Why It's Often a Waste of Time to Hyper-Script Your Sales Calls
Since launching my business two years ago, I’ve worked with some B2B sellers who take a lot of time to craft a lengthy script to respond to all of a lead’s points of resistance on phone or Zoom calls.
The operative words above are lengthy and all.
Believing that emotions trump price if you can get a prospect excited enough, some sellers meticulously go through, and re-review, every single word to anticipate each and every concern, question, and hesitancy that a prospect could pose.
The more that I see this process in action, the more I see it as, frankly, manipulative. At a minimum, it’s slimy. And in my experience being on some Zoom calls where these tactics were used, most prospects feel that.
Why hyper-scripting — or flowcharting — sales calls is not the best use of a seller’s time
First, most buyers can spot a heavily scripted approach a mile away. The longer a call goes on, with the seller saying more versions of “What about…” or “Have you considered that…”, the more likely it is that the buyer starts to feel like a square peg being forced into a round hole. If this goes on for an excessively long period of time, both parties eventually feel this pressure, even if sellers can’t admit this to themselves.
Second, if both parties are far apart on price — the most important factor for all leads — then nothing you say will sway your prospect. A possible exception to this is if the seller is willing to break apart their offering and deliver less service (or a product with fewer features or less value) for a lower price. But in my experience, most sellers don’t go here, either because their job tenure and/or commissions depend on the product or service being delivered as initially offered, or because they don’t have permission to do that from their supervisor or somewhere in the org chart up from there.
And third, it’s emotionally draining for the seller. It’s a lot to ask to consistently put a sales or biz dev person in the position of having to jump through many scripted hoops to get their prospect to — usually begrudgingly at the end — agree to buy what’s being sold to them. (Yes, even if this person is well paid.) And if you as the seller are also the business owner, that’s a crazy level of stress considering all the other aspects of the business you're running.
If your product or service has demonstrated high value, sales calls should be relatively easy…and dare I say, even fun
Your goal, especially if you’re the business owner or leader, should be to shift time for crafting an irrefutable sales script to making your product or service even more of a no-brainer for your lead to buy. This shift in focus for the same block of time makes the job of selling on a Zoom or phone call so much easier.
If your product or service has gotten to a place where, more often than not, it sells itself without you needing to say too much in your sales meetings — and if you still feel inclined to tweak your sales script — then my recommendation is to work on your follow-up communications to your prospects. With my website conversion tracking service, for example, I’ve gotten to the point where I get a “Yes” in the (virtual) room at least 60% of the time — and now my key challenge is reminding my leads that I’m still here, and teasing out the benefits of what I provide for their clients and their bottom line, when someone drags their feet in hiring me after my initial call with them.
One more thing as food for thought….
I mentioned above that I’ve seen firsthand that some sellers believe that emotions > price if you can get a prospect excited enough. The logical conclusion for many sellers who run with this belief is that if you can get your lead to a place of thinking that you are the only solution for them in the marketplace, then not only does your sticker price not matter — you can actually raise it even higher “in the room” to whatever you want.
If you’re selling to an enterprise buyer, this may be true in some cases. But as I work with solopreneurs and small businesses, I’ve found this is not true. In other words, no amount of emotional stickiness will cause buyers at midsize and smaller organizations to budge from the hard number they have in their heads. I’ll say more on this soon in a video I’ll post to my YouTube channel. Stay tuned….