The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Sales Made Simple: How to Book More Calls & Close Deals

• Season 1 • Episode 56

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I sit down with Wendy Weiss, founder of Salesology, to break down her proven 3-step prospecting method that helps businesses book more calls, convert leads, and grow revenue.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
 ✅ The key difference between marketing, sales, and advertising—and how to use each effectively.
 ✅ Why marketing alone won’t replace sales (and what to do about it).
 ✅ Wendy’s 3-step method for booking more calls and closing deals.
 ✅ How to overcome fear of selling and master conversations that convert.
 ✅ The biggest mistakes people make in sales—and how to fix them.

Wendy is sharing her Salesology Prospecting Toolkit, a step-by-step guide to mastering sales and increasing productivity!

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome and Intro
01:03 Guest Introduction: Wendy Wise
01:29 Understanding the Difference Between Marketing, Sales, and Advertising
03:05 The Importance of Sales in High-Ticket Items
03:44 Wendy's Background and Prospecting Method
04:29 Three-Step Model for Successful Sales Prospecting
10:32 Effective Sales Conversations and Common Mistakes
12:36 Sales Ology Prospecting Toolkit
14:01 Trends in Sales Post-COVID and the Role of Cold Calling
18:33 Conclusion and Final Takeaways

Connect with Wendy Weiss:
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If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the Social Media Takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonald, and this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media more effectively to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure that you subscribe, and if you enjoy this episode, we love us. If you could give us a five star review. So today I am delighted to be joined by Wendy Wise. Wendy is the founder of Sales Ology and the creator of the sales ology prospecting Method that generates predictable sales revenue. She is an author, speaker, sales trainer and sales coach, and is recognized as a leading authority on lead generation, new business development and sales. You're very welcome to the show, Wendy. Thank you for having me. Louise. The first question I want to ask you a, a lot of the time I feel there's a little bit of confusion around the difference between marketing advertising. And sales. I think people don't really know like how they differ when you should use. What would you like to maybe start off by giving us a little, your take on it?

Wendy Weiss:

That is a really great question. I'll start with sales since that's my area of expertise. Sales is talking to people. You have to actually talk to them. You have to have that in depth conversation. Marketing is a communication. It's one communication to many. You're getting your message out there to as many people as you can possibly reach sales is having a conversation with one person at a time and then having the conversation with the next person. Advertising is a part of marketing except you have to pay for it.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, completely. Yeah. And I actually think, I don't know if you agree with me on this. I think that a lot of people forget, they think marketing. Is just gonna replace sales. And they think all I need to do is marketing, but I don't need to do sales'cause I don't like it.

Wendy Weiss:

That is so true, Louise. And it's, it's funny because it does depend on what it is you're selling. If you have a very low ticket item, you're selling something for $10. Yeah, you can put a buy now button. People will probably, some people will probably buy it. However, if you're selling a higher ticket item, you have a $25,000 coaching program, I can pretty much guarantee nobody's just gonna click on a buy now button.

Louise McDonnell:

Mm. You're

Wendy Weiss:

going to have to talk to them. Funny story about this. I need, uh, I just got new windows installed. The building where I live, they installed brand new windows in all the apartments. And I need screens. And so I've been, I've had different screen companies come in and give me estimates for the screens. One of the screen companies sent me an email. Their price point was $3,000 for the screens, and it included a buy now button. Nobody has ever called me or talked to me about this. I'm not. I am buying screens. I'm not buying from them. I know. It is so

Louise McDonnell:

true, isn't it? And so people don't like sales though. They don't like putting themselves outside their comfort zone. So is that why you developed your, uh, method, your prospecting method?

Wendy Weiss:

It's part of the reason. My first career was never supposed to be a sales trainer. I was actually supposed to be a ballerina and my first career was I danced with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater and I danced with the Cincinnati Ballet and feel like everything I know in life and business I learned in ballet class. And I use a very simple three step model based on what I learned in ballet class to teach prospecting, to teach business development. And I find that for most people, they're afraid of it'cause they're not sure what to do or what's gonna happen. And for most people, I find once. They have a very step-by-step system and they know what they're doing. Every step along the path, a lot of that fear goes away.

Louise McDonnell:

I can imagine. So talk us through, talk us through how somebody would go about get prospecting, getting more calls booked. What

Wendy Weiss:

should they do? Getting more calls booked. This is what I learned in ballet class. Three steps. If you are a dancer and you have a concert coming up, you don't just run out on stage and start dancing, you have to warm up. You have to get set up to do what you need to do so that you don't have a career ending injury. If you want to sell, you wanna book more calls. There are things you need to have in place for yourself so that you don't hurt yourself and you don't hurt your bottom line. And if you want to hire salespeople, 'cause I hear this all the time, oh, I wanna hire salespeople. Great. There are things you need to have in place for them so they don't hurt themselves, they don't hurt you, and they don't hurt your bottom line. So step one is to put these things in place, and I can break it down further, but this is step one, warm up so you don't have a career ending injury. A business ending injury. Step two, if you're a ballet dancer and you have a concert coming up, you don't just run out on stage and start dancing. You have been rehearsing for months and the great Russian ballerina. Ana Pavlova very famously said, no one arrives from talent alone. Work transforms talent into genius. Now, Ana Pavlova was first ballerina to tour the world with her own company. She also trained for many years at the Imperial Russian Ballet School before she joined the Imperial Russian Ballet or toured the world or did anything that she did, she learned her craft. Sales is a craft. It's not one of my pet peeves. The born salesperson does not exist. It is a learned communication skill. Step two, learn your craft. So we've got step one, warm up. Put the things in place you need to have in place so you don't hurt yourself, you don't hurt your bottom line. Step two, rehearse. Learn your craft step. Three then and only then is it time to perform. The problem is that most people skip steps one and two and they just run out there on stage. They have that career, they fall down. They have that career ending injury, terrible performance, bad reviews. It doesn't work. So that is my three step model for prospecting for sales. Warm up so you don't hurt yourself. Understand what you need to have in place. Step two, learn your craft. Step three, then you

Louise McDonnell:

execute. Okay, so see that I'm just understanding this properly. So step one is you get all the things in place. So it is not like you're preparing, you're getting ready, you're prepare, you're getting to learn about the person that you're gonna be speaking to. You're going to learn everything about. Them so that you can have a conversation with them is step two. Then like re rehears, making sure that you have rehearsed enough so that you are, you're comfortable in the sales call. And step three then is about delivery. Would that be, am I anyway, more

Wendy Weiss:

or less? I would go back even further because step one is really about understanding your market. Mm-hmm. And who, so you wanna be very. Specific about who it is that you serve, what makes a great lead for you in your market with your offering, and then what are the challenges, the problems, the business problems that they have that you can fix? How do you help the people that you serve? You want, you gotta be very clear about that right from the get go, because spending a lot of time speaking with people that are not a great fit for you is just not a good use of your time and you're not gonna sell anything. Who's what describes a great lead for you in your market with your offering? How are you helping them? What's the problem they have that you can fix? How did. They talk about it. What is your message to these people that you can help? Our message is building rainmakers. That's what we do. We teach people to find great opportunities so that they can grow their sales and grow their business. So what is your message to your market? So these are all things. That you have to figure it out before you start talking to people. Yes. Step two, rehearse. Learn your craft. Once you know who you're talking to, what are those challenges they have? What's your, what is your message? Then yes, you do have to practice it. What are the questions you're gonna ask them to make a hundred percent sure that you can help them? How are you going to explain what you do in a way that they understand it? And so these are all things, this is when I say learn your craft. Sales is a communication skill. It is not intuitive. Nobody is born knowing how to do this. And just to be clear, I am not a born salesperson. I am a really lucky person because when I was dancing all those years ago, I needed a day job. And I got a day job where somebody taught me this. Skillset, a born salesperson. Forget about it. It's, it's a communication skill. You need to learn to communicate your value. So true. And then once you've done those two things, then you can start talking to prospect. Nobody really cares what you do. Nobody cares. They care how they're gonna be better off when you finish. They care what you can do for them.

Louise McDonnell:

I always say as well that, um, you market online, but you sell offline. And the goal of using social media isn't necessarily to drive sales. It's the, the role of social media is to find those opportunities to generate sales. People say, oh, but you don't use social media to drive sales. And of course you do. If you go to social media thinking, I'm just gonna use it for awareness, then you're never giving yourself the goal of actually finding opportunities to, to have sales conversations. So, absolutely.

Wendy Weiss:

So, so. Get them out of LinkedIn. You gotta get them, get the zoom call.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah, you gotta get them from the your, from your newsfeed to your inbox and then from there to a call. So when people are having, like sitting down, having a sales conversation with someone, having a conversation with somebody, have you any tips like you, is there any things that people do wrong or they should avoid or any tips that you could offer?

Wendy Weiss:

Absolutely. That's another great question. My favorite question to ask, and I always ask this first, however I got to that conversation with a prospect, whether I cold call them 'cause I actually will do cold call, or if I met them on LinkedIn or some other way, the very first question I always ask is. What's going on that made you reach out to me on LinkedIn or what was it about the conversation we were having on LinkedIn that made you decide we should talk? Or what was it when I cold called you? What was it that I said, what's going on that made you decide that we should talk? Because I wanna know why we're talking. That's always, to me, that's always step one.

Louise McDonnell:

That's a great question.

Wendy Weiss:

And I think the. Biggest mistake that people make is they just talk too much, come up with some really great questions. Like I said, that's always my first, some version of that is my first question. Why are we talking? And put together some questions so that you can learn about that person's situation, why they wanted to talk to you, so you can figure out if you can actually help them. Some people might reach out to you on LinkedIn and say, I really wanna talk to you, and it turns out you can't help. So that does happen. How are you gonna figure that out? Ask your questions and then shut up. Listen to the answer.

Louise McDonnell:

Another thing I say to people as well is sometimes you may ask a question of somebody and they may have to think about their answers. They may not know the answer at the tip of their tongue. And so there's going to be a bit of silence.'cause you have to give them time to, to think about what they're going to be, say, uh, to say. And I also say be, don't fill the silence with your voice. Let there be silence. And give them an opportunity to think and then reply.

Wendy Weiss:

That's great advice. And I also tell people, my clients, if they've asked a question and they're getting an answer, count to 10 in your head before you say anything because you wanna make sure they're done. So true. Yeah. So true.

Louise McDonnell:

Yeah. And I was gonna ask you as well about, you have a great tool in your toolkit. Ology prospecting tool. So this is amazing. Can you tell everybody what your gift is?

Wendy Weiss:

Absolutely. We've put together it is a very comprehensive guide to prospecting for new business, for finding opportunities, and we've broken it down in such a way that if you are a business owner, you're a. Solopreneur or you're doing it yourself, you can use this guide to set yourself up to be very successful at ferreting out those new opportunities and setting up those conversations. And if you want to hire salespeople, it will help you set yourself up to be able to do that so that you'll have all the things in place for the people that you want to hire. Because the last thing that you wanna do is hire someone, pay them. They cost you a lot of money and produce absolutely nothing. So if you have a system in place, it will help you do that. And then if you do already have. Salespeople, this guide will help you make them far more productive.

Louise McDonnell:

That sounds brilliant. So yeah, sales ology, prospecting toolkit, unlock the secrets of effortless sales and increase productivity with the, with this cool toolkit. So yes, I know that's your gift for us. So that is absolutely a wonderful, um, and we'll have that in the show notes and we'll have it in all the links and we'll have that everywhere. Do you see any trends happening now? Anything that has changed, anything you've noticed in the last few years that's changed? Maybe post covid or with the whole AI thing? What? Where do you see it going, Wendy? What's that is

Wendy Weiss:

a great question and it's so interesting to me because as somebody, I do cold call. I have business development people that cold call on my behalf, and we teach some of our clients. Too cold call, and I know that's a very scary thing for a lot of our listeners to think of picking up the phone and talking to somebody that you don't know. However, it's actually not very scary. You can learn how to do it, but the thing that's really interesting to me is that before CID, fewer and fewer people. We're picking up the phone, it was harder to have conversations to reach people, and that's still true. It can be hard to reach people, but the thing you need to know is far fewer people are doing it. Mm-hmm. Before Covid, you could call a prospect and that prospect could very well say to you, do you know how many salespeople called me today? I can guarantee you no one will say that to you today if you pick up. The phone and you call your prospect, you will be the only person that called them that day, guaranteed. But here's the thing, this is also a communication skill. It's, it can be learned and it's in knowing how to introduce yourself. It's the same thing on LinkedIn and social media, those, all those spammy connection requests. And messages you get on LinkedIn, it's the same thing. It's not a good message if nobody, if you have to send out hundreds of messages and nobody responds, what you are saying in your message doesn't work. If you are picking up the phone and calling prospects and everybody that you talk to says, I'm not interested in, hangs up on you. What you are saying does not work. You need to say something else. I think people are hungry for that human being to human being connection, and the phone gives you that as. Zoom call gives you that and, and going to see someone gives you that.

Louise McDonnell:

So true. So true. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If people wanna find you on where, where would they, where do you hang out? Oh, thank you

Wendy Weiss:

for asking. Our website is go sales ology.com So please come visit us@gosalesology.com and also. You can find me on LinkedIn and that that's our main social media channel. And in addition, please look for my podcast Sales ology, conversations with sales leaders wherever you get your podcasts.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Thank you so much. I know that's. There's a lot to think about in this episode when it comes to sales. And at the end of the day, none of your marketing is gonna be successful unless you ha you integrate sales into your strategy. Because at the end of the day, as I said, we market online, but we sell offline. And if we don't sell and we can use social media to sell, we can use social media to to increase our bottom line. And thank you so much for sh coming on and sharing all your advice.

Wendy Weiss:

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Louise. And I'm visualizing everyone in our audience surrounded by cash, really large bills. Me

Louise McDonnell:

too. Thank you.