Everything You Need to Know About Sales Scripts

The Gist:

• Yes, you do indeed need a sales script, powerful language that creates value for your clients and creates a preference to buy from you.
• No, you do not have to sound scripted. You can memorize the talk track, rehearse it, and make it your own.
• You need good talk tracks or planned dialogue for all parts of the sales conversation.

Yes, You Need Sales Scripts

Sales scripts provide you with effective language for the many different conversations you have with your prospective clients, helping you to create value for the contacts who are trying to improve their results. Good language is confident, powerful, and proves that you belong in the room with your contacts, while weak language creates concerns about your ability to be a good partner.

Which sales calls and conversations need a sales script?

One way to think about sales scripts is that you should have good language options for every interaction, something that you find in good sales playbooks. You need good language for prospecting, opening a sales call, and asking powerful questions on discovery calls. You also need to know how to collaborate with your client to develop a solution they can say yes to, requiring language that facilitates that conversation. Later, you’ll need effective dialogue to present and propose your solution, resolve your client’s concerns, and close the deal.

Does everything need to be scripted?

Everything should be scripted, even though not everything you say will be part of your script. The best sales scripts aren’t designed to cover every word of every sentence you utter. Instead, think of them as building blocks that guide your conversation. These blocks ensure your dialogue remains effective, even though you'll often find yourself “off script” for significant portions of the conversation.

I don’t like sales scripts because I don’t want to sound scripted.

So don’t sound scripted! The better you know the sales script, the more you enable the flexibility to improvise. The more you make the sales script your own, the more powerful it becomes.

How much do I need to rehearse?

The best way to acquire good language is to memorize your scripts, then learn to use them better by role-playing with someone on your team. The more you rehearse, the more confident you’ll be when your prospective client asks a tough question or challenges you. Once you have the big, broad strokes of the conversation in place, you can start improvising. Rehearsing and role-playing is the fastest way to avoid sounding scripted.

Which sales call scripts should be prioritized?

The truth is that you need good language for every conversation, but if you want a place to start, try the first conversation, the cold call. It is more difficult than ever to get meetings, making that first commitment for time a critical conversation. Sales professionals also need good language to overcome all the common objections to meetings that they hear from decision-makers.

What kind of script do I need to make a good cold call?

There are three outcomes your cold-call sales script needs to include. First, you need to tell your prospective client who you are and why you are calling them. Second, you have to trade them something of value for the time that you are requesting (See The Lost Art of Closing). Third, you have to ask for a meeting.

No more pushy sales tactics. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales.

What is an example of a good cold-call sales script?

Good Morning. This is John Doe with XYZ Widgets, and I am calling you today to ask you for a twenty-minute meeting to share with you an executive briefing about the four trends that we believe will have the biggest impact on your business and ours over the next eighteen months. Even if there is no immediate next step for us now, I’ll leave you with the slide deck so you can share it with your team. How does Thursday afternoon look for you? This approach follows some of the key elements found in effective sales scripts. (See Eat Their Lunch)

Win customers away from your competition. Check out Eat Their Lunch

Is there a sales script for a client who tells you your price is higher than your competitor?

Rest easy: for every challenge you find in sales, chances are good that someone has already developed a best sales scripts to handle it. In this case, you might start with something simple: “I understand that the price is important, but if a lower price raises the long-term costs for your business, would you consider paying a little more in price to reduce your overall costs? I’d be glad to show you how that might work.”

This is a good example of the power of sales script because it provides you with the tools to respond confidently and immediately. That scripted sales language also creates a conversation about the difference between price and cost, potentially preventing your prospective client from making a mistake that costs them more than they expected.

How do you address a client’s pain points with a sales script?

You’ll find one of two things to be true about your prospective clients. Either they are already unhappy with their results, have already identified their problem, and are already exploring ways they can improve their results, or they are not yet aware that better results are available to them. Your sales call script needs to include questions that help you identify which of these two scenarios is true. You can ask a client who is already aware of their problem to explain their pain points, so you can address them. If they are not yet aware that better results are available, you need talk tracks that allow you to share insights that help them see where and how they might improve their results.

What do I do if I am a sales rep and I have no scripts?

One of the best things you can do to develop your own sales scripts is to schedule a meeting with a few people on your sales team, let each person share the language they use, and decide what language is most effective for your tasks. Consider this a long-term project and keep working with the language. Be willing to revise it when some members of your team come up with super effective language, especially for difficult conversations. This will help your sales performance.

Do Good Work

• Make a list of the sales conversations where you would benefit from better, more effective language.
• Ask someone with really good language choices to allow you to listen to them when they make a call or to join them in a sales call. Write down what they say, then later ask them to explain why they asked certain questions or made certain statements.
• Write down your existing scripts. You don’t change what you say on every call. Looking at the words you use will help you find ways to improve your sales scripts.

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Many would have you believe that cold calling is dead, but the successful have no fear of the phone; they use it to outproduce their competitors.

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