Epic Entrepreneurs

Mastering the Lost Art of Human Connection with Sherry Wheat

• Bill Gilliland

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What happens when you build a business around something most entrepreneurs hate doing? You create a 25-year success story. Sherry Wheat, founder of TeleSales, joins us to reveal how direct conversation remains the secret weapon in business development, even as digital marketing dominates the landscape.

Wheat's journey began in 1998 when she discovered her talent for connecting with prospects over the phone could translate into serious business results. Without formal marketing training, she built TeleSales on a revolutionary concept for its time: a fully virtual team of callers who worked as independent contractors. This approach gave both her and her team unprecedented freedom while delivering exceptional results for clients.

What's particularly fascinating is how TeleSales has survived—and thrived—through multiple technological revolutions. From broadcast faxing to the internet boom to today's AI calling agents, Wheat has consistently adapted while maintaining her core belief that human connection matters. "People are actually answering the phone and returning my calls," she explains. "There's so much pleasure in talking to people." This insight feels particularly relevant as many businesses struggle to break through digital noise and create meaningful connections.

The conversation explores Wheat's business philosophy through the BEPIC framework: Bringing energy, Education, Planning, Inspiration, and Commitment. Her perspective on commitment stands out—she advises regularly analyzing your commitments to ensure they align with your natural flow and values. Perhaps most profound is her observation that "people get sick when they are not being themselves," highlighting the physical toll of inauthenticity in business. Ready to reconnect with the human element in your business development? This episode offers both the inspiration and practical wisdom to make it happen.


To connect with Sherry:
Sherry@TeleSALESAtlanta.com

www.telesalesatlanta.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherrywheatavl/

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me or our team at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button, leave us a 5 star review, and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com or at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!

Bill

Speaker 1:

Hi there and welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm Bill Gilliland, your host. I am the principal of Action Coach, business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. Speaking of the summit, I want to remind you it's coming up on September 23rd. If you don't have your tickets yet, you're going to want to get those tickets. It will sell out. Go out there. Go ahead and get your tickets. It will sell out. Go out there. Go ahead and get your tickets. Invite your friends. If you're looking for package deals and you think you can buy 10 tickets to bring all your clients, or all your customers or prospects, then reach out to me and we'll be glad to make that possible. So, hey, I am super pumped today. I have got a cool guest. I've got Sherry Wheat of Telesales. She's had a fantastic business for a lot of years, helped a lot of people. I can't wait to hear more. So, sherry, tell us a little bit about you and about Telesales.

Speaker 2:

Sure Happy to be here. Thank you, bill. So telesales was started in 1998. And I knew nothing about marketing, I had never taken any kind of marketing classes, I just knew.

Speaker 2:

I discovered that it was important for business owners to be talking to their prospects. And I had been a landscape architect and I left that behind, which is another story and I discovered that people didn't necessarily know how to build their businesses and they weren't on the phones and I was hired temporarily well, not temporarily in a part-time position to help a medical doctor who was consulting to attorneys around the country build his business. And I would talk to attorneys and I would send them a letter and they would send cases and $500. And I became his best marketer. And that's when the entrepreneurial light went on, that people need to talk to their prospects in order to grow their business.

Speaker 2:

And I was fortunate enough I have a lot of coincidences that show up at the right time regularly in business for me and I met a fellow who was in marketing. He knew what I was talking about. He helped me start my business and I started it and within three months I had an $18,000 contract with an insurance company that had a new website and a new promotion that they were doing, and we were part of that team and that's how it all began.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I love it, yeah, yeah. It's still a big need, I think, because it's getting. You know it's all about. You can't do business if you're not talking to each other, and so you have to get business owners and businesses in front of other folks out there. So, yeah, it's a great one. Well, let me ask you some business questions, If you had to start from square one.

Speaker 2:

What would you do differently? Oh boy, what would I do differently? I think I would bring somebody on board that had skills that I don't have and that would be, at least in this day and age, would be, you know, digital marketing, et cetera, because that's so important to the game. So I would add new people to my team that were, you know, working as consultants and could support me. I had a great team calling team, and that's always really, really important and I targeted my business mostly in Atlanta. I might expand it around the country, and there are certain areas I wouldn't go into, but I think that's basically what I might do differently.

Speaker 1:

Got it, got it, love it. So what are some of the biggest learnings you've had as an owner and an employer in your business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I had a knack for attracting good people on the phones and I did not want to set up a call center. I did not want to have people around me all day long and, bill, can you ask me that question one more time before I answer this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. What's been some of your biggest learnings as an owner and an employer since you started? Yeah?

Speaker 2:

So setting up a virtual team 25 years ago was kind of unheard of, but it's what I did and it worked and it still works. And that way I didn't have to manage a lot of people all the time, I just had to manage the project and the client and it allowed me a certain amount of freedom. But it also allowed my team freedom. So they were all independent contractors. They worked on the projects they wanted to work on. They worked when they wanted to, and for me, having happy contractors working for me was just as important as having happy clients, because if they didn't want to be on a project they were not going to do a good job. So that was one of them. Is you know, building my calling team? I think also excuse me, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

I was going to ask you something about that. I just want to make the point that just because they're independent contractors doesn't mean they aren't employees. They're just a different kind of employee. Yeah, yeah, that's a tax designation. It's not that they aren't employees. So, yeah, it's a great point, but I love that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think also having to adjust to the new technologies that hit the ground. I mean, when I started the first big project, they wanted us on broadcast faxing. You know I had a little bit of faxing I was doing. They wanted us to fax companies. You know I had a little bit of faxing I was doing. They wanted us to fax companies around the country. So it was learning new technologies.

Speaker 2:

When the internet hit, everybody told me my business would go out of business and I said no, it won't. And it never did. It did help our business. So I think it's learning to adjust to the outside world when it hits. You know AI is hitting us all right now and how do we want to adjust to that? I will tell you I'm learning about AI. I have had AI agents call me and I have compared it recently because I'm doing some outbound calling myself right now and people are actually answering the phone and returning my calls and talking to people. There's so much pleasure in it. Particularly if you're a connector, which I am, and you like being in contact with others, it makes a huge difference. So everybody's, you know, going to digital marketing, I'm saying it's still really important to be talking to people talking to your prospects.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you got it. Yeah, eventually you got it. The digital marketing's got to lead to talking to particularly on higher end kind of purchases, I mean in B2B, business to business. I mean I still say, and we've proven it over and over again, that direct calling is probably the fastest way to build a business in the B2B and high end products, and that's just the way it is. So what are some common misconceptions about running a business?

Speaker 2:

Oh goodness that it's difficult, that you know you may not have all, the all of all of the systems in place to make it happen. That's certainly one I think there can be fear. You know, I built my business networking. A lot of people don't network, but it's a fabulous way to build the business. So I think there's fear out there related to that personal interaction. Yeah, what other fears, you know.

Speaker 2:

Am I going to make my goals? Am I going to generate the dollars I want to generate? Am I going to maintain my team, particularly the good players on my team? You know what happens when I've got someone that's not working well and I've got to, I've got to say goodbye to them, and how do I do that? In a way that is, you know, legally correct, et cetera? Do I do that in a way that is you know, legally correct, et cetera? So I think there, I think there's certainly issues associated with all of that. And then, as the market changes, can I change with it and what are the changes I have to be making on a regular basis? I think is really important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I like that. So what do you attribute your growth to?

Speaker 2:

I like that. So what do you attribute your growth to? People don't like to do what we do. People hate to do. Business owners hate to do. It's. The only reason I've had my business for this long is that they don't want to do it. They don't have the time, the energy, the desire to get on the phones and talk to a lot of call, a lot of people they don't know, and that has worked in our favor.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, plus, it is leveraged. I mean most people are busy and you know they have to hire somebody and you've got multiple people who can make calls. So I mean it's a. It's very leveraged to to cause you can you could call however many hours they want you to call. I mean you could set that up. So I love that. I've always, you know, I remember back in school or business school we were talking about, like, what great industries were, and one of the great industries we came up with was garbage collection, because no one wanted to do it Right. So I mean, but it is a very lucrative business in the private garbage industry. If you're part of that, I mean you look at waste management and what they've been able to do. So it's, it's interesting. So how do you it seems like you've been pretty good at this how do you balance, like, personal life with demands of business?

Speaker 2:

I have a good team that do the calling for me. I, you know I'm I'm half introverted and half extroverted, and so the networking. I love business, I love doing business. I think I would have given this up years ago and I'm even at this stage of my life. I'm looking at you know how do I want to move forward with my business? So, yeah, it's just it's it's been a fun thing for me to do and challenging at the same time, because there are times when we have clients that are difficult or they give us a lousy list and they expect us to create miracles.

Speaker 2:

We do our best to create miracles, but those lists are incredibly important to the quality of what we can provide, so that can be a challenge for us in terms of providing good services. So it's something that I support my clients on in terms of where did they get this list, how old was it, et cetera. So you know, there are things like that that I have to be monitoring and I'm happy with that. You know I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I'm a connector and I have a sister that is just an amazing connector. She walks in the room and the way she says hello, just hello everybody turns around and looks at her, and animals do the same thing, and it's you know. So I've learned from her and I've also benefited greatly from having an older sister. That's a big connector.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that, I love that. Yeah, connecting people, that's a great way to sort of combine the two. So what qualities do you look for in your employee contractors?

Speaker 2:

I get them on the phone and I'm interested in how they talk to me and I'm interested in how they talk to me and how they sell themselves. So I've gotten their resume and I've looked at it and it may work and it may not. There may be things that are not particularly impressive to me. It's really how they communicate with me and how they talk to me and how they sell themselves and how they talk about their experiences and what's been important to them. So I have, you know, a couple of conversations with them.

Speaker 2:

I don't, I'm sure, and they're all older, seasoned salespeople. So I'm not, I don't, I'm not interested in college kids and, um, family, uh, family owners or family members that have children that they've got to take care of, because that's much more important than getting on the phones and dialing. So it's very interesting to me how they sell themselves to me and then I will test them on a project or two to see how they do, what their challenges were, were and was our technology easy for them to to work with and what did they develop for the client? What were the questions they were asking related to the client and the project? And then I, you know, I'm going to talk to them after they've done their calling, to get a sense of how it went and what were the challenges and what worked and what were the rewards and what were you know, what were they able to generate?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I love that, I love that. So, yeah, let's do a quick fire round. So BEPIC is an acronym. I'm going to give you the letters and then I just want like a couple of words or maybe a couple of sentences about each one. Okay, so the B in BEPIC stands for bring the energy. What are your thoughts around energy?

Speaker 2:

Oh, very important. When we're talking to people, it's important to be present. Charisma is important, kindness is important, bringing our whole energy forward is really important and being friendly is really important. So yeah is really important.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, yeah, you can hear it in the call People have energy, yeah it's awesome.

Speaker 2:

How about E education Very important, and there are times in this world where I see people that haven't had education but were able to do great things. You know, I did no marketing, I took no marketing classes and I've had this business for 25 years. But there are other people that have started their businesses in the garage, you know, just on a whim and an understanding and a creative idea, and so education can be very important at times, and other times I think we have our own inner information that we can bring out to support and teach others.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think self-education is probably more important than formal education. So, yeah, it's in there. P planning what are your thoughts around planning?

Speaker 2:

Very important Planning for everything, planning for the business. You know, right now we're looking at selling our house. That's going to require a lot of planning, but business certainly is important in terms of what do I need to be generating on a monthly, weekly, daily basis? How many clients do I need to have that I'm working with and how many prospects do I need to have that are talking to me about working with us? So planning is very important, especially as it relates to dollars.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it. How about I inspiration? I think that's what you were talking about earlier.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so interesting. I think inspiration is everywhere. It's just a matter of whether we can tap into it or whether we're so overwhelmed with garbage in our brains as opposed to connecting to that creative side of ourselves. But I think it's everywhere and I think it's important to use it. When we're doing our calling campaigns, I have to come up with ways to differentiate my clients from their competition, and the fact that we're getting on the phone is one way that we're differentiating them. But then the questions we ask are really really important to how we differentiate, and they have to be caring, interested, not interesting, interested questions. So you know, I look for inspiration related to that, both for myself and also outside myself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I love that. I love that. That's a. That's one of the better answers I think I've ever heard. So C stands for commitment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, very important. You know, my thought on commitment is, if it's a difficult commitment, I might want to rethink my commitment.

Speaker 2:

If it's an easier commitment and it's, you know, my soul is comfortable with that commitment and my personality and the world around me is working with that commitment, then I'm going to put a hundred percent to it. If there, if it's a situation where something doesn't quite work well and it's not going to, it's not going to change, then I I look at all right, is this something I should be a hundred percent committed to, 50 percent, or that I need to say goodbye to?

Speaker 1:

I love that like always analyzing your commitments to make sure that you actually can stay committed to the ones where you're going to flow, where you're going to feel that flow. Yeah, I love that. I love that. What words of advice would you offer other business owners who are looking to grow?

Speaker 2:

of advice would you offer other business owners who are looking to grow Words of advice? Come up with a plan that feels good, a plan that's not just intellectually good on paper but also is going to be interesting, challenging, wonderful. There'll be a sense of accomplishment when it happens, when it's completed. Yeah, I think it's got to work with your personality.

Speaker 1:

Love it, love it, love it, love it. Yeah, you got to be yourself. Can't tell. I can't tell how many people I sell out. Like like, just be yourself, don't try to be somebody you're not trying to be well, to that point, bill.

Speaker 2:

I think people get sick when they are not being themselves I 100.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's, yeah, I think, yeah, I think, I think I think you. Yeah, I think it's gotta be stressful on the body, so interesting thing. So, lastly, what's the best way for someone to get in contact with you?

Speaker 2:

Um, they can. Direct line is 4 0 is Sherry S-H-E-R-R-Y at telesales with an S atlantacom, because that's where we started the business Sherry at telesalesAtlantacom.

Speaker 1:

Great, I love it. I love it. Hey, this has been fun. This is great. It's been informative. I really appreciate you being part of this community and all you're doing out there, and I know that this business is going to find continued success.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to you and have this conversation and talk to your audience.

Speaker 1:

It's been awesome, so hey, until next time, all the best.