Al McBride 0:03
Welcome to the dealing with Goliath podcast. The mission of dealing with Goliath is to sharpen the psychological edge in business leaders with skin in the game, who want to be more effective under pressure, uncover hidden value and increase profitability. With expert guests across the spectrum.

Al McBride 0:20
We deliver gems of wisdom delving into their methods, their thinking and approach to business and life and to problem solving. This is the double espresso shot of insight through our short interview format, with five questions in around about 15 minutes. I’m your host Al McBride. My guest today is Wendy Weiss.

Al McBride 0:41
Wendy is known as the queen of cold calling. She is an author, speaker, sales trainer and sales coach, and is recognized as one of the leading authorities on lead generation, cold calling, and new business development.

Al McBride 0:55
Clients typically three x the number of qualified appointments they can schedule with a corresponding increase in sales revenue, and the shortening of the sales cycle. Clients include Avon products, ADP, Sprint, and housands of entrepreneurs throughout the world.

Al McBride 1:14
Wendy has been featured in The New York Times Businessweek Entrepreneur Magazine selling power Inc, Forbes, and various other business and sales publications. She’s also the author of cold calling for women, opening doors and closing sales great title. And the sales winners handbook essential scripts and strategies to skyrocket sales performance outside of her high performing business.

Al McBride 1:39
Wendy is also a former ballet dancer, who believes that everything she knows in life and business she’s learned in ballet class. Wendy, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Wendy Weiss 1:51
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Al McBride 1:56
You’re very welcome. And where are you joining us from today?

Wendy Weiss 1:59
I’m in New York City. And you might hear some sirens and horns out the window. That’s just the way it is here in New York City.

Al McBride 2:08
That’s the sound of New York right. Yeah, excellent stuff. Excellent stuff. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. And thank you for joining us. So let’s dive straight in. So who is your ideal client? And what’s the biggest challenge they face?

Wendy Weiss 2:25
Okay, well, you know, how, if you’re a business owner, and you’re really frustrated, and kind of stressed out, because you’re just not getting in front of enough people, the people that you want to talk to, and, and you think to yourself, Well, you know, I’m really good.

Wendy Weiss 2:45
Once I get in front of them, I just can’t get in front of them. And, and you’ve thought about, well, you could hire someone to set appointments for you, or you could hire someone to do a lot of social media for you, but it’s an investment.

Wendy Weiss 3:01
And you’re not sure if it was gonna work. And so you just kind of don’t know what to do. But you know, you have to do something, because let’s face it, if you don’t get in front of people, you’re not going to have a business.

Wendy Weiss 3:16
So those are the people that I work with, those are my people. And what we do is we help our clients get themselves in front of the people that they need to get in front of, we teach a very simple three step method to set more qualified appointments, which ultimately leads to an increase in revenue

Al McBride 3:39
that says, Yeah, it does sound like you know, it’s far more common problem than the opposite. I don’t know too many business owners or people with sales teams who are sort of complaining that they’re, you know, they’re awash with opportunities.

Al McBride 3:55
And it’s so much more particularly with COVID with, you know, Oh, I’d like a few more clients, and you know, that maybe they want to specialize and who they have or anything like that. But it’s, I would imagine that there’s a huge need for that, particularly now. And

Wendy Weiss 4:12
yeah, because possibly pre COVID you’re used to just walking into a place of business and talking to the business owner. Or maybe if you manage a team, those of you that manage a team of salespeople, they were just walking in to the business, or maybe you were going to a lot of networking events or trade shows or conferences.

Wendy Weiss 4:37
And that’s not happening live right now. They’re happening online, but it’s not the same thing where you can online, you can’t just walk up to someone and start that conversation that you want to have. So a lot of businesses are really stuck. How do I get in front of the people I need to get in front of and the answer is your telephone.

Wendy Weiss 5:01
I was actually I was on a panel a couple of weeks ago, one of one of the experts said, Oh, the phone is dead, because everybody’s doing everything on zoom. And I said, No, the phone’s not dead, you need a mechanism to get people to zoom. And that’s your telephone.

Al McBride 5:19
Absolutely, that it’s fascinating, because I would have thought, there is a wonderful intimacy on the telephone. And now it’s become almost a novelty. As somebody said to me, you know, you know, I actually phoned someone on the phone the other day, so it’s one of the least used applications or systems, people cell phones these days, which is crazy. So it’s a great opportunity there.

Al McBride 5:43
So what are some of those common mistakes that people make when they’re trying to solve that problem of getting more potential clients and getting more of those conversations going? So what have people usually tried, and they’re getting frustrated with because it’s not working?

Wendy Weiss 6:01
Well, one of the biggest mistakes that I see all the time is business owners that say, I’m gonna hire a salesperson, I’m gonna hire someone to set appointments for me. And I say, Great, what do you have in place for them? And most of the time, the answer is nothing. And here’s the thing I shared with you, in my bio that you used for my introduction, that I, my first career was I danced in a ballet company, I wasn’t supposed to be the queen of cold calling, I was supposed to be a ballerina.

Wendy Weiss 6:41
And I feel like everything I know in life. And in business I learned in ballet class, this is what I learned in ballet class, warm up, reverse perform. And the problem is what most people do, when it comes to picking up the phone to reach out to prospects is they just jumped to the performance,

Al McBride 7:03
right? And they wonder why they find it so unpleasant. And it’s usually not very successful.

Wendy Weiss 7:08
Exactly. And when you do your homework when you do that warm up, because you know, if you’re a dancer, you don’t just run out on stage and start dancing, because you’re gonna hurt yourself.

Wendy Weiss 7:21
If you’re a if you’re a professional athlete, you don’t just run out on the field and start playing the game you warm up so that you don’t hurt yourself. And then you practice so that you get that automatic muscle memory, that you know how to handle yourself, when you’re out on the field. Or if you’re a dancer, and you’re on stage, you’re not going hopefully you’re not going what step comes next. No, because you’ve rehearsed for months.

Al McBride 7:47
So just know,

Wendy Weiss 7:49
you just know. So the mistake that most business owners make is if they’re if they’re going to process and do the calls themselves, they don’t do the preparation, they just get on the phone, and then they hurt themselves because they’re not warmed up and they haven’t rehearsed. Or they hire someone. And they haven’t put any of the pieces in place for the person they’ve hired to warm up and rehearse. So that person gets on the phone and

Al McBride 8:17
heard the same problem,

Wendy Weiss 8:19
though it’s just the same problem.

Al McBride 8:20
That sounds very interesting. Because it’s a very, it’s a very good and valuable insight that if you’re going to hand over your sales calls and not approach that you have to know what you’re doing in the first place to be able to educate that person as to what as to what you’re all about. I have to do it.

Al McBride 8:39
Okay, very good. So you nearly have to be good enough, you have to be good at it in the first place to hand it over. Whereas other people want to hand it over, because they’re not good at it. And that’s precisely the problem. Okay, very interesting.

Al McBride 8:51
Very good. Very interesting. So what is one valuable free action that the audience can implement that will help them with that issue, so it might get them to the destination, or at least it’ll point them in the right trajectory?

Wendy Weiss 9:05
Well, the valuable action that you can take really is to start to put the elements of the warmup in place. And I know we don’t have time to go in detail about what those elements are.

Wendy Weiss 9:18
But essentially, your warmup consists of identifying the target, identifying the challenge that those kind of prospects have that you can help them with and creating the messaging this scripts, yes, you need his script, it just means you’re prepared. So you create all of the messaging and a process that you’re going to follow.

Wendy Weiss 9:43
How many times to call, leave a voicemail, send an email, what what are you going to do, what’s the process so those are the three elements of the warmup and you can do that yourself or you might need to to hire someone to help you with it, that’s what our company does. But, you know, that is something that you could start to put in place yourself.

Al McBride 10:07
Right? And that makes a lot of sense, then, with the process, I’d imagine you’ve tried and tested a huge array of different approaches and that you have yours is pretty optimized. Yeah.

Wendy Weiss 10:19
And you know, when when you say to someone, if you hire a salesperson, you say, go make some calls, or you say to yourself, I’m going to make some calls. There’s all these decisions that need to be made. Of course, who, and what are you going to say? But even more than that? How many times are you going to call them? Are you going to leave a voicemail? Are you going to send them an email?

Wendy Weiss 10:42
Are you going to reach out to them on social media? How many times you’re going to do that? What are you going to do if you don’t hear from them? They don’t respond. So there’s, they’re all these decisions, and you really want to make them ahead of time. And then you want to measure it, benchmark it?

Al McBride 11:00
Ah, that’s a very interesting addition is the measurement of what what exactly might be the key things to look at if you’re going to start measuring?

Wendy Weiss 11:09
Well, we look at for a calling campaign for an appointment setting campaign, we look at dials, meaning how many times did someone dial the phone conversations, meaning conversations with the decision maker, the person you want to talk to, not with the gatekeeper, not with an admin with the person you want to talk to.

Wendy Weiss 11:31
And then appointments, how many appointments were scheduled, like the one of the really stupid things that people say about cold calling is they say it’s a numbers game. And I live on 100 times a day. And if you don’t get traction, dial the phone 200 times a day. And if you don’t get traction with dial up on 300 times a day, that is not sustainable work

Al McBride 11:55
dot points that you know improving your execution on your system. Yeah,

Wendy Weiss 12:00
the real numbers game that we play is about conversion, of course, convert your dials into conversations with the person you want to talk to, and then convert those conversations into qualified appointments. So we play the conversion numbers game.

Al McBride 12:15
Excellent, excellent. So with that in mind, what might be one valuable free resource that you could direct people to that would help them with that issue?

Wendy Weiss 12:26
Okay, wonderful, we have put together a very special three guide bundle for all of you. The first guide in the bundle is called the cold calling Survival Guide, the subtitle is starts setting appointments in the next 24 hours. So it’s a step by step guide that you can use or you can give to a salesperson to use the phone to start setting appointments.

Wendy Weiss 12:54
In the next 24 hours. We’ve also included the business owners guide to schedule a more qualified appointments when their prospects are all completely freaking out. And that is 12 steps, 12 steps that you can implement today to start bringing in business and I wrote this just recently because of what’s going on now.

Al McBride 13:20
Right? very up to date and current.

Wendy Weiss 13:23
Yeah, yeah. So 12 steps that you can you can use to start bringing in business today. And then the third guide is just kind of a bonus. It’s our resource guide. It’s all of the tools that I use that we use that we recommend. And it’s you know, data resources, software, all sorts of resources for your business. So those those are the three guides that we put together for you.

Al McBride 13:55
That’s a quite a quite an impressive bundle of goodies there. Thank you very much. that those are excellent. Those are Excellent, thank you. So what’s one question I should have asked you. That would be of great value to our audience, but I didn’t.

Wendy Weiss 14:09
Oh, my goodness. Well, that was at the end of your list, wasn’t it? I said everything I know in ballet class.

Al McBride 14:17
I wanted to get back to you on the ballet because it is it is a very interesting analogy. I did want to pick your brain with a little bit more. And I liked the very interesting on the warm up. I was gonna ask you, what other similarities or parallels Do you feel there are in business or lessons?

Al McBride 14:35
So imagine, you know, ballet is the epitome of artistic performers who make it look graceful and easy. Whereas you know how much discipline and hard work and application it takes? Just wondering what what are some of those those parallels for you?

Wendy Weiss 14:54
Well, here’s the thing. When you’re training as a ballet dancer, it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to 10 10 years to train as a ballet dancer, and you start dancing I started when I was five. But usually 789 is the age that you start. And you take a ballet class every day, five or six days a week, especially as you get older as you become a teenager, when I was a teenager, I was I was taking 234 classes every single day.

Wendy Weiss 15:32
A ballet class has a certain set structure, you do the same thing. Every single class, you start at the bar, it’s Ba, rr E, and you do pli·és tendus , you always do those steps in that order. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, or dancing with American Ballet Theater.

Wendy Weiss 15:55
Everybody does the same thing. Every day, over and over again. What happens when you do the same thing every single day over and over and over again? Is you build the muscle memory? Of course, it’s so that when you are dancing, you’re not you’re not thinking you’re dancing.

Al McBride 16:18
It sounds like you’re there’s a huge process in building and then cementing and continually developing the fundamentals.

Wendy Weiss 16:26
Absolutely.

Al McBride 16:27
Fundamental pieces first and during the race.

Wendy Weiss 16:31
And you know, even when I was dancing with the ballet, I danced with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in the Cincinnati ballet. I took class every day, you just take class every day to keep building your technique technique, is that right? And I’m no longer dancing professionally. But you know what? I’m taking virtual ballet classes these days in my living room. Because you just keep taking class, that’s what you do.

Al McBride 17:00
You have a bar in your living room.

Wendy Weiss 17:03
I don’t have I don’t have a bar, I use my kitchen counter. But I did build a dance floor.

Al McBride 17:10
Okay,

Wendy Weiss 17:10
I moved all the furniture and I built a dance floor. The it will not take you 10 years it will take you 10 years if you want to train to be a dancer. However, here’s the thing, if you go to class, you start when you’re young, and you just keep going to class, you know what, eight to 10 years later, you are going to be a ballet dancer.

Wendy Weiss 17:33
It won’t take you eight to 10 years to learn this prospecting skill, it’ll take you a matter of a couple of months, maybe we did we do our core program in three months. Because that’s all you need to learn this this core skill,

Al McBride 17:48
just 90 days,

Wendy Weiss 17:50
90 days, but you do the same thing over and over and over again. Get the automatic muscle memory. And people that do our programs. They’re just so it’s lovely to see because at the end of the program, I always ask them what’s changed for you? And they all say some version of Oh, no, I just call up my prospect. And I get them on the phone and I say what I have to say and they book an appointment. And they kind of say it like that. Like they’re very they’re very blunt.

Al McBride 18:22
It’s a new norm. I hate the phrase but using normal Yeah, right. Right. Okay, so as you said, it’s just become this habit that they can just do. And it’s like making a cup of coffee, you just do it.

Wendy Weiss 18:37
And the thing, the thing is, if I can rant for a moment, one of the really stupid things people say about this topic is it’s always discussed in terms of love it or hate it. And there was a handful, I suppose supposedly there’s a handful of people that love it, and everybody else hates it.

Wendy Weiss 18:55
The opposite of hating This is not that you now love it. You know, I’m not here today to tell you, you should love this. What we’re actually aiming for is neutral. This is just a business process. It’s a way to get clients to pick up the phone, you talk to somebody, it’s it, nobody dies.

Al McBride 19:14
I can imagine when you’re good at it, it makes it a lot more. As you said it’s a lot less stressful and it can even be quite enjoyable and you’re having conversations with people and moving them through a process.

Wendy Weiss 19:26
I always thought it was kind of fun. But it was kind of fun because I was really lucky early in my career. Somebody trained me. I learned this skill I got coached and learning this skill enabled me to build a business so the really good news for any of you that if you’re not where you want to be, that’s okay you can I am not a genius. I was just really lucky because somebody taught me this skill.

Al McBride 19:54
Outstanding. Well thank you very much Wendy Weiss the Queen cold cold calling. It’s a fabulous title. much deserved. Wonderful stuff. Thank you very much Wendy cheers for coming on the show.

Wendy Weiss 20:09
Thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai