7 years ago
February 21, 2017

How to Develop An Effective Script for Telephone Prospecting

These tips will help you develop your own effective script for telephone prospecting and increase your sales rate.

Claire McConnachie Recruiter
Claire McConnachie

Telephone prospecting with an effective script ensures that you do not miss important information you want to share that can interest your prospect and ultimately lead to a sale. Telephone prospecting using an effective script can also make telephone prospecting more fun and reduce the dread that some sales people feel when approaching this necessary task. These tips will help you develop your own effective script for telephone prospecting and increase your sales rate.

Cover Engaging Information First

When we approach the task of creating an outline to educate someone else, the instinct is often to build up to the key points. In an effective script for telephone prospecting, the opposite must happen. Key points should always come first to ensure that you get the prospect’s attention and give him or her a reason to keep talking to you. You can make an even more effective script if you develop an area of personalization within the first fifteen to twenty seconds to tie one or more of your key points to a need that the prospect has.

Find Common Ground with the Prospect

It is essential for an effective script for telephone prospecting to help the sales person find or create common ground with the prospect. This sets the stage for building the relationship and trust on which the eventual sale will be based. An effective script can do this by introducing brief storylines about success stories from businesses in similar positions to the prospect business, mentioning reasons for the call via referral from a recent customer, or other connections between the prospect and your organization.

Make a Conversation, Not a Sale

Sales people who have had experience with telephone prospecting using scripts that were not flexible enough or too general might not know how well an effective script can actually work. One of the major differences between an effective script and an ineffective one is the tone: An effective script is driving to make conversation with the prospect, not make a hard sell. You can develop your own effective script for telephone prospecting by keeping this in mind:

  • Build questions that can be personalized into every stage of a script for telephone prospecting.
  • Keep the language in the script professional, but conversational rather than business oriented.
  • Introduce your products and services by stages as the conversation progresses. Based on your pre-call research and the prospect’s responses you can choose the offerings that are most likely to interest the prospect in a sale.

Develop Authority by Showing Expertise

Now that you have the prospect interested and have started a conversation, the next step is to build trust with the prospect by demonstrating your expertise and ability to solve the problems your prospect is facing. The most effective way to do this is by storylining past successes that you have had with prospects in similar positions. Have an effective script ready with several options that you can introduce to the conversation and choose the one that is most appropriate for the prospect you are calling.

Talk About the Benefits

The idea of talking about features and benefits is anathema to some sales people, but there is something that all great sales people know: In the first conversation once interest has been generated, sometimes features and benefits are what the prospect wants to hear. When telephone prospecting you should not go through a list of features and benefits but rather mention those that directly impact the problems the prospect is facing.

Gain a Commitment to the Next Step

An effective script for telephone prospecting always ends with asking for commitment. Most of the time, the commitment will be to encourage the prospect to set a time for a full presentation. Instead of selling your offering, sell a meeting to the prospect using the principles of an effective script covered above. By doing this, you can make your telephone prospecting easier and more successful.

Claire McConnachie Recruiter

Claire McConnachie

Claire has 4+ years of experience in sales and recruitment. As a Director of Client Services, her main objective is to connect great people to great companies by building strong relationships with both top clients and candidates in the sales industry. She specializes in sales roles of all seniority levels for both enterprise and start-up clients North American wide. When Claire isn't networking with top talent, she enjoys being outdoors, traveling and spending time with friends & family.

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