Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 153 with the Queen of Cold Calling Wendy Weiss.

Wendy Weiss [0:09]
Hey there everyone! This is Wendy Weiss and you are listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:19]
Well, today we are in for a treat with an amazing conversation with the queen of cold calling Wendy Weiss, who is also the president of ColdCallingResults.com and she is recognized as one of the leading authorities on lead generation, cold calling, and new business development. So basically everything an entrepreneur needs. Her clients include Avon Products, ADP, Sprint and thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the world. And she has captured some of her wisdom in the books Cold Calling for Women and the Sales Winner’s Handbook. I am so super excited to have a conversation with her today because we talked about her first career as she started out as a ballet dancer, and then needed a day job living in New York. But she has built a super successful business with absolutely no business background, but she still says that everything she knows she has learned in ballet class. So let’s tune in and find out what The Queen of Cold Calling™ can share with us so that you can have a thriving business, a business that generates leads all the time. And that is a lot of fun. Hi, Wendy. Welcome to Heart Sells! Podcast.

Wendy Weiss [1:43]
Well, thank you. I’m absolutely delighted to be here.

Christine Schlonski [1:47]
I’m so happy you are here. Because I’m so excited. You are The Queen of Cold Calling™. And I’m the queen of the sales success mindset and that goes so well hand in hand. So I’m so excited that you are sharing, hopefully, a ton of secrets today with the audience to help them move forward with this topic that for most people that’s really, really threatening.

Wendy Weiss [2:12]
That’s my master plan for today, share a whole lot of information so people don’t have to. To the people, if you’re listening in, you really don’t need to stress out about this.

Christine Schlonski [2:25]
Yeah, so wonderful. So when people hear the cold calling, usually something inside of them freezes. Somehow this, for a lot of people kind of produces like fear or weird taste. How did you get to cold calling and how did you become so amazing at it that you teach it and you just love the topic?

Wendy Weiss [2:52]
Well, it’s been a long journey, but I will share with everyone, two things. First of all, people say a lot of really dumb things about this topic. So I am here to give you the real scoop. So that’s the first thing that I want to put out there. The second thing is, I was never ever supposed to be the queen of cold calling. I was actually supposed to be a ballerina. And I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I moved to New York City where I still live and work. And I moved, I was 17. I moved here to dance. I studied at the Joffrey Ballet School. And eventually, like every artist in New York City, I needed a day job. And I got a job with a telemarketing agency that did business development. And it turned out I was good at it, which was a complete surprise because if you know anything about ballet, you know, we don’t talk. And so I did that day job for a while and then I started my own business where I had clients that I would represent and I would do business development for them. And then from there, I segue into what I’m doing today, which is working with business owners or entrepreneurs that need to develop new business. And I teach this very foundational skill set. But here’s the thing. This is one of the really dumb things that people say. They say that somehow there are these people out there that are just born knowing what to do and what to say that it’s the myth of the born salesperson. I was not born knowing how to do this. I was really lucky because when I got that day job, they taught me this skill set. And they taught me what to say, how to say it. They held my hand. They coached me, they gave me feedback. And learning this skill enabled me to build a business and so the really good news for any of you that It might be really uncomfortable. Um, the, what I’ve seen over and over and all the years I’ve been doing this is once people learn a bit, once you learn a very simple system, and you know what you’re doing and, and how you’re going to proceed, the fear goes away. And I, even though I am known as the queen of cold calling, I like to think of this as an introductory calling, your calling to introduce yourself. It’s just another way to meet your prospects. It’s an introduction, we make introductions all the time.

Christine Schlonski [5:37]
Yeah, I love that. And I remember I never had the intention to be in sales, but I really wanted to move to Berlin. So I applied to a company and the person who called me was a sales director offering me a job in sales, selling high tickets over the phone. So and the brilliant thing was, that he said, “Well, it’s Learn about skill.”

Wendy Weiss [6:02]
Yes.

Christine Schlonski [6:02]
“I can teach you”, right? Because I would have never thought I also had that feeling or that thinking that you need to be a natural-born salesperson. So I guess my question, if you believe or think that there is such a thing as a natural-born salesperson, what would your answer be?

Wendy Weiss [6:23]
I don’t believe there’s such a thing. As a natural-born salesperson, you might be born with talent. I was a ballet dancer. I started out with some talent. But if I didn’t go to ballet class every day. From the time I was eight years old until I was a teenager, I would not have been a ballet dancer. And, you know the people that are in the Olympics. They may be very talented, but they didn’t just go from being talented to being in the Olympics. They learned the skill of their Sport and they worked with coaches. And so it’s the same thing here. It takes about 10 years to train a ballet dancer, it will not take you 10 years to learn how to do this. But it’s just a skill, you can learn how to do it.

Christine Schlonski [7:16]
Yeah, I love that because so many people in the audience, they really want to get better in sales, and they want to overcome that fear of reaching out, of making that offer. So I love this conversation. Because I truly believe it’s a learnable skill. And no matter where you are on your journey, you can always start. I’m so happy that you’re here because you know how to do it and you can help the audience to get them, let say the motivation and inspiration to just give it a try.

Wendy Weiss [7:55]
Yeah, and it you know, we’re gonna talk about some of the things that you should be doing and some of the process, the things that people say about this topic. Okay, I’m not here to tell you you need to love to cold call. Because that’s the only thing to say. The conversation about cold calling is usually to love it or hate it. And supposedly there’s a handful of people that love it, and everybody else hates it. And the opposite of hating it or hating to sell it. It’s not that you now love it. The opposite is actually that you’re neutral. That you can do what you need to do, and you don’t have a nervous breakdown about it. You can be effective, you can be successful. And what I have seen over and over again, is once you learn that system, and it’s very stepped by step and you know what you’re doing and you know what you’re saying. Everything changes and there has been so much research, you probably have seen that Christine, that shows that when you talk to people, you sell more stuff.

Christine Schlonski [9:12]
Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. And what I really love is you brought us a wonderful gift, which will be on the show notes page. It’s called the Cold Calling Survival Guide. I love the title. So what will people learn when they go and download it?

Wendy Weiss [9:31]
Well, the subtitle of this ebook is, Start Setting Appointments in the Next 24 Hours. And so, when you download the Cold Calling Survival Guide, you will start to learn that step by step system that does start with your mindset and targeting those best-fit opportunities for you, in your market and we can get into that a little bit more today.

Christine Schlonski [10:00]
Love to, yeah.

Wendy Weiss [10:01]
Answering the, what do I say the question. The cold calling survival guide will help you step by step, learn that system to be able to set more qualified appointments in the next 24 hours.

Christine Schlonski [10:18]
Awesome. So how do I find a qualified appointment?

Wendy Weiss [10:22]
Find a qualified appointment or find a qualified target?

Christine Schlonski [10:27]
Well, both I guess we start to need to start with a target

Wendy Weiss [10:31]
We have to start with the target. And one of the really dumb things that people say about cold calling as you’re going to open up the phone book. And what we do instead, we start with a definition of what makes a qualified prospect for you. The parameters need to be very concrete. Sometimes when I’m working with a client, they’ll say to me, I’ll ask them, “Define the parameters of an ideal prospect for you”, and they’ll say things like, “Well, they should understand the value of our services.” “That’s nice. I’d love to be the list broker for that list.” The parameters need to be very concrete. How large is the company? Maybe employee count or revenue? Do they have to be in a certain geographic location? Is there a particular industry? If you’re talking to consumers, how old are they? Are they married? Are they single? Maybe, where they live? Is there a certain education level? What are the parameters of that define someone that would make a good fit for whatever your offering is. And I think that’s one of the hardest things to do, because a lot of entrepreneurs go, “Well everybody. Everybody can use this.” So that’s probably not true. But even if it were true, okay, you get to choose, choose wisely who are the best fits. And the easiest way I know to do that is looking at your existing clients and profile them. What do they have in common? Because you’re looking for prospects that match the profile of your best clients, and by best I mean most profitable.

Christine Schlonski [12:32]
Yeah, well, we want to multiply our amazing, amazing clients, right? Because that’s the fun piece. So let’s say, in case I’m not targeting like big enterprises, I might be like a coach. How would you go about the cold calling piece? Like how could I as a coach, find that ideal prospect?

Wendy Weiss [12:55]
That certainly depends on the topic that you’re coaching on. Again, what I would recommend is go look at your existing clients, you know, who are your best clients in terms of their the most profitable for you. Who makes you the most money and profile them. Take your 10 top clients, or if you only have five clients profile the five clients that you do have. What are the characteristics that define them? If you’re a coach working with small business owners, let’s say then what are the how small is the business? Are they located in a specific geographic region? Is it in or are they on a particular industry? If you’re a coach, and you’re working with individuals, consumers. Well, again, how old are they? Where do they live? What’s their education level? What’s their income? So what are the characteristics? Because once you have that definition, then it’s possible to find more people that match that definition. But until you have the definition of what you’re looking for, you can’t find them.

Christine Schlonski [14:22]
Yeah, I totally agree. So let’s say when I work with individuals, usually, these are women, 45 years old, or 40 years old, and they’re kind of at a point in their life where they really want some change. How would I go about finding them so I can give them a call?

Wendy Weiss [14:45]
Okay, well, you probably can’t necessarily find women who are 45. Who wants change, because that is a subjective criteria.

Christine Schlonski [14:57]
Yes.

Wendy Weiss [14:57]
We’re looking 45 years old. That’s an objective criteria. But people who want a certain thing or people who feel a certain way, you can’t necessarily predict that. So what you do is you say, “Okay, I’m looking for women that are 45 years old. Do they need to have a certain level of education? Are they generally married? Or are they generally single? Are they generally entrepreneurs? Or are they generally working in corporate? Where they stay at home moms? What are they doing?” What is this profile so you can build that profile of objective criteria.

Christine Schlonski [15:48]
So that’s important that we look for objective criteria. And we don’t put assumptions in. Like, I only want to work with somebody who is willing to have a transformation I need to find out after I introduced myself.

Wendy Weiss [16:03]
Exactly. Because you can’t, there’s no way to tell that until you have a conversation with them. I think of it as like, “Can you Google it?” Women who are ready to have a transformation is probably not something that you could Google. Whereas, if you had your other criteria, you could probably Google it and come up with associations or networks, events, where these types of people go. When you have the objective criteria, then it’s so much easier to find them. But if you say, “Well, I want to work with women who are ready to have a transformation.” I have no idea how you find those women.

Christine Schlonski [16:50]
Yeah, and I love that because so many people have the challenge to really get the leads, the lead gen rolling. They don’t really know where to find their clients. Once you get clear, and you really kind of nailed your target market, your target ideal client, then you can actually go out and be proactive, because you know who you’re looking for.

Wendy Weiss [17:16]
Exactly. And this does not, right now we’re talking about cold calling, that any type of marketing or social media that you are doing or you are trying to attract the right type of prospects to you, the right kind of leads to you. This is where it starts, and this is not unique to the telephone, this is marketing one on one. And even if you’re doing a marketing campaign, and it’s working and it’s attracting the right type of leads to you. At some point, you still need to talk to those people on the phone if you want to turn them into clients. And that’s where the skill comes in. So it’s not just about the lead or where it comes from. It’s about the ability to have a conversation with that other human being and get their highs to light up. It had somebody we run coaching programs, training and coaching programs. And we had somebody on our last coaching program that would go to a lot of conferences because the people she wanted to meet went to these conferences. And so she was in our program about telephone prospecting. And after the program ended, she told me that when she used to go to these conferences, and she would talk about her work, she said, “I could see their eyes glaze over and roll back into their heads.” So what she did was she took the introduction that we helped her create and she used that. She went to a conference and use her telephone introduction. And she said, “I could see their eyes light up and get big and they completely got what I was talking about.” And she went home with a bunch of appointments. Now that is what is actually supposed to happen is, when you talk to the right people in the right way, their eyes light up. And they want to hear more.

Christine Schlonski [19:14]
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree. That’s basically then the sequence. First thing, you need to get clear on your niche, on your target, on your ideal or I call them soul mate clients. And then from there, you can take the next step because now you have an important foundation that you didn’t have before. And I see so many entrepreneurs who want to help everybody, especially coaches, heart-centered people, they want to help everybody but by having that mindset, they end up helping nobody because they don’t know how to target the ideal person. So that was already very, very helpful.

Wendy Weiss [19:58]
Good.

Christine Schlonski [20:00]
Great. So what’s the next step?

Wendy Weiss [20:03]
Well, the next step, once you know who you’re looking for, is to figure out what is the challenge that they have, that you can help them with and how do they talk about it. So then, what I always tell my clients is nobody cares what you do. They care how they’re going to be better off after you finish doing whatever it is that you do.

Christine Schlonski [20:30]
Yes.

Wendy Weiss [20:31]
And most coaches, entrepreneurs, everybody likes to talk about what they do. I’ll give you an example. I had a client who was a marketing consultant. And she worked with a nonprofit agency. She helped them put on their fundraising of them. So I said to her, “Okay, why should these nonprofit agencies be interested in working with you?” And she said, “Oh, well, we have a very special proprietary process.” And I said, “Okay, so what? Tell me about your process.” She said, “We meet with our clients.” I said, “Okay, so what?” “Well, we asked them a lot of questions.” And I said, “Well, okay.” “Well, then we analyze the answers.” And I said, “So what?” And then she said, “Well, then we make recommendations.” I said, “Okay, so what? How are your clients better off after you meet with them, you ask all your questions, you analyze the answers, and you make your recommendations. How are they better off?” She said, “Oh, they’re fundraising events make money.” I said, “Bingo!” So we helped her create an introduction. That was something like, we work with nonprofit agencies that are sick of losing their shirts and their fundraising events. And the development directors that these agencies would literally stop in their tracks. If they’d lost money on an event, they would stop in their tracks and talk to her. Because that’s what they want to do. They want to make money on their fundraising of them.

Christine Schlonski [22:24]
That’s, that’s awesome. And that’s so important. Thank you for taking us through that process. Because I think everybody no matter where they are on their journey, like thinking about that constantly, and tweaking and changing it and making it fit better is so important. Really getting that sentence right, as you said earlier, that the other person’s eyes just light up.

Wendy Weiss [22:57]
And one of the things and we see this over and over again in our programs, the myth about cold calling or telephone prospecting is that it’s about rejection dealing with the rejection. That’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is getting first doing the targeting so you know exactly who you’re going after, and then creating the introduction that gets their eyes to light up. And when you do that, what happens. We see it over and over again and you talk to your prospect and they open up their calendars and they book an appointment. That’s what happens.

Christine Schlonski [23:39]
That’s what you want to do. Awesome. Well, time flies talking to you. So, unfortunately, with this interview, we are coming to an end. But the great thing is, I have a second interview with you. Because I really want to get into space where we talk about like, what do you say. Now you got the appointment. And now you probably going to think like, “How can I get them to buy? How can I figure out if everything makes sense? How can I onboard them?” So I’m really, really excited that we have this opportunity. But I also want to send people to the Cold Calling Survival Guide, which I will put on the show notes page. But if somebody needed to look you up right now, where would they go?

Wendy Weiss [24:26]
Go to http://www.coldcallingresults.com/

Christine Schlonski [24:29]
What a great URL. Thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing your knowledge. Brilliant. I hope people took a ton of notes and get really, really clear because this will improve every single business no matter if they are at the beginning or in the middle or if they are already have grown. Like getting really, really clear over and over again, helps with prospecting. Thank you so much, Wendy.

Wendy Weiss [24:58]
My pleasure. Thank you.

Christine Schlonski [25:01]
I just love the story. It’s so amazing how someone with such creative talents and the will to survive the heart market of dancing in New York managed to build such a successful business. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. I hope you took a ton of notes. hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab for the transcripts, the show notes, all the resources we have talked about and the links to connect directly to Wendy. I highly recommend you follow her because cold calling is something that will help your business grow no matter where you are. Make sure you are tuning in to the next episode because now that you got the appointment, what are you going to do next? And I will be discussing this with Wendy. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.