What comes first, the offer or the audience?

What comes first, the offer or the audience?

TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome to the “S” Word LIVE. My name is Rene Hribar, TEDx speaker, author, and I am here to help you with your sales strategy. The “S” Word LIVE is a show that I do every single week, Live Right Here, originated from my Facebook business page. And it is your chance to come in here and ask questions. So I am in Detroit today. I’m not always in Detroit working, but this is today for me. Where you guys? Tell me in the comments, whether you’re listening live or on the replay. Hello. Hello, guys. So let’s say hello as you join today. I’m talking about a topic that has been percolating in my community, with my clients, with my students, and my programs. And I’m just excited to share it with you here. So here is the hot topic. What comes first, the offer or the audience? So there’s a popular misconception, I would say in my personal opinion, that the Internet has given us and it is called the one call close. Have you ever heard of that? The one call close. So for me, as a sales professional, having sold millions of dollars in products and services over the last 20 years for clients like AT&T and Intuit, Quill and even my own beverage company, the point is, is that the one call close, if you’ve heard of that, can put a little weirdness into our head, if you’re new at sales. So here’s the key. If you’ve been spending any time with me at all, you’ll have heard me say great salespeople ask great questions, good sales people have a good pitch. So say hello as you join. Have you ever heard me say that, that great sales people ask great questions and good sales people have a good pitch? So if you’ve heard me say that before, this is in alignment with that.

Hey, Mary from New York. I’m from New York. But I’m not there today.

Hey, Tammy. Hey, Mary Day. Hey, Diane Thompson. Hi, Lori Evans. Hi, Mindy.

So say hello as you join. Ultimately, have you heard of the one call close? And has it ever made you feel like if you ever were to get on the phone with someone that you were supposed to be able to close them in one call and be able to finalize the deal? I think that if you’ve heard of that, let me know in the comments, whether you’re live or on the replay, if you’ve heard of the one call close, because this ties into the title today of the big problem that’s been percolating in the community is that question of what comes first, the offer or the audience. So when I work with women, typically they’ve had five, 10, 15, 30 years sometimes of corporate experience becoming a master in their field of expertise. And now they’ve decided for many reasons, whether they have aging parents or young children or their third child or their fourth or retirement, whatever their reason is, they’ve decided to take that experience and hang up their own shingle, say, I am now going to be a consultant or a done for you service provider, independent of my corporate experience. Some of them still work for corporate clients, and I like to say that those are their biggest one on one clients. So if that’s you say hello. So I’m thinking of the  coaches, the consultants, the done for you service providers, you know, the virtual assistants, the OBMs, the integrators, the agency owners, the people that are out there, that have the experience, are coming into their own, and they’re hanging up their own shingle.

Maybe you have your own office space locally. Maybe you only do work, you know, globally, virtually, remotely, either way or some combination there in either way. The goal is, is we want to find new paying clients. Right. So the age old question is, is it the offer or the audience that comes first? And so let me know if you’ve ever heard of the one call close. So the one call close in the Internet space is perpetuated a lot. I’ll get him on the phone. I’ll close him as a professional salesperson. I think. No. Hey, Donna, how are you? I know that that is truly a myth. So if there’s ever such a thing as a one call close, number one, as a woman selling specifically to other women, we just don’t operate in the hardcore closer mindset. Right. Let me know if you have ever heard of that. You know, one call close. When do we sell as a woman we truly create genuine relationships and we don’t want to make it a hit it and quit it type of environment. So. Oh, Donna says getting ready for the hurricane. Oh, my goodness. Yes. So be safe. Be safe, Donna. So the goal here is, is that when we’re connecting with people. Is it the offer or the audience? It’s truly both at the same time. And what I want to encourage you today is if you are listening, you ever said things like, oh, my goodness, my,

you know, I need to change my message. Chances are you’re messaging is off because we haven’t connected enough to the people that are listening. And when you’re speaking out loud, maybe you’re not saying the things that you truly mean to say or need to say or that they need to hear so that they understand that you have the unique skill set to solve the problem that they have. So how does this all come together? What comes first, the offer or the audience?

What I’m going to encourage you to do is to release the idea that there is such a thing as a one call close and to look at every single person who interacts with you, whether you meet them at a local networking event or you meet them in person at a conference, whether you meet them in a Facebook group, whether you meet them on LinkedIn or you connected with them on Instagram, or whether you connect with them here on Facebook. Anybody that you interact with is a part of your audience. They don’t have to be quantified necessarily by people on your email list or people that like your page or connections on a certain platform. The goal here is that if you’re interacting with them right now, they’re listening.

They’re part of your audience. And so wouldn’t it be great if you could poll your audience or ask questions? You can. There’s nothing stopping you. In fact, one of the best things that I love about doing business globally is that no matter when I’m able to work, I’m able to connect with someone. If I want to work in the middle of the night and I live on the east coast of the United States, I can connect people in Australia. And so let’s say that I do that. Let’s say I get on a phone call. What is my goal? To ask questions, to find out how they’re describing the issues that they have, not to present some foregone gone prepackaged solution. Number one, if I do that, I am eliminating a lot of people. I am treating my one on one services like a mass market product. That’s the first problem. The second problem is I’m not able to listen to what people need. And then I might be missing out on an amazing opportunity that I hadn’t even thought of. So have you ever felt like that, that you can’t get on the phone with someone until you have an offer prepackaged, done, signed, sealed, delivered that you can put out and go look at this beautiful offer?

If you have ever felt like that, it’s OK. It’s totally okay. I understand why you might feel that way because of what’s perpetuated in our news feed oftentimes. So this is probably something you haven’t heard anybody talk about out loud. The goal is this, is that you can build your offers and your audience at the same time. Right now, today, whatever, whenever you’re listening to this, whether it’s today or down the road, right now when you’re hearing this, you can literally find a place that you’ve engaged with someone, a social platform or in person or even a former colleague, and reach out and have a conversation with them and not feel like you have to sell them something. And here’s the better part. When you ask these questions, you will get ideas about how they describe their offers, how they describe their problems, how to describe their their concerns that will help you form better messaging and form better offers. What?

It’s amazing. And then here’s my other advice.

If you’ve hung out on me any length of time, you know that I’m always going to encourage you to keep the relationship open, to always protect the relationship, to keep the conversation going. So why would you end the call like, OK, thanks. See you later. Click. Why wouldn’t you go, Great! I would love to talk to you again. Let’s set up another time to reconnect. Maybe it’s tomorrow. Maybe it’s next week. Maybe it’s three weeks or months from now. Ultimately, when you connect with someone, you are allowed to continue to connect with them. Of course, when you do, it’s not about how can you sell them. It’s about asking the right questions so that what they need truly becomes clear to you and to them. So if you’ve ever felt that you have to get on the phone and have an answer, and then you’ve tried that and they’ve said, send me a proposal and then you’ve struggled making the proposal, that is identifier that you didn’t ask enough questions. If writing a proposal is hard for you, believe me I have written my share, then it’s not because you don’t know how to write an offer.

It’s not because you don’t have offers. It’s because there wasn’t enough discovery. So take the time. Don’t fall prey to the one call close. Don’t believe the hype that you need a thousand subscribers on your email list to have an audience big enough, to serve the clients you need, to make your business profitable and grow your business. So I just wanted to release that from the hype of the world that we live in and give you that permission to just get on the phone with people that you’re interacting with, connect with them, don’t feel like you have to sell them, and then always keep the conversation open. Tell me how that feels in the comments below. Do you feel that you can take those actions today? If any of us feels confusing we’ve been talking about it a lot over my free Facebook group. Click the link, continue the conversation. There’s lots of ways to continue this. If any of this feels foggy, then we should definitely hang out more. I look forward to seeing you right here back again for the “S” Word LIVE show next week. Have a super great day. Yay!