In Episode 43 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie interviews the Queen of Cold Calling® – Wendy Weiss. Wendy is an Author, Speaker and Sales Trainer/Sales Coach. She is recognized as a leading authority on lead generation, cold calling and new business development. Using her three-step system clients typically 3X the number of qualified appointments they can schedule with a corresponding increase in sales revenue and a shortening of the sales cycle.
In Episode 43 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie interviews the Queen of Cold Calling® – Wendy Weiss. Wendy is an Author, Speaker and Sales Trainer/Sales Coach. She is recognized as a leading authority on lead generation, cold calling and new business development. Using her three-step system clients typically 3X the number of qualified appointments they can schedule with a corresponding increase in sales revenue and a shortening of the sales cycle.
What did the Queen of Cold Calling® learn from ballet?
In this episode Rennie and Wendy cover:
About Wendy Weiss
Wendy Weiss, who is known as The Queen of Cold Calling®, is an Author, Speaker, Sales Trainer, and Sales Coach. She is recognized as one of the leading authorities on lead generation, cold calling and new business development. Wendy helps clients speed up their sales cycle, reach more prospects directly and generate more revenue.
Wendy has been featured in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Magazine, Selling Power, Inc, Forbes, and various other business and sales publications. She is the author of Cold Calling for Women: Opening Doors & Closing Sales and The Sales Winner’s Handbook: Essential Scripts & Strategies to Skyrocket Sales Performance. Wendy is also featured in Masters of Sales, Top Dog Sales Secrets, and How to Say it: Business to Business Selling.
She is also a former ballet dancer who believes that everything she knows in life she learned in ballet class.
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Rennie Gabriel 00:10
Hi, folks, welcome to Episode 43 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration. In the past episodes, we spoke about how to build an income and expense report, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in five to ten seconds, what to look for on a net worth statement to see how close you are to Complete Financial Choice™. Today, we have as our guest, Wendy Weiss. Wendy is known as the Queen of Cold Calling®. She is an Author, Speaker and Sales Trainer, and Sales Coach. She is recognized as a leading authority on lead generation, cold calling, and new business development. Clients typically get three times the number of qualified appointments they can schedule with a corresponding increase in sales revenue and a shortening of the sales cycle. Wendy, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Wendy Weiss 01:14
Thank you for inviting me to be here today.
Rennie Gabriel 01:18
You're welcome. Well, let's get right to it with some questions. Tell us what you do and why you do it.
Wendy Weiss 01:26
Well, my company - coldcallingresults.com - we're a sales training consultancy. And we work with business owners, sales managers. They have salespeople - they're either underperforming salespeople or their new salespeople - and they want them to produce, and they do not want to have to micromanage them. And I do what I do because I know this is something that is so difficult for so many people. And this is a way that I can make a difference.
Rennie Gabriel 02:00
Terrific. Now, because my program is called, Create Wealth With Purpose... Meaning, let's talk about charities. Is there a particular charity that you support, and if so, what is it they do?
Wendy Weiss 02:13
Well, I support the Humane Society.
Rennie Gabriel 02:15
Oh, well, I think . . . Yeah. If you don't know what the Humane Society is, you've been living under a rock.
Wendy Weiss 02:23
I have two rescue cats. They were rescued from a horrific situation. They were in a hoarding situation with like a dozen other cats. And they were rescued, and they're my family now. And so I think it's really important to take care of animals that can't take care of themselves.
Rennie Gabriel 02:45
Thank you. Thank you for what you do. We also have two rescue dogs and my wife and I donate to all sorts of different animal rescue organizations. So tell me who are your target markets?
Wendy Weiss 02:59
We work with mostly B2B businesses.
Rennie Gabriel 03:03
For people who aren't familiar, that's B2B, is businesses that sell to other businesses. Okay, go ahead.
Wendy Weiss 03:11
Okay. Thank you for that clarification. And they have typically a small sales team, small, midsize businesses, and service professionals. We do a lot with people in insurance, commercial real estate, IT, SaaS, consultants. Typically, we're working with either an underperforming team or a new hire. And we teach a very simple three-step method that on average, increases qualified appointments in sales by 73% without having to micromanage salespeople.
Rennie Gabriel 03:49
Oh, yeah. Without having to micromanage is great. And also, you use the term SaaS, which, in case someone doesn't know, is, Sales as a Service. So . . .
Wendy Weiss 04:01
Software as a Service.
Rennie Gabriel 04:02
Oh, software? Oh, yes, software . . . See, that's the reason for defining acronyms.
Wendy Weiss 04:10
Define everything. That's a good principle, actually.
Rennie Gabriel 04:14
So, let me ask you, what was your biggest failure, whether it was personal or business?
Wendy Weiss 04:20
My goodness . . . You know, my first career, I was a ballet dancer. I was never supposed to be a sales trainer. I was supposed to be a ballerina. And I always felt that I did not progress in my career. I danced in the Corps de ballet, a couple of different ballet companies, but I always felt like I didn't progress in my career the way I should have. And, you know, here's the thing, when you're a ballet dancer, your career starts when you're really young, like 15 or 16. And we're so granular, we're like triple or quadruple. Type A, and nothing is ever good enough. Because you can always - whatever you do - you can always be better. So I just never thought I was good enough. And that held me back. And what's really funny is when I started my business, I thought everybody would want to talk to me because I was an artist. So the point that I'm making here is your mindset. The way I thought I wasn't good enough, it held me back. I didn't have the career that perhaps I might have had. But then when I started my business, I thought everybody wanted to talk to me because I was a former artist, which enabled me to start a business.
Rennie Gabriel 05:46
Okay, yeah, sure. I'm not quite following that line of thinking. But I hear where you're coming from.
Wendy Weiss 05:52
I'm not saying it made sense. I'm not saying it made sense. I’m simply saying, that's the way I thought about it.
Rennie Gabriel 05:59
I get it. And then, that's why I'm laughing because I failed high school math - and so I went into a career that had nothing, that had only math. So, yeah, you know, the irony of situations. So what would you say your biggest insight was from not doing well enough in what you wanted to be doing as a ballet dancer?
Wendy Weiss 06:25
Well, it was that realization about mindset. When we're doing training with clients, and we don't focus on... We don't say, now we're going to work on mindset, but it pervades everything that we do because there are so many people that just - they stand in their own way. And I think that is the hardest thing in the world, is to get out of your own way so that you can do what you need to do. Because you can teach someone the skills that they need, but they also need to be able to execute.
Rennie Gabriel 07:05
Yeah. It's like the old Henry Ford comment about 'if you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.'
Wendy Weiss 07:16
Exactly.
Rennie Gabriel 07:17
What would you say are the typical feelings your prospects experience?
Wendy Weiss 07:23
|Well, our prospects are very frustrated because they go into a sales meeting with the sales team, and the team isn't selling, and all they're hearing are excuses. Well, 'you need a better website, or, we need to do more on LinkedIn, or, more social media, or, prospects aren't doing anything these days, or . . . ' All they hear are complaints and excuses. And they kind of start to feel like they're losing their minds, because they know if they could just get in front of the right people - if their team would just get in front of the right people - they would be able to sell. And so that's the problem that we solve. It's we help sales teams get in front of the right people. I was just reading a study the other day that said about 83% of newly hired salespeople are gone in three years. They're either let go or they quit.
Rennie Gabriel 08:25
That sounds frightening. Are there mistakes that the clients make when they're hiring salespeople? Is that why there's such a high failure rate? That's what I'll call it.
Wendy Weiss 08:38
Absolutely. The biggest mistake that I see is a company will hire someone, and they teach them every last thing about whatever it is they're selling - which could take a really long time - and then they say go find some clients. And they don't have anything in place for that new salesperson to actually be able to go find some clients. And so step one, actually, we use prospecting as a litmus test for whether or not a new hire will be successful. Because you can teach a brand-new salesperson to prospect and set an appointment - maybe for somebody else that knows what they're doing. But you can teach them to do that in a matter of months. It will not take years the way it might to turn them into a really great salesperson that knows everything about the product or service, but you can teach them. We do our program in three months. By the end of three months, they're either finding opportunities, or you know, this is somebody that will never pick up the phone and talk to strangers and you don't need to keep them around for three more years to find that out.
Rennie Gabriel 09:57
So I'm hearing that one of the major mistakes is hiring a salesperson and not providing them the people, or how to reach the people that they need to sell to.
Wendy Weiss 10:09
Exactly, exactly.
Rennie Gabriel 10:11
Do you have a case study of a situation where that's what you stumbled into, and what did you do, and what happened? What was the result?
Wendy Weiss 10:20
Yeah. Well we had somebody that came to us a couple of years ago, he was a brand-new insurance professional, and he learned everything that he needed to know as a commercial producer. And he learned everything that he needed to learn about commercial insurance. And he got all of his licenses. And his company literally said to him, go find some clients. They said, "go." And he just did not know how to "go". And he found me - he found our program. He came to our program.
Rennie Gabriel 10:55
Was this the salesperson or the owner of the company?
Wendy Weiss 10:58
The salesperson himself was motivated enough to come to us. Usually, it's the owner who's really frustrated. But in this case, it was the salesperson, because he had a completely empty pipeline. He didn't have any clients. He was very frustrated. And of course, he was worried about his future because he had an empty pipeline and no clients.
Rennie Gabriel 11:22
Yeah.
Wendy Weiss 11:22
And he didn't know how to do it. And his manager was getting really frustrated with him. So he found us. And he learned our system. We teach a very simple step-by-step system: what to do, and what to say, and how to say it, and when to say it. And he started making appointments. He started actually writing some really large accounts. And in a matter of months, actually in six months, in six months, he paid off $60,000 in college debt.
Rennie Gabriel 11:56
Hmm. Wow.
Wendy Weiss 11:58
After he did the program.
Rennie Gabriel 12:00
Now, I'm thinking, that salesman should have referred you to his sales manager who sounds incompetent.
Wendy Weiss 12:08
Well, I don't know if he was incompetent.
Rennie Gabriel 12:10
Well, the idea of making someone out to go do something, and not even telling them where to go, doesn't sound like competence to me.
Wendy Weiss 12:19
Well, you know, Rennie, there is this myth about the born salesperson. And the myth goes, there are these people, they're just born with the gift of gab, they're very charismatic, they get along with people, they are people person, and they somehow just know what to do. A lot of people believe this myth. This is not true. You know, I was really lucky, because when I was dancing, I needed a day job, and I got a job with a telemarketing agency that did business development. And they taught me this skill. And learning the skill enabled me to build a business. So I was really lucky. I am not a born salesperson. It's just like dancing. You know, a dancer may be born, someone may be born with a lot of talent, or a lot of athletic talent - that doesn't mean they're going to the Olympics. And if you're a dancer, and you don't take your ballet class every single day, you're not getting a job in the ballet company. So it's the same thing here.
Rennie Gabriel 13:30
I get it. And what I'm thinking is, you know, in my mind, hey, the company where the salesman came from, should have been your next client.
Wendy Weiss 13:38
Yeah.
Rennie Gabriel 13:39
But be that as it may, is there a valuable resource that you can direct our listeners to if they're facing this?
Wendy Weiss 13:49
Absolutely. That is - The Business Owner's Guide: Scheduling More Qualified Appointments when their Prospects are all Completely Freaking Out. And I wrote it.
Rennie Gabriel 14:01
A nice short title. Yes.
Wendy Weiss 14:02
A nice short title of where the circumstances in which we live these days. And it is 12 steps to follow to increase sales now.
Rennie Gabriel 14:14
Okay, you know what, I'll put the URL - because it looks kind of long - in the show notes. So people can just click on that. And is there a question that I should have asked you that would give some great value to the audience? And obviously, besides the question, what would the answer be?
Wendy Weiss 14:35
Well, the question would be, because I mentioned before, our simple three-step method.
Rennie Gabriel 14:40
Yes.
Wendy Weiss 14:41
And the simple three-step method that, on average, increases qualified appointments and sales by 73% without having to micromanage salespeople. So I believe that everything I know in life - business, life - I learned in ballet class This is what I learned in ballet class. Warm-up. The first thing you do if you're a dancer is - you warm-up, so that you do not hurt yourself. So what that means for your salespeople is you don't want them winging it. They don't know what they're doing, especially if they're brand new. So you need to have a system in place that you can plug them into. A system that you know, that works. That's the warm-up. We have, in ballet, you start at the barre, that's b, a, r, r, e. And, you know, we have a certain way you warm-up, so you don't hurt yourself.
Rennie Gabriel 15:43
As opposed to kicking back a shot glass. I get it. Okay.
Wendy Weiss 15:48
Exactly. B, a, r, r, e. So we start at the barre, your salespeople need to have a system that they can use to warm themselves up so they're not winging it. So they don't hurt themselves, and you. The second thing I learned - the second step in the three-step method is Rehearse. When you're a dancer, you have a performance coming up, you don't just run out on stage and start dancing. You've been rehearsing for months. And what happens when you do the same steps in the same order, you know, you practice the choreography every single day for hours on end, you're building muscle memory. Muscle memory is automatic memory. You do the same thing over and over and over again until it just becomes a part of you. And you know, all high performers do this. They practice. And so your salespeople, again, we don't want them winging it. And information alone is not enough. They need to practice so that they internalize, so they get that automatic muscle memory. So when a prospect says, "I don't have the budget." They don't go, "Ahhh." They have an answer.
Rennie Gabriel 17:08
Now, would that be similar to . . . Well, I'm thinking of either role-playing or practicing on real prospects. Would it be role-playing?
Wendy Weiss 17:18
Yes, we do a lot of role-playing. And the other thing I recommend is, once they have a handle on the system, we have people put together a low-priority prospecting list to practice on.
Rennie Gabriel 17:32
Got it. So in other words, if they goof up with the person who's a low priority, it's not that big a deal.
Wendy Weiss 17:39
Exactly. You don't want them goofing up with the most important lead, that you're like, that's our wish list - we want to work with that company. Not that.
Rennie Gabriel 17:49
Got it.
Wendy Weiss 17:50
And then the third step of the three-step system - we have Warm-up, Rehearse. The third step is that's when you Perform, when you've done your warm-up and you've done your rehearsal. And people, business owners, they talk about their salespeople, they have call reluctance. Well, you know what? Call reluctance is like stage fright. I've been there. You're standing in the wings. Your heart is pounding, and your palms are sweaty. But you hear your music, and you get on stage. But because you've done your warm-up and your rehearsal, it's just automatic. You do what you have to do. And you do it well, because you've done your warm-up and you've done your rehearsal. Call reluctance is like stage fright. And what I have seen over the years that I've been doing this is when people learn a very simple system - and they know all the answers, they know what they're going to do, and they practice so they have that automatic muscle memory - then they're able to do what they need to do and be really good at it. And then after the performance . . . I can't tell you how many mornings after the performance, you go to the rehearsal the next day, and the director says, "Okay, we have to fix this. And we have to fix this. And we have to fix this." But you know what? That's what makes you better.
Rennie Gabriel 19:14
Yeah.
Wendy Weiss 19:14
So when you've got people that are making their calls or prospecting or setting appointments, you can then work with them to make them even better. That's my three-step model. Warm-up, Rehearse, Perform.
Rennie Gabriel 19:31
Thank you. I love my last question, which is, what should I have asked you? That's where I get the best answers. Thank you.
Wendy Weiss 19:37
Well, my pleasure.
Rennie Gabriel 19:39
Thank you, Wendy, for being on the show. And to my listeners - thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review, and subscribe. If you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page roadmap to Complete Financial Choice and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money. Again, that's, wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.