Sales Scripts

Sales Scripts

Scripts can be helpful with all your customer-related communications, but their real value shows up in sales. Scripts offer your sales people a verbal framework around which to base their sales related conversations. Depending on your business it may not be necessary or even appropriate that your people recite them verbatim. But committing them to memory will free your salespeople to focus on the job at hand, rather than searching for the right words all of the time.

Initially, there can be a certain amount of fear and resistance to the idea of using sales scripts. The feeling many people have is that when it comes to sales, someone either “has it” or they don’t. You are either born a salesperson or you are not. So giving a script to a great salesperson is unnecessary and giving a script to a poor salesperson is a waste of time and resources. Those who believe this, typically see sales scripts as restricting and controlling. They may even believe sales scripts can do more harm than good for someone who is good at selling. If we were to force an unnatural sales script on an outstanding salesperson then I would have to agree, but that is nowhere near my intention. Sales scripts are simply a good place to start. They establish a “base line” for your salespeople.

Scripts are tremendously useful, but once your salespeople get used to them, they should typically be free to put them into their own words. It’s important that people are comfortable with your scripts or they will end up sounding like recordings. Sales scripts organize our thoughts in much the same way a well-planned speech organizes the thoughts of a public speaker. He may not give the speech exactly the same way every time, but he gives a better speech because of it.

Scripts also make excellent training tools by serving as a fountain for role-playing.

Write your sales scripts as you design your sales system.