You thought you were killin’ it on those discovery or sales calls. You were giving them advice to be what you wished you had 6 years ago. Giving away all the secrets. You were the dictionary picture of active listening. And you emailed them a 3 page take home gift of a summary of your help. You made sure they didn’t miss a word or a tip. They even said, your notes were better than theirs.
So, what’s the problem? They said they didn’t have any money. Yet, you see that they’re about to invest in a new leadership class. What gives?
What did the one guy/gal in that video call say/do that you didn’t? And how could you get better at this sales call opportunity? You thought you were a huge help, but people aren’t calling you back. They aren’t emailing. Being ghosted shouldn’t be your new occupation.
Here’s the 9-1-1 rescue call you were needing and didn’t know it. You need a sales script. And these are the five huge power trips that sales scripts give you and how to put each into play.
What Is A Sales Script?
Great question! A sales script is an outline of an optimal sales presentation that will give the prospect the information they need to make a purchase. The difference with Matthew Pollard’s sales script is the emphasis on questions that empower prospects/customers to see their own problems. Then, to see you and your product/service as their long awaited solution. Pollard encourages salespersons to make these personal even down to dictation of personal jokes.
Your sales script writing powers?
- Power 1: Gift of Introspection
- Power 2: Control the Flow and the Spigot
- Power 3: Personalization
- Power 4: Unarguable Defense
- Power 5: Forgiveness
Let’s jump right into why you should start writing your personalized sales scripts.
Power 1: Sales scripts give you the gift of introspection
Here’s the deal. If you were feeling helpful and giving advice, you were doing it wrong. You were confusing advice giving with real value. That real value is in the power of introspection. Real value on the caller-side comes when you can see your full picture. You want to be the one on a call who asks that series of questions. These question series lead each prospect to a kind of problem clarity.
Each question should let the prospect see their own problem from a variety of distances.
The Gift of 3 Lenses
Introspection gives your prospect a past, present, and future view of his/her biggest business challenge. Imagine being a photographer. You work with an assortment of lenses. You use regular lenses, a wide angle lens, panoramic one, and up-close zoom varieties. Think of your questioning power as similar to those photographer lenses.
Zoom-In
Your first question is steeped in the present. What is the biggest challenge facing your business right now in regard to (fill in your field of expertise)? This personalizes their experience. It’s all about their most pressing need. And that is the one that is burning in their hands, heart, and heads right now.
Think of this as the stage set for your whole sales phone call.
This is where you can tell whether it is in your best interest to help them further. Or hand the call off. Especially if it is to someone who specializes in this issue. That’s of course why marketing calls differ from sales calls.
Get Panoramic
Your second question? It is one of the most provocative ones. What is going on in your life that’s brought you to this call? I discovered the power of this question from my mentor Jo Wiebe. She swears this is the best question to ask on any thank you survey.
Panoramic questions are still present-centered. But they peer toward the past as well. When you ask about the setting for the call, you have prospect attention and awareness triggered. This question is a wake up call.
- What is it going on that I am aware or not aware of?
- How does it relate to this call?
Wide Angle Views
The third question is a bit of a transition. It’s a disguised future casting question. Wide angle lenses allow your prospect to see their current challenge as surmountable. This confidence building viewpoint offers a unique perspective to prospects. Think of this as if you have climbed this mountain and you are on the summit looking down.
What do you see besides a change in size of your surroundings?
Let’s bring in the benefits from the point of view of the prospect. Listen close. Prospects reveal the nag behind the nagging problem when observing their struggle from here.
For instance, ok, now you’ve got your problem solved and you’re able to do this thing you weren’t able to do before. How does this make you feel? What will you be able to do that you hadn’t been able to do before?
Switching lenses
Now, your prospect has all three different lenses in his/her bag. You can mix these lens questions up and find overlap. Some of the future casting questions often lead right back to the present. See below example to see this overlap dimension to your prospect questions.
- How long have you been waiting for this (you fill in the benefit)?
- Did you know that this solution A was all that was keeping you from benefit B?
Once you establish the three lenses the prospect through your questions can look at his/her problems with new eyes.
(Note the Introspective Difference of Sales Call Scripts)
Prospects see the value is in the call’s lenses, not your helpful advice. You’re helping them see the totality of their challenge. Yes, that includes the long term consequences for not solving their problem right away. Your specific questions give them unique lenses.
And that vision will reserve yourself a future granted privilege of offering your diagnosis and prescription often later in this same call.
Power 2: Sales Scripting the Flow and the Spigot
Show with the flow
Scripts give introverts a feel for the spigot of the sales conversation. Introverts don’t have to rely on their charm or motivation levels. They have a script. A sales script once written and memorized gives introverts a system like a tightrope. It helps them keep all information they need to conduct a successful sales call from the danger of a forgetful memory.
This flow control allows the sales call to achieve many goals. These are related to unaligned messaging, averting conversation tangents that can lead to missed opportunities, and bringing a presentation to the forefront to bulk up presenter confidence.
Many think of this script as a structured pitch. But that negates the active listening dynamic of the sales conversation. Without memorization though, a lack of preparation often leads to missed opportunities and inconsistent results.
Memorized sequencing of the conversation flow allows the sales call to move forward to a desired outcome. It’s all because you feel sincere and authentic within the moment you’ve rehearsed.
The golden glove on the spigot
Thanks to the principles outlined in Matthew Pollard’s The Introvert’s Edge to Selling, you’ve got a hold of the intensity of the sales experience. So, this allows you to let the pitch proceed only after the prospect’s need has been exposed. You explore his/her pitfalls after they have brought them to the surface of consciousness.
It also gives you the flexibility to attempt to close the sale. This occurs as you ask for details that are already necessary in closing the sale. So in this way, the signing off on the sale is a step in a logical process. Why? Because you’ve already got the information to go there.
This is what turning the spigot of the sales conversation looks like in sequence.
- Active listening to the prospect = (no to low flow of sales pitch)
- Introduction of self and past customers and projects = (low to lighter flow of it)
- Understanding the differentiation in your service and its process = (higher flow of it)
- Decision making and Storytelling…= (lighter flow….objections addressed in story form)
- Testing the close…. = (lighter flow….asking for vital information soon needed for the sale)
A sales script avoids…
- Messaging Failures: Each conversation differs leading to mixed messages and a fuzzy brand creation.
- Skipped Opportunities: Key information ignored, and unhighlighted pain points hide.
- Feeling of no or low confidence: Without a presentation flowchart, sales are fragile and lack conviction, components are missing to close deals.
Matthew Pollard’s sales script entrenches introverts in a structure to support confidence and reinforces that key selling points are well communicated. This intensifies the sales process experience of the prospect.
Power 3: Sales Script Personalization
The sales script is a beginning step. Over time and with practice, you’ll begin to make it a reflection of your strengths as a salesperson.
But the steps are universal. And that structure is what Pollard gives the introvert selling, a place to anchor his personality into a process.
Pollard creates the setting for a sales conversation. Unlike a sales call, this conversation allows for a bond to form, disclosure to take place, and commerce to be set up for an exchange.
Here’s the universals in your script.
- Break the ice
- Prospect Introduction
- Background discussion
- Biggest challenge revealed and explored
- Salesman/woman introduction
- Quick sales process reveal
- Storytelling to tease out objections
- Trial close
- Thanks/Follow Up
Putting It Altogether: Creating a Sales Script
Creating a sales script involves several purposeful steps. Each creates rapport, further reveals client needs, and presents solutions with compassion. Here’s an example based off of a script paralleled with Pollard’s sequence:
- Build Trust and Set the Agenda:
- Introduction: Start with a greeting and nice reference to a caller’s location to smooth over rapport. “Hi, this is Jeff.” Use small talk to show you care and set up a connection. Small talk about weather, traffic, holidays, weekends is also acceptable.
- Agenda Presented: Set expectations by telling prospect exactly what’s going to happen during the call. This manages the conversation and sees that all key topics are explored.
- Active Listening:
- Professional Background: Invite prospect to talk about their background and pinpoint any current business-related challenges. This invite is important because it’s your opportunity to show you care by how well you listen to them, their challenges, and respond.
- Business Passion: Uncover the motivation behind the prospect’s business. This passion shows if you and the prospect share business goals. In this way, your pitch will line up with their core values. Be honest here. If you can’t help them, let them know. Provide this space for them to bow out of the sales conversation if you two don’t fit.
- Unveil Your Value Proposition: This statement is like the XYZ statement. It tells what your business can do for prospects and how it is different from its competitors.
- Spotlight Your Experience: Share fitting successful examples of past clients and their projects. Tack onto your credibility and present your grasp of the inner workings and needs of their industry.
- Show and Tell Your Process: Explain your personalized approach to their challenge, the “5 lens process,”. These steps include reviewing existing marketing materials, interviewing prospects and customers, and tweaking content through peer and live feedback.
- Probing Questions:
- Call Out Their Pain Points: Ask questions that expose the client’s biggest challenges and desires. This step is about restating their needs, showing a deep understanding of them, and if appropriate laying out your product/service as a solution to fit their needs.
- Qualification:
- Determine the Quality of Fit: See if would-be clients match to criteria that has created successful past working relationships. Those prospects that qualify self select themselves for your product or service. All you do is ask questions. They align themselves to be a better fit to your products and services or do the opposite. This step makes it easier to invest time in prospects who most benefit from what you offer.
- Story-Based Selling:
- Relate Through Stories: Share stories of how you’ve helped past clients in their same situation. Stories double as powerful tools to cement your value, make it more appealing and add meaning.
- Storytelling Through Objections and Trial Closings:
- Address Concerns with stories: Move through obstacles such as time investment for voice-of-customer research.
- Trace Next Steps: Spell out the follow-up process. Make it easy for the client to move forward in their sales transaction by asking for information needed for the close to occur before the prospect has said yes. This is the equivalent for the extrovert style of assuming the sale.
Power 4: Unarguable Defense with Sales Scripting
Your prospect knows the risk behind saying yes. So, he/she is going to resist the change that comes with a purchase. This gridlock is what marketers call inertia. That’s a sale stopping power. In order to smooth the process, you’re going to forget high pressure tactics. You’re not convincing anyone. Instead, you’re reframing their possible objections as stories of past clients.
Doing this allows you to talk about time investment, needs for warranties, and other securities in a non-defensive way. No one is going to argue with you when you tell a story of a past client’s road from challenge to success. That’s the genius of Pollard’s storytelling introvert edge to selling.
Here’s an example:
I was talking to a prospect the other day about how I had just read this book, Forget the Funnel. It talks about jobs-to-be-done interviews. In passing, I mentioned voice of customer interviews. He had never heard of these or VoC (Voice of Customer). I then realized it was one of the best kept secrets that could revolutionize his small business.
Owners like you will never make that mistake again of winging copy. And that will keep everyone who uses VoC up on their competition forever.
This short story above talks about the innovative risk of voice of customer research by explaining it away as the best kept secret to keep you atop your competition.
Power 5: Forgiveness Through Sale Scripts
If written with efficiency, you have within your sales script the power to give your prospect forgiveness. You show them through your past client stories and your questions that they have been long at trying to resolve this challenge. And you also explain to them that the time is now to overcome their biggest obstacle. You have shown them information they didn’t have prior to this phone call.
And your stories are giving them examples to tackle what’s getting in the way of their success. Email marketer, Ry Schwartz taught me how this gift of forgiveness will clear the path for you as a salesperson to make a diagnosis of your prospect’s challenges and ultimately your put your product/service as their solution.
It is in this context of forgiveness granted that you can ask for more information to move the sales transaction forward. Pollard mentioned asking a prospect to go get their driver’s license. And while they were doing that, he’d get started on their paperwork. The idea is to make the sales close as easy as possible from the prospect’s point of view. Even if it means doing the customer part of the sales transaction paperwork.
If they object to your request for info, apologize, and then, think of how that information could’ve been requested instead of it being needed to complete the sales transaction.
For example, the driver’s license is also necessary to see that people are who they say they are. It’s not only to put on as identification for purchases.
These requests for information, if not objected to, allow for the sale to close fast. But to keep such requests from seeming awkward you need to practice asking for such information in rehearsals. You can do the same thing with rehearsing the price of your products and services. This is especially helpful when the price tag is high.
Let’s look then at all the perks of having a sales script…
- Message uniformity: the overall communication is spelled out. There are no surprises. Expectations are clearly stated. And prospect needs are dissected. Plus, offers are presented within the context of a natural conversation.
- Aimed Accuracy: Script structure lets a salesperson have focus on active listening and pinpoint presentations that meet customer needs.
- Confidence within Compassion: You have a guide to follow. But you also don’t do anything but tell stories to sell your product and show compassion. The decision is all on the prospect. You make sure it is easy for the prospect to say yes.
- Increases close rates: By tailoring products and services to meet prospect needs you triple the likelihood of selling on the first meeting.
Sales Scripting in Retro
A sales script is a personalized, flexible, structured flowchart to help a salesperson listen to a prospect’s greatest business-related challenges. It’s a strategic flow of a sales conversation. This script presents you with a platform to present your total message and connect in a meaningful way with clients. Matthew Pollard designed it with an introvert’s strengths in mind.
A well-designed script can change the sales process from a messy, stressful experience to one that’s natural and enjoyable. Creating and refining your sales script, you set yourself up for great success and consistency in meeting your sales goals.
All Sales Script Powers Undone
Sales scripts grant you a pack full of impactful powers. Let’s review these.
Power 1: Gift of Introspection
Power 2: Control the Flow and the Spigot
Power 3: Personalization
Power 4: Unarguable Defense
Power 5: Forgiveness
The final power comes through testing.
Each time you make it through the script, think of yourself like a chemist mixing a secret formula. Let all things stay the same and change this one ingredient. What was the result? As you test out new ways to listen and present your agenda, you create momentum to increase or decrease the speed in which sales transactions move. The sales script gives you all the controls. Now, all you have to do is find the right formula for each mix of ingredients.
But the reward isn’t the sale!
The reward is in the efficiency and the helpfulness of the sales experience.
And to be helpful, that’s an introvert’s most natural goal.
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