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Welcome to the Sales Transformation Podcast, the definitive stop for leaders driving change in the sales world. Hosted by Collin Mitchell, we dive deep into the minds of Founders, CEOs, VPs of Sales, and Sales Development Leaders from trailblazing startups to industry-leading public companies.
Our mission is simple: to illuminate the path to extraordinary sales leadership. We explore a broad spectrum of sales territories, from the intricacies of Founder Led Sales and Outbound Sales to the transformative potential of Technology in Sales and Social Selling. Whether it's mastering your CRM, optimizing conversions, scaling sales teams, or engineering a complete Sales Transformation, our conversations are set to challenge the status quo and redefine sales success.
With a new content every day of the week, we bring you unfiltered interviews with the luminaries of sales, people who have not just succeeded but transformed the way we think about sales. Collin Mitchell also shares sharp, tactical sales tips every week, packing decades of sales wisdom into bite-sized insights.
So, if you're ready to rewrite the sales rulebook and learn from the best in the business, the Sales Transformation Podcast is your ticket. Write us a review, share the show, and join us on this journey of sales evolution. Let's transform the way we sell, together!
Welcome back to another episode of sales transformation brought to you by Leadium. In today's episode, we have Wendy Weiss, founder of Salesology, discussing how to to build pipeline faster and the common mistakes people make in the process. So let's dive in and learn from Wendy's expertise. Colin, take it away.
Collin Mitchell:Alright. Welcome back to another episode of sales transformation brought to you by Leadium. I'm your host, Colin Mitchell. And today, we've got Wendy Weiss back on the show. If she's the founder of Salesology, a prospecting method that generates predictable sales revenue results.
Collin Mitchell:Wendy's helped 775 plus businesses increase qualified appointments and sales faster, more easily, and more profitably. Wendy, welcome back to the show. How are you?
Wendy Weiss:I am fabulous. Thank you for having me back.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. So those who maybe didn't catch the first episode, we'll drop the link in the show notes where you can go check out, where we talk about the Salesology method. And, also, there was, some free gifts there that you won't wanna miss as well. But give us a little bit better background on yourself and how you got into the sales world. Wow.
Wendy Weiss:Well, I got into the sales world completely by accident. My company, Salesology, we're a sales training consultancy. We focus on the front end of the sales funnel. And, my first career was I danced with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and then I danced with, the Cincinnati Ballet. I was not ever supposed to be a sales trainer, but, I got into this by accident because I needed,
Collin Mitchell:between my dance jobs. And I got a job with a
Wendy Weiss:telemarketing agency that did, B2B business development. And lucky for me, they taught me this skill which was transformational. Because, number of years later, when I was, ready to stop dancing, Learning that skill enabled me to build and grow a business. So today, my company, Salesology, we work with business owners, entrepreneurs, sales teams, and help them teach them the skills they need to build a pipeline of opportunities faster, more easily, and more profitably.
Collin Mitchell:I love that. Well, thanks for for giving us a little bit more background. You know, I know we covered some of that in the in the first episode, a little bit about, you know, how, what are some of the similarities or things that you learned, as a ballerina that transferable, over to, sales. So so love that. And today, we're gonna talk about couple things that we planned, but where I wanna start is you said that you help people build pipeline faster.
Collin Mitchell:So let's dig into that a little bit. What do you think are some of the things people are doing wrong when trying to build pipeline, and what are some of the things that you typically help companies fix to build pipeline faster?
Wendy Weiss:Wow. Great question. Thank you. And there are a lot of things that we see that don't work very well. It often starts and we talked about this last time, but it often starts with the targeting.
Wendy Weiss:Mhmm. The, when I'm working with a client, we want them to have a very narrow focus on who they're reaching out to. Mhmm. You can have multiple you can have multiple targets, but for each of them, you wanna have a very narrow focus and you have a very clear definition of who you're looking for because that way it's you can create messaging that's going to really resonate with that particular audience.
Collin Mitchell:You're you're you're speaking my love language now because, you know, I can't tell you how many times sales leaders, business development managers, founders, they think that, when you ask them who their ideal customer profile is or or anything like around there, you know, they tend to go very broad. Like, hey, we can we can work with pretty much anybody or you know, and it's like, yeah. That's not a good thing. That's not a good thing. And and I love that you tied it in there.
Collin Mitchell:Right? Because the the reason that you want to go narrow is because the more broad you are, the less that your messaging is gonna resonate to that broad audience of people. So, you know, when you go narrow, you can be very specific and the messaging is gonna resonate better with those people.
Wendy Weiss:Absolutely. And, you know, if you flip it around and you think if if you were talking to a salesperson about possibly buying something from them. And they said, oh, yeah. This is for everybody. Would that be convincing for you?
Collin Mitchell:No. No. Because we all think we're because we all think we're unique and special and different. Even though we might not be, we still think that and believe it.
Wendy Weiss:Thanks. And and, you know, one of the, questions that salespeople or business owners that are looking to set up meetings, one of the questions they often get asked is, well, have you ever worked with anybody in our industry? And the reason prospects ask that, you might be doing exactly the same thing for every client no matter what industry they're in. They all think it's different.
Collin Mitchell:Mhmm.
Wendy Weiss:So you you really have to tailor your message to the people you're talking to.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And and I think that, it it also helps you be more effective because you start to understand, you know, your target. You start to understand the language that they speak, the the terms that they use, the problems that they have that are maybe different from, you know, industry to industry.
Wendy Weiss:Yes. And we actually, part of our process is we have clients interview, some of their clients. And what we wanna know is because the question is always, what's the problem your prospects have that you can fix, and how do they talk about it? Not how do you talk about it. How do they talk about it?
Wendy Weiss:And, so we will have our clients interview their clients and the questions we want there's only actually 4 questions we want them to ask. 1st the first question is what was going on before you came to us? Mhmm. 2nd question, how did you feel about that? 3rd question, what's happening now?
Wendy Weiss:4th question, how do you feel about that? And, of course, the questions that nobody wants to ask are how do you feel about that? Those are the 2 most important questions.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And and and what what how does that help people, craft better messaging to
Wendy Weiss:The way it helps find more prospects like that. In creating the messaging, what we are looking for when you, develop a cold calling script, an introduction, is not the reaction of, another salesperson called me.
Collin Mitchell:Mhmm.
Wendy Weiss:What you're looking to do is get a reaction of, oh, this person that I'm talking to on the phone gets me. So that's not about the things that you do or that your product does or all the service offerings. That's actually about the problem you solve and the how the way that prospect feels about that problem that they have. Because if they don't have a problem, you probably can't help them.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And and I think that the the important piece there is when you take this approach where your messaging and your scripts is built around the problems that your prospects have rather than your products and your features and your benefits. When you actually get a conversation, meaning, say, you're prospecting in and your goal is to book a meeting, discovery call, or whatever your sales process looks like, those those prospects are gonna be way more qualified than somebody that took a meeting because you pitched your product at them, which is the approach that many people take. Right? Very product centric sales scripts versus, you know, problem centric around the types of problems that their best prospects have.
Wendy Weiss:Yes. And you asked me about mistakes that I see. And one of the big mistakes that I see, is that every sales conversation goes through certain steps. And if you are cold calling, step 1 is to get them on the phone and get their attention. But your goal at that point is to set up an appointment.
Wendy Weiss:And let me give you my definition of the word appointment so we can be clear. To me, the word appointment means the prospect agrees to have an in-depth conversation with you about whatever it is you're selling. That conversation could happen on the phone. It could be on a Zoom meeting. Maybe you get in your car and you go see them.
Wendy Weiss:But they say, yeah. I wanna talk to you about this. They they agree to have that conversation. And so one of the big mistakes that I see, is pitching, as you said, Colin, pitching that product, instead of just getting agreement to have a conversation about a problem, and also framing it in such a way that the prospect thinks they have to make a buying decision on the spot. Mhmm.
Wendy Weiss:Which they are unlikely to do.
Collin Mitchell:Right. Yeah. And I think that the the the reason that this is, you know, hard for a lot of people is because when they're not prepared, right, and they don't have enough practice, right, which are all things that we talked about the last time we had you on the show. Right?
Wendy Weiss:Right.
Collin Mitchell:If they're not prepared when they make these calls, also, you know, another thing that what you just touched on is they're going too broad. So they're trying to have messaging that's gonna apply to a vast amount of people, which is very hard to do, never gonna work. And if they get nervous, right, we talked a little bit about phone reluctance the last time you were on the show, The the the easy, comfortable place to go is to pitch products, features, and benefits.
Wendy Weiss:Absolutely. And it just doesn't work very well. And so if you can speak to the problems, and it doesn't it's it's not a long complicated script. It's it's something like we specialize in working with fill in the blank, fill in the problem. Maybe tell us a short story about a a client and how you solve their problem.
Wendy Weiss:A short story like 2 sentences, 3 sentences maybe. That that's it. Ask to have a conversation. Once once someone has agreed to have a conversation with you, everything changes.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. I think the biggest miss that most people make is is not asking good questions.
Wendy Weiss:Yeah. Well, let me say something really controversial. Alright. Let's do it. Okay.
Wendy Weiss:Because people always clients are always telling me how they want to be consultative. Consultative selling does not work for prospecting. Step 1 is getting the prospect's agreement to talk to you. You cannot consult with someone that will not talk to you. So step 1, get the agreement to have the conversation, then go ahead and ask all your questions and consult.
Wendy Weiss:But you can't do that if they say I'm not interested and hang up the phone. So step 1 is get the agreement to have the conversation, and that's probably the biggest mistake that I see.
Collin Mitchell:Yes. I I don't disagree with that. I I like to follow, at least for cold calling, a framework of, you know, asking some questions, you know, to see if the problem questions centered around the problem or the pain that we want them to have that we can tie in the product or solution to. Right? So you're not running a discovery call.
Collin Mitchell:You're not doing a consultive sell on a cold call. Right? But you wanna make sure that they actually have something going on that, that you can help them with to see if does it even make sense for us to have an appointment and have a future conversation? Because I think a lot of times people can get stuck in this, like, hey. They're on my list, so they're qualified, and I need to get appointments.
Collin Mitchell:And you get into this, place where a lot of sales organizations end up booking a lot of appointments that should have never been appointments in the first place. And I think that's a challenge for a lot of people. And then you get, you know, sales leaders saying, we need more leads. We need more leads. And a lot of times, they don't need more leads.
Collin Mitchell:They just need the right leads. They need more qualified leads, rather than meeting with people that, you know, are tire kickers or, you know, aren't really qualified to to be an appointment anyway.
Wendy Weiss:Yeah. I am not saying that you get new car and you go meet with everyone, but what I am saying is before you start asking questions, you want to say, I'd like to have a conversation with you about this. Do you have some time to talk now? And if they say yes, then you ask your questions. It Yes.
Wendy Weiss:It's, we actually teach something that seems completely backwards. We'll set an appointment and then ask the questions. The reason being that if someone has just agreed to an appointment, they're going to ask answer your questions. There we just eliminated the struggle. People don't like to ask answer questions until they have a reason to answer the questions.
Wendy Weiss:So we actually teach a system that seems very backwards and works Yeah. Like a charm.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. I love that. I mean, I I like sometimes to ask for a meeting right away before I've even told them anything. And and the purpose of that is, like, most of the time they're never gonna give you the meeting when you ask because they because the first thing that's going through their head is who are you? What do you want?
Collin Mitchell:Why are you calling me? Right? Which you haven't addressed yet, which would go into that permission and then, you know, some questions. But when you ask them that, it really throws them off, and that's the purpose. Because a lot of times when you cold call people, they're not really listening to you.
Collin Mitchell:Right? They're just trying to think like, how can I get rid of you? And by doing that, it kinda it kind of is a pattern interrupt where it catches them off guard, and then they start asking you questions. And then that's when now we're having a dialogue rather than me sort of talking at a wall and then hoping to just say something to get rid of you.
Wendy Weiss:Yeah. And if you have a good introduction, you can flip that switch so they wanna hear what you have to say.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Which which brings me to another point that I wanted to get your thought on, which is a lot to do with what, you know, what I'm thinking here when you said that, is is is how much how important is how you say what you say?
Wendy Weiss:How you say what you say is probably the most important thing. Yeah. Because you could have the world's most brilliant cold calling script. And if you read it deadpan, word for word, you are probably not going to get anywhere. And I have had the experience, Colin, you've probably had this experience too, where I have set up meetings with people that then said, and what are we gonna talk about After they just agreed to the meeting.
Wendy Weiss:Because after doing this for a really long time, I know how to handle myself. And, but it it the delivery and that's one of the things that we work on with with clients because people think if they have a script, they can't be themselves and they can't be authentic. But, you know, you watch the news, you see the newscasters, they're all reading scripts. That's they sound very lifelike, and that's simply a matter of practice.
Collin Mitchell:Oh, yeah. And the script's never gonna cover everything. Right? I mean, we're talking with people which are highly dynamic, and the conversation can go, you know, a million different direction. The scripts the script is a is a guardrail and, a way to help you get into a conversation.
Collin Mitchell:Right?
Wendy Weiss:Right.
Collin Mitchell:And so but, you know, it also helps to prepare, like, well, hey. What do a lot of those conversations look like? What are a lot of the questions that come up? What are the most common objections? You know?
Collin Mitchell:How have I dealt with that in the past where it worked well or well where it didn't work well? And, you know, so arming yourself with all of that information and and having a guide and being able to practice, you know, is all really important. But, Wendy, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Appreciate it. I know that you have, some free gifts for people.
Collin Mitchell:We're gonna put a link in the show notes if you wanna tell them a little bit about that, and then where's the best place for people to get into your world.
Wendy Weiss:Absolutely. Well, thank you for asking. And, so I invite everybody, to listen to my podcast, Salesology Conversations with Sales Leaders, where wherever you get your podcasts. I just I interviewed Colin recently. And, every time I interview someone, sales leader for the show, they usually have a gift for our listeners.
Wendy Weiss:And so what we've done is we've taken all the gifts. We put together put them all together in one place. It's the Salesology vault. And I know that Colin is gonna put a link to the Salesology Vault in the show notes. So we have done over 65 episodes.
Wendy Weiss:So there are over 65 gifts for you in the salesology vault. You can go back. You can go in, download, the gifts that you want and go back as often as you want because every week we release a podcast on Monday. Every week we release a new podcast. There's a new gift goes into goes into the vault.
Wendy Weiss:And I also invite you to visit us atgosalesology.com. That's our website. Or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Collin Mitchell:Perfect. We will drop all the links there in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you to get the free gifts and get into Wendy's world. If you enjoyed today's episode, please write us a review, share the show with your friends. It really does help us to reach more sellers and sales leaders to help form the way that they sell.