Raven: Before we get into our questions, I read your bio. I know that you were in ballet.

Wendy: I was a ballet dancer, and I was never supposed to be doing what I’m doing today. I was supposed to be a ballerina. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I moved to New York City to dance when I was a teenager, to study, and after a few years in New York City, like every artist in New York City I found that I needed a day job. So, I got a job with a telemarketing company, and it turned out I was really good at it. So, I did that for a while. Eventually, I started my own business where I had clients that I represented, and I did all the new business development for them. Over time, I segued into what I’m doing today which is training and coaching. So, my business today is helping people that are trying to develop their business. If you visit my website, and you take a look at my client list, you’ll see that I have a pretty impressive roster of corporate clients. Just about every client that’s on that list, I can trace back if not directly to a cold call, if they were a referral, I can usually trace that referral that I cold called. So, I practice what I preach, but what I’d really like our listeners to get because I’m not telling you this to brag. I really want you to get this. I was a ballet dancer. I didn’t know anything about business. So, if I could pick up the phone, talk to people and build a business, then any of you who are listening to this call can do it. If you are struggling with building your business and with prospecting, this is a communication skill. Like any communication skill, it can be learned, and it can be improved on. It’s wonderful to have control of your own destiny. With the phone, you can talk to anybody, any place in the world, and you can conduct business without every having to leave your home. This morning, I was on the phone talking to some prospects, and I closed a nice piece of business, and I am in my apartment. So, it’s a wonderful tool that you can use to develop new business. It is a communication skill, so you can learn how to do it. There’s this idea out there that there are people that are natural sales people, and if you’re not a natural sales person you can prospect by phone, you can’t cold call. That’s not true. Anybody who wants to, can learn how to do this.

Raven: This is about picking up the phone. So, let’s talk a little bit about what it takes in the mindset to make those calls.

Wendy: The mindset is really the most important piece of this. There’s a lot of myths about cold-calling, and what you need to know about cold calling is that it really works. There have been studies done, a lot of studies done that show that the number one way to generate new business is by picking up the telephone and talking to people. The Direct Marketing Association has done study after study about this. MarketingSherpa.com did a study last year that showed that picking up the phone and talking to people was one of the best ways to develop new business. So, you don’t have to just take my word for it. It really is a great way to develop new business because it’s inexpensive. It’s highly targeted if you do it well, and the problem is there are a lot of people doing it badly. You’re targeting your market so that you’re only calling the people that are most likely to say yes to you, and then you have the communication skill to be able to really explain to that person what it is that you’re doing and why they should be interested, and why they should want whatever it is that you’re offering. The bottom line is that whatever you believe is going to affect your action, and then of course, your actions affect your result. So, if you believe that cold calling doesn’t work, or you believe that no one wants to talk to you, or that people are simply going to hang up on you, that belief is self-limiting. Of course, you don’t actually know any of those things because you haven’t made phone calls yet. You’re pre-judging. You’re fortune telling. You’re deciding the future. If I make this phone call, this person will not want to talk to me, and they will hang up on me. That’s fortune telling. You don’t actually know that, and if you have the actual skill to be able to engage that person, they’re going to be very interested in speaking with you, and they’re not going to hang up. They’re going to say, “Tell me more.” So, what you need to do, what you want to do is really look at your beliefs, and whether those beliefs support your ability to be successful, and if your beliefs support you and then you don’t know how to do it, well, then there are lots of resources available. There are resources available on my website. There are resources available in many places, and you can learn the skills that you need, if you believe you can do it.

Raven: What were some of the ways that you built your belief up?

Wendy: Well, when I started, I actually had a very different mindset from many people because when I started, I was a ballet dancer, and I needed a day job. I was in my early twenties at that point. In my world, ballet dancers and artists were the important people. While many, many people look up to business leaders or very highly successful business people, I didn’t because in my world, they weren’t artists. They were business people. Because I was an artist, and this is just an example of the power of belief, because at that time I was an artist. I considered myself to be an artist and I still am an artist. Anyway, I would get on the phone, and my belief at that time was that people would be delighted to speak with me because I was an artist. I had no problems getting people on the phone and having great conversations and getting results first for that telemarketing company, and then when I started my own telemarketing business. That was my mindset. I actually never realized until many years later when I started doing training that other people were uncomfortable prospecting by phone. I knew nothing about the business world. I thought everyone would be delighted to talk to me. That belief, even though most of the time especially when I started out, I didn’t really know what I was talking about. Simply that belief carried me through, and it enabled me to learn more and to progress, and then yes, along the way I educated myself. I took seminars, and I went to teleconferences, and I bought products like this. I worked with a coach, and I did all of those kinds of things. It really started from a place of belief. As long as you have in your head the idea that you can learn, it’s okay to be a little uncomfortable if you’ve never done it before. Everybody is uncomfortable doing something that they’ve never done before. If you let that discomfort rule your life and keep you from taking action, then that’s very sad. If you’re a little bit uncomfortable and you go and you educate yourself and get the skills that you need, then you’ll get over the discomfort.

Raven: Let me ask you this. Why cold call at all?

Wendy: Great question. Number one, it’s extremely effective if it’s done well. It’s highly targeted. You can decide based on whatever your offering is. You can figure out who are the prospects that are most likely to say yes. Instead of calling everybody in the world, you’re only calling prospects that are right for you and your offering. So, you’re having conversations with prospects that are likely to say yes to you. It’s very inexpensive. All you need is your telephone, and you can call all over the world. You can stay nice and safe and warm in your home, not have to go anywhere in the middle of winter, and it really works. It creates that human being to human being connection that is missing in a lot of other forms of marketing, say internet marketing or direct mail or anything like that. You’re actually able to have conversations with people. It’s very, very powerful if it’s done well. There are a lot of people out there making calls and making calls badly. That’s part of the reason that cold-calling has a bad reputation, and lots of times clients will say to me, “Oh, well, I don’t want to be like a telemarketer.” When they say that to me, I know what they’re saying is, “I don’t want to be perceived to be somebody that’s not very bright, reading from a script word for word, mispronouncing a lot of the words, interrupting people at dinner, and not offering anything of value.” My response to those clients that say that to me is, “Do you believe that what you’re offering has value?” They usually say yes to me. That of course, goes back to what we were just talking about, belief. You must believe in the value of what you’re offering. If you don’t believe in the value of what you’re offering, then you have to find something else to do, but then if you believe in the value of what you’re offering and you have the skills to have an intelligent conversation with a prospect, nobody is going to perceive you as having nothing of value and reading from script and interrupting them. Hi, this is Raven Blair-Davis reporting for Michael Senoff’s

Raven: You talked about having the skills and communicating with your prospects. What do you mean by that?

Wendy: When you’re on the telephone, you don’t have a lot of time. When you’re face to face with someone, you can launch into a long complicated explanation, and since you’re face to face with them, the chances of them interrupting you and just walking away are lessened. Also, we’re all very intuitive. We read each other all the time. So, if you’re talking with somebody, you can tell if they’re paying attention. If you’re face to face with them, you can see their reaction. You don’t have any of that on the telephone. It’s very easy for a prospect to say, “I’m not interested,” and get off the phone. It’s harder to read them because you can’t see them, and remember, it’s much harder for your prospect to read you because they can’t see you. So, in a very short amount of time, you need to be able to get that prospect’s attention, and then their agreement to have a conversation with you. The way that you do that is by communicating the value of whatever it is you’re offering to that prospect in a way that they’re going to get it, that they’re going to understand it. That’s a skill because you’ve got to do it fairly quickly. Once you get their attention, then you can get their agreement to have a conversation, and you can have a real conversation. But, if you can’t get their attention and then their agreement, nothing else happens.

Raven: Hasn’t email and network marketing these days replaced cold-calling?

Wendy: Again, the studies that I mentioned earlier actually placed cold-calling, picking up the phone and calling prospects, above internet marketing and email. So, in other words, picking up the phone and talking to people gets better results than internet marketing according to many, many studies. So, they’re out there. Again, picking up the phone and talking to people, you’re making that human being to human connection. If you send out an email, somebody can very easily hit delete, and never read it. So that’s why picking up the phone, depending on your business is a very, very valuable skill, and it’s a very valuable inexpensive powerful way to build your business quickly. Internet marketing is also something that you need the skill. You also need copywriting skills. So, any type of marketing requires a level of skill. It’s not something that simply happens or that you’re born knowing how to do. Whatever the type of marketing is, something that you need to learn about and study. The really good news for all of this stuff is you can do it, and if I can share an analogy with ballet because I do feel everything in life I learned in ballet. If you go to class every single day, because that’s what you do when you’re a ballet dancer. When you’re training, you take a ballet class everyday, five or six days a week. You take at least one – hour and a half – ballet class. In the ballet class, you’ve got a teacher whose job is there to correct you and help you dance better. You dance in front of a big mirror so you can see what you look like, and correct yourself. You take class every single day. The thing that’s really amazing is that if you take class every single day, and you listen to your teacher and follow direction, and look at yourself in the mirror and check what you’re doing, and you keep taking class every single day, over a period of many years, it usually takes about eight to ten years of training, but after a period of years, you will be a ballet dancer, period. It’s going to happen. If you go to class, it’s going to happen. The really good news, and the analogy here when it comes to prospecting by phone is that if you prospect every single day or if you go to a course and read books or do whatever you do to gain the skills that you need and you do this every single day, you will learn to be effective on the phone, and it’s not going to take you years and years the way it would if you were training to be a ballet dancer. This is something you can learn to do in a fairly short amount of time, and it’s something that you can always tweak and hone your skills and get better out. If you start out and you study and learn some of the skills that you need, and get on the phone, and you do that every single day, you will learn how to be effective on the phone, period. One of the biggest reasons that people don’t get the results that they want over the phone is that they never ask for what they want. I had a coaching client one time that called me in desperation. He was trying to set appointments. He wanted to meet with his prospects face to face. So, he was doing appointment setting, and he called me in desperation. He said, “Wendy, I have made hundreds of phone calls. I don’t have a single appointment to show for it. I don’t know what to do.” So, we started working together, and he was a very nice man, very smart, very personable, very friendly, and he could actually get people on the phone and have conversations with them. Then, the conversations would just kind of end with the prospect saying, “Well, we’ll call you if we’re interested.” So, we didn’t change anything that he was doing except at the very end, I gave him what I call the appointment setting mantra. The appointment setting mantra goes like this, “I’d like to introduce myself,” and whatever your company name is, “personally. I need ten or fifteen minutes whenever is good for you. Can we carve out a few minutes this week or is next week better?” So, we added the appointment setting mantra to the end of what he was already doing. We didn’t change anything else. He went from hundreds of phone calls and no appointments to now, if he gets someone on the phone out of every two or maybe three conversations he has, he gets an appointment. Those are very high numbers. So, it’s really a matter of having the skills, knowing the goal of your phone call because a lot of people don’t understand the goal of their call. You need to know why you’re making the phone call what you want to get when you hang up the phone. What is it that you want to accomplish? Then, you have to ask for what you want. I got an email yesterday from someone who said, “My biggest question is I need to learn to shut up. I’m giving away free advice, and I’m not getting any clients. So, what do I do?” I emailed her back some tips that when she thinks the prospect is finished speaking, she should actually count to three in her head before she says anything. I also told her to try and ask more questions because that keeps the prospect talking, and when the prospect is talking, you’re not. That’s something that’s very common that a lot of people do if they keep talking. People frequently hear things that the prospect is not saying. For example, if you call someone and they say, “Hey Raven, I can’t talk right now. Can you give me a call another time?” A lot of people think that that means that that person doesn’t want to talk to them. What it actually means is that you should call them back at another time because they couldn’t talk at the time you called them. Another thing that people do, they don’t work with scripts. So, then they’re worried about what they’re going to say. So, then they’re not listening to what the person they’re talking to is saying because they’re worried about what they’re going to say next. I’d like to say this one piece about scripting because a lot of people are very resistant to working with a script. My definition of a script is thinking before you speak. If you think about, if you’ve got fifteen to thirty seconds to get the prospect’s attention, this is not the time to be winging it. You really want to think ahead and craft an approach that you think is going to work, that’s going to really express what you have to say and get your prospect to understand it. That’s not just going to happen. You’ve got spend some time thinking about it. When you think about it, you need to then write it down so you remember it, especially because a lot of people get nervous, and if you’ve got it written down in front of you, you’ll remember what to say. You don’t want to rely on your memory. The mistake a lot of people make in writing a script is that we’ve all been very well trained in school, capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, period at the end. If you write a script the way you’ve been trained in school, written language and spoken language are very different. Your script has to be in spoken language. You have to write it down the way you talk because if you write it down in perfect grammatical written English, and then you say that, you’re going to sound very phony, and you’ll sound like you’re reading. The key is to write it down exactly the way you talk, and if you have a hard time with that, call up your voice mail, talk into your voice mail and then play it back and write it down. I want to say one other thing about scripting, and that is if you feel that you need some more help with scripting, I have a free report on my website called How to Write an Effective Cold Calling Script. All you do is you go to my website. It’s right on the home page, and you can download it. Now, as far as knowing who to call, this is really important. This is the piece that a lot of people leave out. Lots of people will say, “Cold calling is a number’s game,” and on a certain level it is. You have to make phone calls. What you want to do though is spend your time calling the best possible prospect. So, it’s not about opening up the phone book and just calling anybody. It’s really identifying out of everybody in the entire world who might buy what you’re selling, who is most likely to? Then, who is most likely to buy a lot of it, and who is most likely to come back and buy more? Those are the prospects that you want to identify, and the way that you do that, if you’ve been in business for a while, look at your top ten customers, and figure out what it is that they have in common. That can be the industry that they’re in or the number of employees or the geographic region where they’re located. If you’re calling consumers, you might look at the ages, where did they live? Are they married? Are they single? Are they men? Are they women? You look at all of these factors, and what you do is you create an ideal prospect profile. You’re looking for prospects that match your best customers. You also want to ask yourself the question, “Who is it that’s most likely to need whatever it is I’m selling?” You’ve got to think creatively here. You might get together with a bunch of friends or some colleagues and really do some brain storming, and then try and figure out once you’ve identified the market where you’re going to be able to find the type of prospects that you’ve identified. Let’s say for example, you’ve got a product that is health related. Well, who is interested in health? You can start thinking about chiropractors and massage therapists, spas, gyms. There are lots of places. You simply have to start thinking creatively about it and identify those best possible prospects so that you’ve got a match.

Raven: We know whom to call, make a list of who’s in your market.

Wendy: You’re talking about targeting?

Raven: Yes.

Wendy: What you want to look at is out of everybody in the entire world who might buy what you’re selling, who is most likely to? Who is most likely to buy a lot of it? Who is most likely to come back and buy some more? If you’re making business to business calls, then you would want to put together a list of your top ten customers, and look at the industries that they’re in, how large are the companies, how many employees, where they’re located. These are all pieces of a profile. Essentially what you’re looking for is a company that matches one of your best customers. So, if for example, you do a whole lot of work with manufacturing companies, it’s a really good bet if you go to another manufacturing company that say manufacturers the same type of equipment that your customer does, they might be a good customer for you as well. The same thing if you’re selling something that’s in the B2C or business to consumer market, and most of your customers are baby boomer women, it’s a really good bet that if you’re talking to a baby boomer woman, she’s a potential customer for you. So, what you want to do is look at who is buying now, and find more people that are just like them who is buying the most. Find more people just like them.

Raven: What if this is their first, they’re just starting their business. They purchased this program. They looked at all the different ways of creating a business over the phone. They hear what you’re saying, and they’re like, “But, I don’t have ten customers.” Are they going to start with the same process?

Wendy: They’re going to do the same process, and they’re going to look at their competition. Who is buying from your competition? Profile them, and also think about who needs what it is that you’re selling. Who would use something like this? Whatever the product or service is, that’s going to take some thought. So, maybe you get together with some friends or some colleagues, or you hire a coach and you do some real brainstorming about this because it’s really, really important. It’s one of the most important things that you need to do is target your market because you could be the most skilled cold-caller in the entire world. You can have the best product or the best service, and if you’re talking to the wrong people, they won’t buy it. You have to figure out who you need to be calling. That’s a big mistake that I see lots of times is prospectors just don’t call the right people, or they call teeny tiny companies that might use the product once every few years. That’s not a good prospect because they’ve used what you’re selling once every few years. Yeah, you might get lucky when it’s time for them to buy, or you might have to wait five years for them to buy. So, it’s not a good use of your time. Now, the question that you have to ask yourself before you dial the phone is why should this person be interested? You need to identify the value of your offering to your prospect. Why should this person want this particular product or service? If you imagine your prospects sitting there in their homes, in their offices, and they’re kind of leaning back in their chair, and their arms are crossed across their chests, very closed off position. They’re thinking, “What’s in it for me? Why should I be interested in this? What is this going to do for my life, for my bottom line for my employees, for my company, for my family?” You’ve got to tell them, and you’ve got to tell them in terms that are very clear because if they don’t understand what you’re saying, they’ll simply say, “I’m not interested,” and hang up. So, you need to be very clear about the value of your offering, and this is a place where a lot of people fall down because they’re not able to communicate the value. The value, it’s really about the bottom line, what is this going to do for your customer, and why should they be interested? Once you identify what that is that’s what you want to lead with because that’s what’s going to get their attention.

Raven: Let’s talk about voice mails real quick because we’re going to get a lot of voice mail. Should we leave a message, or should we just call back? What’s the rule of thumb?

Wendy: I’m not a big fan of leaving messages. The possibility of somebody calling you back on a cold call is pretty minimal. The only exception to that I would make is if you’ve got one prospect or a handful of prospects that you want to reach and you’ve got a very specific reason that you want to reach them, maybe you know something about them that makes time of the essence. Maybe you know you heard through the grapevine that they are going to be buying what you’re selling within the next month, and so you want to get a hold of them. If you have some reason, that would be an exception, and in that case, you’re going to have to leave more than one voicemail. You’re probably going to have to leave a series of voicemails. What you want to do is be very clear again about the value of your offering. Make sure that you leave your phone number very clearly so that they can call you back, and then be prepared to call them seven, eight times. Leave messages and leave different messages that focus on value, and then if you do that type of voicemail campaign, there’s more of a chance that they will respond even if it’s only to tell you to go away which at least you know then to take them off your list. Hi, this is Raven Blair-Davis interviewing for Michael Senoff’s

Raven: How do we overcome that fear and reluctance?

Wendy: Fear and reluctance, that’s so huge, and that really stops people in their tracks. You really overcome fear by doing. There are the facts, and then there are stories that we tell ourselves about the facts. The facts are you need to make some phone calls. If you want to develop your business in a really effective and fast method, you’re going to need to make some phone calls. You’re going to dial the phone number. You’re either going to reach your prospect or you’re not. When you reach that prospect, you’re going to say what you have to say. They’re going to say what they have to say, and that’s pretty much it. The story is, “I’m bothering them. I’m interrupting them. They’re going to hang up on me. They’re not interested, etc, etc, etc.” If you’ve got that story in your head, it’s not helping you. It’s not supporting your ability to be successful, and you need to change your story. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but you need to reprogram your brain with a different story. What if you thought that your prospects would actually be very happy to speak with you and were interested in what you had to say? That would be a different story in your head. It would set you up differently, and you would be making different calls. So, imagine that instead of this prospect that you’re scared of, imagine that you’re calling somebody in your life that you like and that you know that’s very receptive to you and wants to hear what you have to say. Put their picture up so you can see them and pretend that you’re talking to them. Put a rubberband around your wrist, and everytime you start to have those negative thoughts, just snap that rubberband to get you out of it, and remind yourself that those thoughts do not necessarily reflect reality, and that many people are very interested in hearing what you have to say. There are many things that you can do to overcome what I call telephone terror, and also to visit my website, there’s another free report that you can access that’s called Ten Top Tips for Terminating Telephone Terror.

Raven: If you had to pick the top three reasons why people were afraid, what would they be?

Wendy: One of the biggest ones is simply projection that people do a lot of mind reading. They’re talking to a prospect who does something, and they interpret that to mean something other than what the prospect is saying. It’s always something very negative. So, again that’s an example of the prospect that says, “I can’t talk right now.” Some people will read the prospect’s mind to determine that the prospect really means they don’t’ want to talk to them. Another thing that people do is fortune telling. They predict that if they make phone calls, the prospects will not want to speak with them. These are all things that keep you from taking action, and keep you from being effective. The fear that you create for yourself is much greater than the reality. You overcome fear by taking action. The top five things that you want to remember are first of all, make phone calls. You need to make phone calls. That’s number one. Number two is you need to make a lot of phone calls. It’s something that you want to be doing every single day, depending on what your business is and what else is going on, you don’t’ have to spend hours on end making phone calls, but if you make phone calls every single day consistently overtime, you’re going to see the results. Number three is to remember that you have something of value to offer, and if you don’t believe in the value of your offering, then you really need to find something else to do. Number four is that how you think about this and how you feel about it is absolutely within your control. You may be uncomfortable or afraid today, and that can change, and you can change it. There are resources out there on my website, with my products. There are other trainers out there with products and information, too. So, however it is that you feel about prospecting, if it’s negative, you can change it. That’s totally within your control. Number five is remember, we’re talking about a phone call. Nobody is going to die. If somebody says no to you, nothing horrible is going to happen. You won’t die. Somebody in your family won’t die. Your life won’t be destroyed. Your house won’t burn down. Nothing bad is going to happen. So, have some fun with it.

Raven: The intent I always look at Wendy is not so much to land a sale that day. It’s just to make the connection and appointments.

Wendy: I think that is one mistake that people make in not recognizing their goal because depending on what it is you’re selling, some people are closing over the phone. However, most people are trying to set appointments, and if you’re trying to set an appointment to have a face to face meeting, you’re not asking that prospect to buy from you over the phone. You’re asking them to sit down and have a conversation with you. That’s a very different place to be, and even if you are closing over the phone, you still need to have that prospect’s agreement to have the conversation before you can possibly talk about whether or not they want to buy. So, it’s a very step-by-step process, and you need to –

Raven: Ask them for permission to go on.

Wendy: Exactly. “I’d like to talk to you about,” fill in the blank, “do you have a few minutes now?” If they say no, then, “When would be a better time for me to check back with you?” You make a phone date for a better time for them to have a conversation.

Raven: That second time it went from a cold call to a warm call.

Wendy: Exactly because you schedule the follow up appointment. You need to look at what your process is for whatever it is that you’re selling, and take it step by step. Please go to my website. You’re going to find a lot of free resources. There’s a free report, How to Write an Effective Cold-Calling Script, that you can download. It’s right on the home page. There are also other articles. There’s the report, Ten Top Tips for Terminating Telephone Terror that we just talked about. All of that is available on the website. There’s a lot of information that you can access right off the bat. I also have some products that will help you. The Miracle Appointment Setting Script is a home study program that will teach you step by step what you need to say to a prospect to get them to agree to sit down and have that further conversation with you. That is available on the website as well. I do a monthly teleclass on some aspect of new business development. So, there are many, many resources available to you on my website, and you can also email me through the website. So, go to the website, and check out all the information that’s there for you.