Know your audience
For your sales call to be successful, you must learn about your audience, including their specific needs.
Before calling your prospects, try to learn more about their industry and competitors to get insights into the types of problems they might face. You should also research your point of contact to determine whether they're someone who can make purchasing decisions.
While not all your prospects are decision-makers, they can influence important decisions like purchasing your solution.
For example, if you sell marketing software, you might speak to the marketing manager who requires permission to make a purchase. Yet, convincing them will convince their boss, who relies on them to make the right decision for the business.
Highlight benefits, not just features
While you want your prospects to learn as much as possible about your product or service by highlighting its features, they really want to know how your solution benefits them.
Start the conversation off by learning about the customer's pain points and addressing them. You should ask questions like what products or services they use and why they don't find them effective.
Asking these questions can help you learn more about their specific pain points while giving you a method for addressing them without coming off as too salesy.
Overcome objections
If you're cold calling, you'll be faced with more objections than a company that invests in lead generation tactics.
With lead generation, you secure personal information like phone numbers from warm leads — individuals who have expressed an interest in your offerings. However, when you're cold calling, your leads are cold, and many prospects may not want to speak to you or hear about your offerings.
Always expect some degree of hesitation when you call someone who doesn't know you or the business you represent. Prospects can object without reason, giving you no way to potentially sway them to listen to you.
If this is the case, your script should have some instructions for dealing with it, such as letting the prospect know you understand and offering to email them more important information about your business.
Prospects can also be very forthcoming about why they're objecting. For example, someone may have budget concerns or is happy with their current providers. In this case, it's up to the sales script to pivot based on the specific objection.
In any case, it's important to share information about why a prospect should continue listening to you on the phone and offer them the opportunity to speak to you further if they change their minds.
Test and refine your script
You won't know your sales script's effectiveness until you start testing it. Every sales call script should have a friendly greeting, small talk that includes asking them if they have time to chat, and your prospect's challenges.
Only if your prospect has agreed to talk should you continue on to your sales pitch and adjust it according to the information you've learned about your prospect by talking to them about their wants, needs, and pain points.
Additionally, all sales scripts should have several methods outlined for handling objections and end with a call to action. You can learn about the effectiveness of your script by reviewing sales data and refining the script the more you learn about your specific audience.
Sales Script Examples
Sales scripts vary depending on the organization, prospect, whether you're cold calling or contacting warm leads, and how many times you've already spoken directly to the prospect.
Remember, while sales scripts are commonly used for cold calling, they can be used throughout the entire sales process, regardless of how often you've already talked to your prospect on the phone.
To understand what a successful sales call script consists of, take a look at these examples:
A real estate agent
Real estate agents often have to rely on phone communication with prospects.
Its possible prospects come from marketing and advertising tactics in which the prospect is already familiar with what the agent does. However, some real estate agents might rely heavily on cold calling, depending on their target market.
In any case, the first phone call with a prospect would look something like this:
"Hello, [Insert Name]. My name is [Insert Name] from [Insert Name]. I saw that you were interested in selling your home and would like to learn more about you and how we can work together. Do you have a few minutes to discuss selling your home?"
This type of sales script helps you learn more about your prospect and helps you warm the lead without trying to sell them immediately on your services.
Instead, it opens up a dialogue for how your company might help a home seller sell their home and gives you the opportunity to highlight what benefits they'll get from choosing to work with you.
A marketing agency
Marketing agencies commonly use a combination of cold and warm prospecting methods to find new clients, which often lead to a discovery call to learn more about the prospective client and their needs and determine if you're the right fit for them.
The discovery sales script might look something like this:
"Hi, [Insert Name]. My name is [Insert Name] from [Insert Name]. I noticed you weren't investing in social media marketing and wanted to ask you a few questions about why you've decided to stray away from this type of marketing and learn more about what you do and your challenges in reaching customers. Let me know if now is a good time to talk or if you'd like to schedule another time."
This sales call script immediately shows that the caller has done their research and uncovered a potential customer need — social media marketing.
Additionally, this type of script is flexible for a variety of different industries as long as you focus on any information you've uncovered during your research process.
A mortgage lender
Mortgage lenders find customers in a variety of ways, including cold calling and lead generation. Nowadays, one of the most effective methods is generating leads on a website or third-party website in which potential buyers indicate they're interested in securing a mortgage. An example of a cold call script would be something like this:
"Hi, [Insert Name]. My name is [Insert Name] from [Insert Name]. I saw that you submitted a form on our partner site requesting more information about mortgage pre-approval. I'd like to learn more about your home-buying goals and see if there's anything I can help you with. Is now a good time to talk?"
This sales script addresses where the caller received their information, and instead of trying to sell them on a mortgage immediately, they request more information to qualify the prospect.
In all of these examples, we've only provided the first part of your sales script. The rest of it will depend on various factors, such as the prospect's answer to whether they have time to discuss and what their overall tone is throughout the call.
In most cases, you likely won't have a goal of selling them your product or service immediately. However, this depends on the company, as some have longer sales funnels than others.
After your prospect has decided to continue talking to you, you should introduce yourself again and the company and ask a few questions to learn more about them and their potential pain points.
For instance, the mortgage lender might find that the person they're talking to is self-employed and has had a difficult time finding a mortgage program that's right for them. If the lender specializes in these types of mortgage programs, they'll follow up by discussing them and providing more information about their expertise in the area.
Then, once they've effectively qualified the lead, they can make an appointment to talk more in-depth about their needs.
You can adapt any of the above scripts to your own product or service to make them work for you. Most important is learning about your prospects and qualifying them to determine if it's worth spending more time talking to them. You can typically gauge a prospect's interest by the answers they provide.
Common mistakes to avoid
Crafting your sales call script takes time because it relies on research to learn about your target audience and their pain points. Many companies make mistakes that prevent them from being able to sell their products to customers.
A sales script doesn't guarantee more sales; your script might highlight the offering's benefits and how it solves your prospects' common problems. Mistakes to avoid when crafting your sales pitch script include the following:
Lack of personalization
Relationship building is crucial regardless of your industry. Your customers must trust you before they decide to make a purchase. A lack of personalization in a sales script can immediately signal that you haven't taken the time to actually learn about your potential customer or their needs.
Focusing too much on the product, not the customer
Many businesses make the mistake of highlighting the product and its features instead of how the product can benefit customers. Prospects don't necessarily want to hear about all your product's features; instead, they want to know how your offering can address their pain points and solve their common problems.
For example, if you sell a project management software and your prospect is already using one, they don't want to hear about the features. They want to hear how your product will solve the issues they face when using your competitor's software.
Overcomplicating the script
Your sales script isn't supposed to be a document your salespeople read verbatim. Instead, it should highlight the most crucial talking points to serve as a conversational guide. You should always keep sales scripts short for the first conversation so you're not wasting your time or your prospect's.
Besides, a complicated script can be difficult for sales reps to remember and fully understand, and it can become boring to prospects. The main goal is to generate interest and to do that; you have to have a conversation with the prospect instead of talking at them.
Using a one-size-fits-all approach
All your customers are different and have different needs. Even if your customers operate within the same niche, your product may be solving different problems for them.
Because of this, it's crucial to have a sales script that can easily be personalized and customized on the spot by sales reps, allowing them to insert the client and their specific needs into the script so it makes sense.
Tips for delivering the sales script
Just as important as having a sales call script is properly delivering it. As we've mentioned, your prospects don't want to hear a script; they want to have a conversation with you to learn when your business and its offerings are the right fit for them.
Here are a few tips to help you deliver your script and generate more interest:
Practice and memorize the script
All your sales reps should practice and memorize the scripts so that it comes naturally to them. Of course, they don't have to read the script verbatim, and they shouldn't.
Instead, memorizing the script can help them understand the direction of the conversation while they keep it casual and natural.
Use tone and inflection to convey enthusiasm
If you want your prospects to get excited about an offer, the salesperson has to be excited about it. Your prospects will consider your tone and how you deliver the script before deciding whether they want to continue the conversation.
You should be enthusiastic but also listen to the customer's tone to determine where the call is headed and be able to pivot when necessary.
Build rapport with the customer
Rapport is crucial for relationship building because it helps you understand your customers and communicate with them better. Your prospects must trust you before they decide to make a purchase or work with your business, and building a rapport can help them develop a deeper connection with your business while they learn more about your offerings.
Ask open-ended questions
Asking open-ended questions will help you learn more about your prospects and their specific pain points and needs. Once you learn what your customers care about most, you can tailor your sales pitch script to build personalized solutions.
In addition, open-ended questions show that you're actually interested in a customer's issues and that you can find reasons for them to believe your solution is the best available.
Why a well-crafted sales script is essential for success
A well-crafted sales call script can help you learn more about your customers while pitching solutions that address their pain points, both of which lead to more sales and better customer relationships. But, of course, sales scripts are just for cold calling; they can be used for a variety of customer communications, including email marketing.
Sales scripts can improve your lead generation efforts and support your other outbound sales efforts. Start crafting your perfect sales script today with Mailchimp and test it via email to find the right messaging for your unique customers.