Sales Scripts, Arm Yourself

When it comes to cold outbound sales calls, I’ve learned some facts and skills that have already shifted the way I will always look at the sales cycle.

Cold Sales Stereotypes

For me, cold calling still conjures up images of telemarketers calling during dinner and blatantly stepping through a script. As someone just diving into sales, I feared to become this sort of dreaded cold-caller. However, I’m quickly discovering that this is fundamentally just a poor sales practice. Any truly successful sales campaign aimed at driving organic revenue growth must be based in relationship building and come from authenticity and earned respect. Robotic speeches must be avoided.

Arrows in your quiver

Canned sales scripts reek of inauthenticity. That said, there is still value in writing things down. You’ll need to effortlessly match solutions to problems. Instead of canned paragraphs and decision trees, business development reps should arm themselves with loose phrases or sentences to be called on demand. These are arrows in your quiver that can be pulled organically during the course of a normal, authentic conversation.

Aim for a target

Besides arming yourself with ammo, you must have a target. In Predictable Revenue, they refer to “peeling the onion.” Each step in the sales cycle has a necessary outcome for advancing towards the close and the first cold call is no exception. In every call, know your objective.  Write down your primary and backup takeaways for the call. Are you trying to get a valid e-mail? Get past a gatekeeper? Get a 20-minute discovery call?

First shot

In addition to authenticity, you must show respect and what better place to start than right at the opening. Another gem of advice from Predictable Revenue is to open with the following after your short introduction, “Did I catch you at a bad time?” This is my favorite arrow to pull. It immediately shows respect for your prospect’s time and gives you a host of options to organically guide the call to a number of favorable outcomes.

Earning the right

Earning the right to close the cold call and advance to the next step in the sales cycle is about respect. But it is also trying to get to the position of trusted advisor by continuing to be authentic and not a script-reaching machine. If you earn the title of trusted advisor by listening to problems and matching them with solutions, then closing to the next step in the sales cycle will be the obvious next step.

It’s time to shred the old scripts.  Before calling a prospect pull your arrows up on your computer screen, aim for the target, and let fly.