Even when a sales conversation doesn’t lead to a yes, it can still be a powerful win.
Renee Hribar shares a fresh perspective on what to do when your initial outreach ends in silence. Instead of spiraling or overhauling your entire business, she introduces three powerful reframing questions to help you stay grounded, gain insights, and keep the door open for future connection. By focusing on generosity, listening, and documenting meaningful details, you build a pipeline of potential clients, collaborators, and connectors that fuel sustainable business growth.
Sales is not about pressure, it’s about presence, patience, and positioning. When you treat every conversation as a connection, your expertise becomes magnetic.
Transcript
Don't panic, don't spiral into thinking I must not be good enough. Don't change everything overnight. Don't go in changing your website or your branding or anything. Yet. Instead, I want you to use these three reframe questions to stay in the game. And the game is in your head. It's connecting with people.
[:How many clients do you need? These people, if they're not a client, they're a connector. They're a collaborator. Collaborators put you in front of their audience, right? Opa, other people's audiences, connectors bring people. Constantly, they could bring another hundred people tomorrow if they understood what you did and the problems that you solve, which is what we do when we share anchor content, right?
s I. Love documenting, and I [:Even back in the 19 hundreds when I had my sales agency that I, I mean, I had it for 15 years, so part of it was in the 19 hundreds and I would tell my sales reps to practice in their bathroom mirror. Well, now they have their phone. They would just, we didn't have iPhones back then. Now they could just.
Talk into your phone if you have any kind of transcription service. Maybe you use Otter or just voice notes on your iPhone Point is this Practice. Practice document. Document everything. So practice having those conversations with an open heart and ask yourself, what did I learn about this person? One thing I also do when I document is I put their name on a document.
nnel. Spotify, wherever they [:So I look like I remember everything and I do, I mean, because I documented it, right? I'm not a super computer, so what did I learn about this person? That's valuable. That's data and it's all something we can use moving forward, even if the relationship stalls. Second reframe question. Did I show up with generosity and clarity?
So did I listen more than I talked? That is a hard one for me. Seriously, I got a podcast that goes out twice a week. I mean, the notes home to my parents. Growing up, if Renee would just stop sharing with her neighbors, she would do so much better academically. Now, granted, I still graduated cum laude. Okay, but.
. And when I got into sales, [:Did I clearly communicate what I do? That's another question I have to ask myself. A lot of times, my website, my title, my bio, all the different content I have out there, it's just gobbledygook until I can frame it so that that person understands it. And I can't do that clearly until I have context.
know us, it is a tendency of [:And I'm saying, don't try just. Ask and listen, and you'll know when it's time to enter the conversation. And if, if you are not sure, then don't enter the conversation and wait until the conversation's over and then share something meaningful as a reflection of the conversation. There's nothing wrong with you listening for the 20 minutes you have on the call.
And 18 minutes go by, they've talked the whole time. Two minutes. Oh, you have to go. And then maybe you send a meaningful email later or. Wherever you communicate with them could be Messenger or dms or whatever the case may be. They're gonna like that. That's really nice. And you also can transcribe the conversations, right?
e. But the point is, is that [:On that date with, if you were to get, uh, you know, asked about it later, they would say, oh, that was a great first date, because they were able to talk. So did I show up with genuine? Generosity and clarity. That's question number two. If yes, that's a win question. I ask myself number three, the three reframe questions.
roblems that you know how to [:It's, it's moot, right? It's like going out to a restaurant with a friend who just came from a big family dinner and you're like, you just wanted to go. Check out this new appetizer and they're like, yeah, I'll come with you. I'll just have a drink. And the friend just has a drink. You have the appetizer. You wanna share the appetizer, but they're just like, no, I'm not hungry.
That's okay. You don't have to shove it down their throat. Right. You don't. They don't have to have the appetizer to make sitting with them. There a lovely. You're gonna hang out again, right? but if you start to force feed 'em, they're gonna be like, I'm never going out with you again. 'cause that was weird.
n a way that helped you see, [:And again, client connector collaborator. So I've had people circle back to me because I don't make offers unless I see that they have. Said out loud the problems that I know how to solve. So, in other words, I've spent a lot of time qualifying. I've had people circle back after months, even years later, because I don't push, I, I don't wanna turn over objections, been there, done that.
It's the, it's for the birds. It, you are an expert selling for yourself. You're not just selling. You gotta sell and deliver. Like as a salesperson for another company, once you sign that paperwork or whatever, as soon as that ink is dry, I'm done. I pass it off to the account manager. They gotta deal with you now.
it, but then you're the one [:So when you're selling your expertise, the sale is often just the beginning of the relationship, right? Not the end. And here's the truth. When you stop treating sales like a win-lose game and start seeing every conversation as a connection, your business gets stronger, period. Done. Full stop. So here's your action step.
If a conversation didn't go the way you hoped journal on the three questions, you might be surprised how much you actually gained. Here's the three questions Again. Your three reframe questions are, number one, what did I learn about this person? Number two, did I show up with generosity and clarity?
Number [:Your long game is strong. You're doing great. See you next week.
