates analysis paralysis, all the things you've heard. False evidence appearing real. It feels like I shouldn't do it because of this one tiny piece of data, because of this one tiny thing that I think I saw or heard or interpreted in some way.

So the reality is you don't need some shiny tool. You have plenty of tools. I'm pretty sure if you're listening to this, you've got plenty of tools. You need to stop tapping the doubt into yourself every time three people don't buy. Three people is not a failing offer. Three people is not enough data. You don't give yourself enough time, often, to let things work When I first came into the online space, the best advice I got, which was very, I, I didn't believe it at first, by the way.

It was, like, f- very, like, "That's not true. That's true for other people, but not me. Not me. The- you don't know me. I know." And that was, pick one offer and marry it for one year, and get so good at that offer, at selling it, at delivering it, that it doesn't even matter what it's called. It just matters that you love selling it, and you love delivering it, and the people that are getting it are getting results.

Marry it for one year. I did that. I launched and delivered this one program over and over seven times in a row, month over month over month over month. And then I ended up loving it for seven years. It was so good for me. And then AI came on the scene, and I needed to reevaluate everything that was in that program.

So I took the best of it, evolved it, added in some AI amazingness, because AI does have a place in our business. It doesn't necessarily need to be the main focus, but it it's like having a business without using the internet. I mean, if you hire a plumber, you want him to be able to accept credit cards, right?

So he needs the internet for that, 'cause he needs to be able to take credit card processing. Okay. So long story short is that you need to give yourself more time, and that genuinely, what is that one offer? So if you've sold it once, like the person who started this whole episode, right? If you've sold it once and delivered it once and you love it, let's get really good at selling it and delivering it, and then on the way, refining it I mean, this is not just one person.

Like I was on a call with a potential client recently. She came to me a lot of the same ways a lot of people do, "I want more clients, I wanna make more money." And the more we talked, the more I saw it. She thought she was a web designer who knew how to generate copy to fill the pages. She's really smart.

Massive amounts of certifications, just a brilliant woman. she's not a website designer who knows how to fill copy though. She's a strategist. That's what I said. She has years of experience, and she can see the exact points that have to happen before any page starts to optimize, before...

But she confessed, "Renee, I hate it because when I get home, there's a mountain of work waiting." So I asked her if she had ever bought, you know, brought an assistant, into her business Or, you know, to show me the automation, automations she has in place. Why is that word so hard to say? Automations. So yeah, hiring an assistant, having an automation or 17 like I do, um, one at a time.

she gasped. She's like, "Automations? No. I like to make sure everything is personalized." Girl, you are among friends. I agree. I want things to be personalized, too. But that means no growth unless you are at your desk. Even the, the three basic automations would save her hours every week. Again, if you wanna know what the three basic automations are, let me know.

Email me. She did say that she hired help, though, but it fell apart. "Oh, Renee, it was a disaster. I don't wanna manage anybody." And so I probed a little bit more. I asked a few questions. And the thing is, is the person was actually really good, but she never created SOPs, right? Standard operating procedures.

She had written nothing down, no checklists. she was just, handing it over. "Hey, figure this out." and here's the part I really want you to, like, hit home with. You have to build that delivery structure, whether you're handing it to a person, an automation, or an AI agent. It does not matter which one.

The machine needs the recipe just as badly as the human does. So can you see the pattern here? You have an idea, it lives in your head, you test it on one person, and it doesn't work. Now you're doubting your worth, you're doubting your value, and you're just... You're killing yourself over it.

And it's not fair. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to the impact you could make, and it's certainly not fair to your income So what did I do with her? Well, we didn't add anything. We took things away. We cut, we focused ruthlessly. We put all of that scattered energy into the two things that actually move the needle.

Do less on purpose with a plan. That's the work. Most of my clients know already I'm gonna ask them to show me their calendar for the week, because that is a tell. You show me your calendar, I'll show you how you're not making money or where you can make more money, because it's not just about selling it, it's about selling it and delivering it.

So, and as, and genuinely, this is where I separate from many other sales or business coaches you'll find out there. Most of them know how to sell. I mean, I know how to sell and deliver, but then I also refine the whole thing while it's running, the words, the offer, the admin work in the back. Yeah, you know, if you're into it, I'm a Sagittarius.

I'll travel this planet until they stop letting me on a plane or a boat or a train. But I'm also Virgo rising, which means I am as structured as an accountant at tax time. Formulas, timers, calendar links, structure is your actual day. How you spend and invest your hours, that tells me more than anything else, because that's what keeps me up at night.

Money you can always make more of, but time you can't. You will never get this Tuesday back, not for any amount of money. So it is not enough to just sell the thing. You'll have to work harder later if you just sell it now. The question is, what does that work look like? And can we take the heavy time-sucking pieces out and put something in that feels just as good at, to the client as it does to the cost of your life, right?

Like, the cost of your time. And that's what I'm protecting. I'm protecting you from bad clients, from bad money, from the version of you that says yes when you're tired. And you can't throw money after, like, good mo- what do they say? You can't throw good money after bad and expect a better result. It's the same with your time.

So yes, as a sales coach, I protect your time, and I want you to think about that today when you're listening to this podcast. Maybe you think about it a little later. Continue to think about it. Am I learning how to sell myself into a cage, or am I selling myself into freedom? And that's the difference. So, all right, I'm gonna finish my little espresso here, and then maybe I'll get on a paddleboard later.

I don't know. I do this here, out on the water, one stroke at a time. P- the paddleboard only moves when you find the rhythm, right? When you paddle harder, doesn't work. When you paddle, you know, you have to paddle in the right time with the waves, with the motion. Now, again, the Mediterranean is not, like, as wavy as, like, the deeper seas, the deeper oceans of Atlantic or Pacific.

It's not like... There's n- there are surfers here, but they're few and far between 'cause the waves just aren't that big, especially this time of year. But that's your offer, by the way. It's not about working harder. It's, it's about continuing to connect with real people and refining it along the way. So if this landed and you felt the little tap of doubt while I was talking, good, 'cause that means you're close to something real.

Here's your invitation. Go to askmecoach.com. At the very least, get on my email list. You can hit reply to any email I ever send you and ask me anything. I'll always be up to something. I always have something going on. You know that. I'm always a l- you know, doing things that are a little off-menu that never gets posted anywhere, so you definitely wanna be in my world.

And if you're ready to actually build the validated offer, the one that's been sold and delivered until it hums like a flywheel, that's what I do. Real practice with real humans. All right, that's it for today. See you next time.