The Role of Scripting in Telemarketing

If you read my pieces on telemarketing you'll see that I'm in favor of using what I term, "smart scripts."

These are call guides where the essentials are crafted very carefully in advance, including:

(1) Secretarial screening maneuvers and dodges;

(2) Voice mail messages to be left, and escape phrases to break out of voice mail jail;

(3) The credibility statement, a brief phrase touting your expertise and uniqueness;

(4) Some "perfect questions" that get clients to persuade themselves;

(5) A brief description of your product or service,

(6) Transition phrases to smoothly buy time while answering objections;

(7) Answers to key objections; and

(8) Closes-strategic ways to explicitly ask for the sale.

This seems like a large number of details to prepare before you get on the phone, and it can be.

You might be wondering, with so much prepared, won't you sound canned? You shouldn't.

Once you have prepared, you can rehearse for the specific purpose of sounding spontaneous. A script should liberate you to be a performer, just as actors are free to work on interpreting their lines, because their script already exists.

The job of actors is to make it ring true, and a salesperson's job is to make the script ring the cash register.

One of my favorite clients, a top salesman in his own right, taught his people this gem of a lesson: "Before you finish a conversation, ask for the sale at least once!"

To do that, you need to have a few closes, always ready to be deployed. They'll be there for you if you script them, memorize them, and practice them. Leave closing to chance, to mere improvisation, and you're likely to stammer, to over-talk, or to forget about securing the "yes," altogether.

But let me say this. Scripting doesn't mean writing out the entire conversation, because then we would sound canned, and fail.

A script is to telemarketing what an extemporaneous speech is to a public speaker. The key points and flow of reasoning are in front of the performer, but he is free to highlight, to amplify, or to minimize certain points to adapt to his specific audience.

The key is to sound organized, well informed, and professional, while leaving room for the sort of light banter that enables you to sound sincere, as if you are generating your thoughts as you move through the back-and-forth of lively conversation.

That's a lot to ask from a script, but it's exactly what we demand from a great stage play or a good movie, a sense of authenticity, a being-in-the-moment quality, and generally, most entertainment scripts deliver.

So should ours.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top trainer, conference and convention speaker, sales, customer service, and negotiation consultant A frequent expert commentator on radio and TV, he is also the best-selling author of 12 books, more than 1,000 articles and several popular audio and video programs. Visit Gary's web site for product information: http://www.customersatisfaction.com, or contact him directly at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

The Utter Truth About Telemarketing Scripts

"This telemarketer phoned me the other night and it was obvious he was reading from a script. He sounded so CANNED!"

You've probably heard this complaint in casual conversation or even uttered it. I've heard it in numerous seminars I've conducted as well as from readers of my best-selling books: REACH OUT & SELL SOMEONE and YOU CAN SELL ANYTHING BY TELEPHONE!

Scripts and telemarketing go together like Mother and apple pie. Well, not exactly. We LIKE Mom and apple pie! But we love to hate telemarketing and those that do it, especially the ones that struggle through their poorly crafted presentations.

I'm here to tell you that scripts (and telemarketers that use them) get a bad rap. Working well together, these can be pillars of your overall sales success.

Why Do We Use Scripts in Any Walk of Life?

Actors follow scripts because they lead to better performances that reliably produce positive effects in audiences. Companies, and their managers, use scripts in selling and service because they're supposed to produce consistent and profitable sales and contribute to customer retention.

When management sage Peter F. Drucker studied doctors as they performed medical diagnoses, he stumbled upon a cruel fact of life, and death. Some practitioners buried their patients much more frequently precisely because they DIDN'T USE SCRIPTS, systematic procedures for deciphering maladies. Like the simple washing of one's hands before surgery, when the proper protocols for diagnosis were introduced, survival rates soared.

In a word, physicians became more productive in achieving their main mission: the prolonging of life.

If Scripts Are So Vital, Why Do They Suffer From Such a Bad Image?

Most people don't object to the use of scripts if they are UNDETECTABLE.

As a rule, we don't leave a movie or legitimate theater singing the praises of the screenwriter or playwright. Their well crafted lines are essential, but the better they are, the less noticeable they tend to be to the audience. Moreover, actors and their directors are expected to make the words they've been provided sound natural, as if they're being uttered spontaneously. When a script is well written and performed well, it rises above the ranks of the "canned" talks that so many disdain.

But audiences and customers are unforgiving when subjected to poorly constructed and delivered scripts that sound "phony." When scripts don't ring-true, they compromise the suspension of disbelief or light trace state that is vital in a smooth theatrical performance and in sustaining a productive sales or customer service encounter. Hearing a bad script is a lot like crunching down on an eggshell in one's breakfast. Suddenly the mystique of eating a wholesome meal vanishes, and with it our appetite.

Before You Jettison Scripting, Try to Improve It!

I was brought in to consult to a major manufacturer of consumer electronics.

One of its products consistently broke, and this evoked thousands of calls per day from irate purchasers.

To its credit, the company executives asked me this question:

"Is it possible to turn conflict calls into selling opportunities?"

After giving it some thought I said it was, and I undertook the development of a script that would:

(1) Defuse the anger, and (2) Sell an additional product, all during the same inbound call.

My strategy and the training program I devised to implement it, resulted in add-on products being sold in 50% of the conversations in which the script was used. This turned the customer service function, a cost-center, into a profit center.

So, before you dismiss or derogate the idea of scripting your sales and customer service calls, think again. You, too, might make 100 million customers, and your accountant, sing!

Are you looking for a customized phone script, top training, and the best seminars and audios and video products in telemarketing? Contact the author.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top trainer, conference and convention speaker, sales, customer service, and negotiation consultant, and attorney. A frequent expert commentator on radio and TV, he is also the best-selling author of 12 books, more than 1,000 articles and several popular audio and video programs. His seminars are sponsored internationally and he is a faculty member at more than 40 universities, including UC Berkeley and UCLA. Gary's sales, management and consulting experience is combined with impressive academic credentials: A Ph.D. from USC, an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management, and a J.D. degree from Loyola Law School, his clients include several Fortune 1000 companies.

His web site is: http://www.customersatisfaction.com and he can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

His blogs include: YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUCKS! and ALWAYS COLD CALL! at: http://www.alwayscoldcall.blogspot.com