In our last article we explained to you a little bit about sales scripts, how they work and where you can use them best.
Now has come the time to really improve your business situation and work on creating your own scripts.
To start with, look at exactly how your sales pipeline is working.
Usually, it will begin with a conversation on the phone.
This can either be a cold lead or a warm lead as we already mentioned, meaning the customer either knows at least approximately who you are and what you do or not.
Cold and warm leads are two fundamentally different situations which will again require different techniques.
Try to really optimize, test and twerk different scripts for each of these two situations to gain the maximum output possible.
Once you have clear results, there should be a clear path to follow for working with cold leads or working with warm leads.
However, if your sales pipeline usually first starts with contact via email, you can of course start with a script for email conversations.
Many businesses find it more efficient to automate email conversation scripts as much as possible with automated mailing programs.
You have to test what works best with your customers and see what the best way to start a conversation is for your business.
Sales Scripts on the phone:
Starting on the phone, you will at first have to introduce yourself.
The introduction should not be too long but also not too short.
The customer picks up and wants to know only the essentials:
Who am I talking to?
From which company?
Why have you called me?
The other person will not mention these questions but they will be in their mind as soon as a stranger calls.
The faster you can answer these questions on the phone with a customer, the sooner you can get the customer to get their mental guards down and allow for a more open conversation. It is really important to not appear as a pushy sales guy but always have a sort of benefit for the customer when calling.
Never call without anything beneficial to offer.
The favorite radio station of most people in the world is WII.FM, or in other words: “What's In It For Me?”
People are busy enough with their own life, and you should respect that.
Make sure from the outset of any conversation you have a reason for calling that benefits the customer.
Of course, this is clearly easier to do with warm lead than with cold leads.
That is why we will focus here on calling leads that are at least half-warm, which could be an established trader of the goods you sell in another state, or someone from the same industry that uses products similar like yours on a regular basis.
For cold-calling we will write another separate blog post for you.
The introduction could start like this:
“Hello Mr. Thompson, this is Mr. Smith from XYZ corporation in St. Antonio, TX.”
That is it.
Keep it simple and just introduce yourself.
Usually you will get a simple “Hello” as an answer.
Some now walk around the actual purpose and ask the customer how they are today or if this is a good time to talk. I urge you not to do that, because you are giving the customer a first option to say “no” to you. You have to lead the conversation in a direction you want it to go so far, don’t mess it up now.
The next sentences could go like this:
“Well Mr. Thompson, the reason I am calling you today is because as I have just seen on your website ( company brochure / business card) is that you are in the construction industry and I want to show your a product that can save your costs / make your workers more efficient / bring you results much faster than what is currently available on the market.
All I would need is a few minutes to give you an overview of what we do for you / how we can help you / how we can make your team more efficient.
What would be a good time to discuss the benefits for you in the next few days?”
Here is the part where you really need to customize your message depending on what you sell and to whom.
But basically all products will have a certain benefit for its users and most companies will operate their sales within a certain industry.
So use your benefits and the specific information you have on a given industry the customer is in to make them interested. Admittedly, it will be hard to really get someone interested just from a simple and short phone call.
But that is not necessary.
All we need is to get an appointment, and to make it sound worth the customer´s while to spend time with us.
After the call, the customer will probably not remember what it was about your product or what exactly you are going to show them. All that matters is that they remember that it was something beneficial for themselves or their business and that you have an appointment with them as a result.
Also note that we did not ask the customer if he or she is interested.
We did not ask if he or she would want to meet us.
We also did not ask if they have the time to meet, but only when they have the time to meet.
This is a very important detail that gets easily overlooked - you control the conversation, not the customer.
By structuring your script correctly you are always asking the questions and guide the next moves.
You do not give them a chance to be given a “no”, instead you just naturally assume they will be interested and move ahead.
If someone really gives you an objection right away, then you can use the objection buster which we will discuss shortly afterwards.
Just pretend that people want to hear about your product, and make that certainty be heard in your voice when calling. Assuming the sale will improve your results instantly because you subconsciously project your feelings and mental state to the other person via your tone of voice.
What follows is just a brief confirmation about the appointment when the customer has given you the time it would be possible:
“Alright Mr. Thompson then I will see you next Tuesday at 11am.”
That is it.
Pure and simple.
If the conversation on the phone runs smoothly and you can clearly explain your benefits, this will be all that is necessary.
In case you do not have the address you can also add asking for the address, or if you are not sure you can also add a confirmation of it like:
“I will meet you in your office downtown, Upper road nr 417.”
Whatever option you choose, it is important to just naturally expect people to say yes and have a confident or authoritative voice when making the call.
This should go for the entire phone call.
But what if the customer interrupts you, gets rude or is just not interested in whatever you want to show them?
This is where you will use your objection buster.
Do Your Research On The Customer
The more you can personalize your sales scripts, the better they will potentially work.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new call you make, but it will definitely help to build a few sentences you know about the customer into your script every time.
Look for possible pain points, changes in their industry, products or in their company.
Find common ground between what their business is doing and what other businesses you serve as customers are doing.
It could also be worth mentioning something you can find out about them as a person, if they have such information available in their social media feed for example.
If you have received the contact through a referral, make sure you check with the referring person to ask what kind of person he or she is, what makes them special as a person and what could be interesting to them.
If you happen to know such details on the first call, it also signals to the other person that you have done your homework and are serious in what you offer.
Personalizing a phone script will definitely require some work on your part, although it is certainly worth the effort.
But clearly, it pays more if you know you can use the same scripts multiple times.
To make your work more efficient you can also compromise and not generate a new script for every client but to make them industry or area-specific.
For instance if you offer a service for real estate agents in Dallas, you could use the same script for all of them.
As long as the pain points and other potential motivators are similar, you can keep using the same scripts even across industries or geographic areas.
Sales Objections on the phone
You can definitely count on some customers to bring up objections.
Objections are a natural part of the sales process and actually a very good sign - because this proves that the customer has paid attention to what you say.
Thus, you should always expect to get at least some objections and to see them as a chance to prove your expertise and problem solving skills to your clients.
As you have seen, the actual sales script we advise to use on the phone is really short and easy to follow.
It is to the point, leading the conversation and with only the absolute essential information to get an appointment as quickly as possible.
But what if the customer does not agree to an appointment?
What if they demand to receive some material first or plainly say they are not interested?
What if they say there is no time or budget for the things you sell?
This is where the objection buster comes into play.
The objection buster is a second script, which you will use in combination with the actual phone script.
You can never know when an objection might come up.
Some say they are not interested right after picking up the phone, others listen to what you have to say and then tell you they are not interested.
In these and all other possible cases, an objection is at first a “no” which you have to convert into a “yes” with your communication skills.
And since acquiring these skills will take years of experience, you can shortcut it by using a script which will prepare your people for exactly these objections.
In life, there are hardly any things that will go according to your plan.
When on the phone with a customer, the chances for the conversation running just like the script says it will be even lower.
Everybody uses different words to express their thoughts and feelings, everyone has another point of view for all kinds of topics and we all see the world through our own glasses.
So without making any wrong promises, even the best sales script in the world will get off course sometimes.
This is no sign that your material is bad or that your people don't get it, but a perfectly normal situation in sales.
All you have to do is use the script often enough, and you will again find our ratios appearing.
Knowing that objections will come up almost certainly gives you an advantage: you can now prepare for them.
And this is what you will use the objection buster for.
To create it, you start with selecting the absolute most common objections every salesperson on your team will be facing.
For most industries they will be the sames, among those you will always find:
Number 1: “I dont have the time.”
Number 2:“I dont have the money / budget.”
Number 3: “I am not interested.”
In fact most other objections that will come up are again basically a form of one of these 3, but packaged differently.
For example, if someone says “Thanks but we have a different supplier for it” it is actually a combination of Numbers 1 and 3. The customer does not want to spend time talking with you about a problem that has already been solved and therefore is not interested.
In the essence you could thus solve this objection just like you would handle those numbers 1 and 3.
Thus make sure you know these 3 main objections and how to handle them inside and out.
Also if for your products or in your industry there are other objections coming up again and again - make sure you also know how to handle them.
How will you know which one they are?
Well, just try to sell your product a few times. After a very short time and some conversations you will know them exactly.
How should you handle those top 3 objections?
A common trap most people fall into is not opening a discussion with the potential prospect on the phone:
They say they are not interested.
So you go deeper into explaining what you offer.
Again they are not interested. You put out your testimonials and tell them about happy customers who were in the same situation just like they are right now.
They already get kind of annoyed and politely tell you to leave them alone.
You go on about what great the product can do for them.
They hang up the phone.
Uh-Oh. Whoops.
Guess the customer was just not ready to buy, right?
Wrong.
The salesperson was not ready to handle objections.
Sales start with a personal contact or an appointment and to get there you first have to handle objections properly.
It all starts with the right mindset towards receiving an objection from a customer.
Because in fact, getting an objection is a really good sign for the process of your sales.
If a customer has an objection it means he or she is really considering your offering in their minds.
They really scan their own situation for potential use of your product.
Especially early in the sales process, it is just logical that they find some objection since they do not have received all the necessary information so far.
What they heard was just your presentation and it is natural to still have some other questions in the back of your mind.
If you try selling yourself for a few times, you will notice that the worst appointments are those customers who never bring up any objection.
They just nod and smile, agree to every word you say, and you think you have pocketed a surefire deal already.
But the moment you walk out of their door, they never answer any mail again.
They never pick up the phone again and never ever open up the door again when they see you standing there in front of it.
Especially if you sell abroad in cultures where it is considered impolite to say “no” so people seemingly just agree on everything even if they hate it, this can drive you crazy.
Objections are a blessing.
They are proof of sincere interest.
Hidden behind every objection lies a deep interest the customer has.
Someone who says they dont have the money, might actually want to save to give their kids more and are afraid it could threaten their next christmas presents.
Someone who says they dont have the time to meet might actually need your product the most because it saves time once it has been installed.
Or some prospects just want to get on with their day and want to get rid of you and use the objection just to achieve that, believing you are not prepared for it.
Even if the customer has really researched you and your product, they have probably only found a certain part about what your product really can do and the benefit it offers.
You as a clever salesperson then have to figure out what their wants and desires are in life, and then apply the use of your product to demonstrate to them that this is actually the best solution for them.
And the first way to do this is to make use of the objections.
In fact, if you know how to do it you can use objections to your advantage.
The reason for this is consistency.
People like to be consistent with what they say and their opinions.
Therefore, once they bring up one objection you can make use of it by turning it around and using consistency as a tool to get appointments.
This is exactly what you do with what I call “objection yudo”.
Objection Yudo
In some martial arts like Yudo you do not fight your opponent directly with force, and instead you use the opponent's force against himself.
If sales conversations were a sport, this would be it.
As you have just seen it is never a good idea to sell by being pushy.
You should never open a discussion with or ever argue against the customer - even if they are talking complete nonsense.
So what is possibly left to do then instead?
You ask questions.
Your job as a sales professional is to uncover the real need or desire in a prospect before they can be considered to be in the state of buying at all.
Before you really get a customer to talk about their wants and needs, they will in most cases just try to get rid of you at first.
Only if you genuinely show interest in their situation, listen actively and then offer them a real solution for the problem can you proceed to think about selling them something at all.
But how will you do this in a heated phone call with a customer?
You use your biggest advantage on the phone:
You have all the time in the world to prepare for the call upfront, the customer does not.
And so you think about every possible objection a customer could come up with.
Ideally you do this by beefing-up your script as well.
If you have already experienced sales reps on your team, get them in the room and ask them about their experiences throughout the years and what customers can say on the phone to get rid of them.
Ask for the most frightening situations they ever had and how they solved them.
Or if they could not solve them in that heated moment, think for a minute about what would have been an appropriate answer to that question.
Make a really detailed list with every objection possible.
When you are finished, you then look for the best and most precise possible answers anyone could come up with to turn the situation around and use the objection as something positive.
For example the common objection “I dont have the time” can lead to:
“I fully understand that your time is valuable sir just like mine so I will go straight to the point and not waste a second. To make sure I understand you correctly, would it be very important for you to save time through the use of our product?”
Or “I am not interested” can lead to:
“I totally understand Sir since you have no idea who we are yet. Are there any challenges your business/industry/product is facing right now?”
The essence of what we do here is:
To take the objection as a base for their concern
Show understanding for the customer and their situation around that concern
Then get back with an open question that leads the customer to think about the reason behind that objection and a possible solution.
Open questions are very powerful because it interrupts the mental thought pattern of people and directs their thought in a certain way.
For example, at first the customer might just think:
“I want to get rid of that guy on the phone.”
But by asking about their situation, you shift their thinking to:
“Yeah sure we would need some tools that can save us time and yeah, our business is facing a major challenge right now.”
It takes no Yedi mind tricks to get from an objection to a sale.
All you need to do is acknowledge the customer's situation, take them by the hand and lead them through the buying process.
As soon as you have turned their objection into a desire, you can then go back to your sales scripts and just continue from where you got stuck with the objection.
The customer is now open to further discuss the matter, even if they might not be ready to buy at this point.
But they will be open to hear what you have to say in most cases.
Ideally, you may want to take notes if the customer reveals some details or problems existing in their business that you could use for the further sales.
You will definitely not remember them after the conversation is over, so make sure to note them down somewhere.
Especially if you have 10 such customer appointments per day.
Of course it will be up to you to ultimately create the perfect objection buster script for your industry, your sales team and your product.
But use this method as the groundwork.
Get your best sales reps on board and let them help to design a manual for other sales reps to create the perfect scripts and objection buster.
In the end, your team should be equipped with two documents:
The basic scripts for any sales conversation, leading the team basically into the sale on autopilot.
The objection buster, to be ready to handle objections and turn them into a desire like a pro
These two should always go together, ideally you may want to print them just in one document or folder.
Think of it like a gun and its bullets.
After some time you will see that your sales team is using the scripts less and less, as every one will be developing their own style after a while based on the scripts you provide.
This is the best result of the process, and you have given your team a head start from day one.