Telesales Tips | Telesales Coaching

Does Your Sales Script Sound Genuine?
Sean McPheat

During one-on-one sales coaching sessions I always ask my coachees to sell to me so that I can get a feel of what it is like from their prospects position and to review their technique.

Sometimes this can be a cold call, sometimes this is a formal presentation or on other occasions it can be a simulation where I pretend to walk into their shop looking for a mobile phone or whatever widget they are selling.

Somewhere or t'other, there is always a sales script that they have written somewhere!

I always like to hunt down the script and take a look.

Some are good but the majority of them, especially cold calling scripts are appalling.

If you ask most salespeople whether they want to use a call script, they'll say no, and one of the reasons they'll cite is that it sounds canned. But let me point out that poor delivery is only one reason that scripts sound canned.

A more significant reason is that they're very, very poorly written. Any call script needs to be conversational. You need to capture the sound of real talk in your scripts.

Make it sound genuine

For example, would you really use any of the following statements in a conversation:

"Can I just spend 5 minutes of your time to explain..."

nope!

instead you would say "Could I just walk you through..."

"If I were in your position I would feel exactly the same way"

nope!

instead "Oh no, that's terrible. How did it make you feel?"

"I am sorry you're in that position"

nope!

instead :"My god, that must have come as a real blow to you"

You see, you need to make your replies real and conversational. Using "Oh no" or "My god" says you're being spontaneous, a real person.

"Oh no" actually says, "I'm not scripted!"

Therefore, scripting it is that much more powerful.

I'm just offering this as one example of how you can make your sales scripts sound genuine, while avoiding the perception that they're canned. There are many other ways, and if you give it thought, you can generate your own.

The real secret is identifying how real talk sounds, and then putting that, imperfections and all, down on the page.