The fastest way to land your dream client might not be through the front door at all.
Renee Hribar breaks down the "side door" strategy she's used since her first sales job in Manhattan: instead of chasing an elusive decision maker with an outdated LinkedIn profile, reach out to the people whose job is literally to have conversations- the sales team, biz dev, and partnership managers who already know the organization inside and out. She shares how one dashboard designer used genuine curiosity, framed as research for an article, to open doors that months of cold outreach couldn't, and how a client added a thousand dollars in revenue from a single email once she helped her see an opportunity that was already sitting in her business.
Renee closes with a simple challenge: pick one dream company, skip the perfect contact, and start one real conversation this week. It's a reminder that intelligence in business isn't about knowing everything, but about knowing who to ask.
Renee Hribar: One of the biggest problems I see really smart people, especially B2B service providers, making is assuming they have a people problem. Like, "I just don't know who to talk to." But most of the time, it's really about the pathway it's really about where you're looking and where you're taking them. So let me explain I met a dashboard designer recently who works with managers leading marketing departments in large organizations.
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Like, people that are looking for conversations actively, who do have active profiles, who do have current emails, because that is how they literally do their job. So the people who you already know, and the people that can easily be contacted, and here's the best part, they already know how their organization works.
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She writes... She has a Substack, so she writes a lot about her industry and the changes, and she's been in her industry for 30 years, so she's seen everything from the beginning. And so she can literally genuinely say, "I'm researching for an upcoming article I'm writing and wondered if you might know someone in the organization that would match this profile.
I'm looking for marketing managers that can answer a couple questions or answer a quick question that will help me out. I'll even cite them in it so they'll get a little bit of, you know, professional juice," I guess you can say. Now, obviously, when we ended up sending it, she did end up working with me, it was a lot more polished, but the reality is, is that it can be as easy as that in theory.
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Like, you know what to say based on what they say. And, and the fact is if you can connect with the people who are connecting people all day, like the biz dev team, like the sales team, surprisingly they're really good at connecting people. So don't be afraid to take the shortest path, because the shortest path sometimes isn't even the one where you try to get ahold of the marketing manager in this case.
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Boring. But if you look for a side door, you know, someone out on the smoke breaks that they take, back in the day when people smoked. P.S. they definitely smoke in Europe. Here in Barcelona it's not as bad. When we traveled through Italy the past two summers, it was like literally, my child was like, "I think my voice got deeper from all the secondhand smoke."
That's how bad it was but back then, people definitely smoked a lot and definitely a lot more or even people that were just cracking the door open to get some fresh air in the building or, you know, in the shop or wherever it was, depending on my territory So, you know, those people out there, they would know where the office is for the boss or whomever I was asking for.
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So one of my favorite things about coaching isn't giving someone a script. You'll notice I don't sell scripts. It's helping them see opportunities they literally couldn't see before. They are... I mean, they're looking for people. Like, they're, they're looking for the people that, that can help them with the problems that they don't know how to solve.
But some people are gonna be like, "Oh, I'll just ask Claude where to look," or my favorite AI, whatever that is. Mine is Claude. And yeah, that'd be great if you even knew what to ask for. I do, right? And that's, and that's not bragging. It's that I genuinely have tried thousands of approaches and tested them all, and I have coached thousands of people to do the same for their business.
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And you're like, "Whoa." Like, like I'm suggesting, like, what if you just went in through a different department? What if the client you want isn't actually the first conversation you need to have? Suddenly, there are unlimited possibilities that you never even considered, and that's why I joke with my clients all the time, they get to keep me in their pocket.
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And I, I don't just see what's directly in front of you. I'm always looking down the road, like, "Okay, so if we wanna talk to this person, what are we gonna invite them to first? Okay, and then where does that lead? Okay, and then what? And then what's next?" And that is genuinely because I have experience. It's from practice, right?
Doing this actual thing for as long as I have, the lens I see businesses with is just different. And like, like for example, I had a friend growing up whose mom had lived in Japan and had become a certified feng shui interior designer. I mean, it was very cool in the '80s. And it's very cool now. It's very cool now, but back then before the internet we didn't know all the things we know.
And everywhere she went, she'd whip out her compass, which was not on her iPhone 'cause they did not exist yet, and say, "They need a water feature over here," or, "They need a plant there," and it was so cool. Did you ever do that when you walk into your clients' businesses virtually or otherwise? I bet you have, right?
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She a- added it to her offer suite but didn't see the opportunity in building out the funnels those calls lead to. So again, boom, we mapped out the offer. She made it in an email to just one of her clients. Just one. She admitted later that she did not think it was gonna work. Boom. She made an extra thousand dollars that week from one email to one client just for suggesting that they map out one f- it was just a call funnel.
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I mean, sometimes one little tiny, teeny-tiny, like the bathing suits in Barcelona, teeny-tiny small shift in perspective creates thousands of dollars in opportunity that was sitting there all along. One of my clients told me, she's like, "You have such a gift for pointing out the obvious, and then when I see it the way you see it, I'm always like, 'Ugh, I see it now.
Why didn't I see it before?'" Don't beat yourself up. It's because we all see it through our own lens, and that's one of the biggest reasons people tell me they work with me. Not because they don't know enough. It's 'cause they're too close to their own brilliance to see all the ways that they can create value, and that is completely normal.
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And if you point to any, quote-unquote, industry titan, they also have their trusted advisors. You know, I, I'm sure you know, but having lived in Detroit for so long, it's hard to escape the stories of Henry Ford and how he built Ford Motor Company out of a tiny garage. I mean, at the time, that was his side hustle, right?
But there's this one famous story popularized by Napoleon Hill that Henry Ford kept a row of buttons on his desk so he could immediately summon an expert who knew what he didn't. Whether or not the desk worked exactly that way or not, Ford understood that something that every expert and business owner needs to understand.
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One. Maybe you really admire the way that they, uh, create a company culture, or maybe you really admire the way that they have a philanthropic arm. So one company, not 10, one. I know, I see your Trapper Keeper already opening. Now stop trying to find the perfect decision maker. Instead, find someone in sales, biz dev, partnership teams, client success.
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And if you'd like someone in your pocket helping you see the hidden opportunities already in your business, head over to askmecoach.com. That's A-S-K-M-E-C-O-A-C-H.com. That's where you'll find the best ways to connect with me beyond the podcast this week. All right, have a great week.
