We've all been on the receiving end of a bad sales call. Stilted language, too-pushy pacing, or even simply a product or service that misses the mark for us completely. What if I told you there is a way to guarantee your target customers never receive a sales call like this from one of your staff?
If you want your team to close more sales, you need to show them how to avoid unproductive conversations. The best way to do this is to know exactly what to say to advance a sale. In other words, you need a tried-and-true sales pitch script.
This post will cover the three essential elements for preparing your staff to make effective, efficient sales calls. Armed with this information, you should be able to get your sales team on track to their highest ever close rate.
How to Construct the Best Sales Pitch Script
The average salesperson will balk at using a script, or what we call "talk tracks." The mistake they make is believing that they aren't already using the same language in every sales interaction--even when the language isn't effective. Their real concern is sounding as if they are reading a script. More still, what sales leaders and sales managers should worry about is using language from old, outdated approaches that no longer work in the modern sales environment.
Better talk tracks designed to appeal to the modern buyers, decision-makers, and stakeholders improve the salesperson's success in creating and winning opportunities and acquiring new clients. When the only vehicle to creating value for your clients is a series of conversations, the content and delivery of that conversation is the variable to success.
With one simple change to a salesperson's prospecting pitch, they generally acquire four meetings out of ten conversations, a yield far better than the one meeting they were scheduling before making the change. You can have the strategy and the exact language free here: My Proprietary Strategy for Gaining a Meeting.
We also see close rates rise by 30% by providing a roadmap that provides the salesperson with a way to manage a non-linear conversation by providing them with a strategy and the talk tracks that allow them to advance the sale. The salespeople who send us email and InMail on LinkedIn all share one thing in common: they all include that they have greater control of the conversation, followed by a word or two about how they are making more money.
We built Sales Accelerator, our proprietary development platform, to provide a modern sales approach for companies who need help transforming their antiquated approach to what works now. We have hundreds of talk tracks that provide the sales force with talk tracks that are consultative--and that don't cause the salesperson or their client to cringe.
Here are the top three elements your sales team needs to consider when implementing a sales pitch script.
1. Mindset
Without the right mindset, there is no script that will be foolproof for your sales staff.
Staff needs to be resourceful, accountable, and take initiative to research the prospect and prepare the proper rapport-building information and questions for an effective call.
The right mindset is built on being other-oriented instead of self-oriented. The language needs to come from a place of helping your prospective client make a good decision about their future by creating value for them. Much of what salespeople say in meetings is based on approaches that repel clients, especially when the approach has the salesperson starting with the "Why Us," conversation that ignores the reality that conversation is only valuable at the end of the sales cycle. The early conversations create value when your talk tracks help the client understand their world and answer the question, "Why Change?"
There is a paradox at work with this mindset and the approach. You need powerful talk tracks that allow you to create value and allow you to gain the commitment to move forward with your prospect, but you also need to think on your feet, responding to your client's questions, challenges, and resolving their concerns. The combination of well-designed talk tracks and the ability to be fluid enough to have good language for the unexpected question or prompt a decision-maker throws at you.
2. Skill-set
Your sales staff will also need to develop a few vital skills to effectively use a sales pitch script. Building consensus, creating differentiated value, and compelling change are all skills your staff needs to effectively implement a script with consistent results.
Getting a yes and ink on a contract is only possible when you help your client with a facilitated, needs-based buyer's journey, one that helps them recognize and commit to the conversations for them to move forward towards the better results they need. One of the main reasons salespeople lose deals they might have won is because they skip some of the outcomes that precede a won deal or let their prospect avoid the conversation.
Both your approach and your talk tracks need to create differentiated value, something that is still easy to do as most salespeople still execute a legacy approach to sales, along with the completely commoditized discovery call that creates no value for the prospective client. Instead of asking "What's keeping you up at night," good talk tracks would provide a different, value-creating approach, like "Have you already started to make the adjustments that would allow you to succeed in the current environment, and if not, can I share with you what we see working now? You create value for your clients when you approach and your talk tracks teach them something about themselves, their company, and their current reality.
Consider any pipeline report from any company and you are certain to find stalled deals or ones that aged out but are still taking up space and providing "hope" to the hopeless. There are two incredibly important conversations that cause stalled deals. Lacking talk tracks to compel change, something you might recognize in the talk tracks in the preceding paragraph. Deals stall when the salesperson lacks the talk tracks to compel change. Many clients will agree to a meeting, but moving deals forward requires a compelling reason to change, often one the client is unaware of before meeting with a salesperson. The second critical conversation that needs to be scripted is one that helps the client build the consensus that ensures the decision-maker has the full support of their team with a new approach, a new partner, and a change initiative that helps them produce the better outcomes they need.
3. Language
Only once this foundation has been laid can we move onto the script itself.
We place a high priority on language in the Sales Accelerator because sales is a series of conversations, and the better the conversations, the better the salesperson or sales team's results. To make certain that salespeople would have the right talk tracks for the sales conversations, we built a program called COACH. COACH has one hundred talk tracks, covering every part of the sales conversation, starting with the language needed to secure a meeting, the common objections a salesperson is likely to encounter in their day-to-day selling, all the way through the negotiation.
The language of your sales force matters. It's one of the variables that leads to success. Would you prefer to say, "If I could give you a fifteen percent discount would you buy today," or would you be more confident and comfortable saying, "Unless you need something else, can I provide you with a contract and begin delivering the better results you need?" In any sales conversation, you will find weak and tentative language or talk tracks that provide the salesperson with the confidence and the competency to lead the client through conversations that create value and a better experience, one they will prefer over others.
Preparing Your Team with the Best Sales Pitch Script
Wrap up by reinforcing the idea that it's not just about a script, it's about the idea and mindset behind the language your sales staff are using.
While the scripts and talk tracks and playbooks are all important, the mindset and the approach are also critical to success. Preparing your team to engage with powerful language and even more powerful conversations is how you improve their ability to create and win new deals. The language that works the best right now is language designed for the modern sales approach, one that requires more of the salesperson, and one that your prospective clients find valuable.
You can find the resources you and your team need in the Sales Accelerator. To explore the approach and talk tracks, contact us here to speak to one of our Sales Transformation Specialists.
This should lead back to the Sales Accelerator, naturally flowing into offering this course for sales managers looking for more details on the above elements.
