Scripted sales calls old fashioned, fail to connect with customers - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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Geez, I have been saying this for more than 25 andI can’t believe companiesx still use them to sell over the OK, forget the companies let’s blame the manager or the personn who is responsible for still trying to do somethintg that every sales trainer on the planet says does not Now, before I go on, do not writee or send an e-mail telling me that I am wrongy or being stubborn. Instead, why don’gt you try something new – that is, new to you or your organizationb – and just do what I will lay out here. Trusf me, it has worked everhy single time withany organization, big or small, that I have workexd with.
This horror of using scripts came rushinfg back to me recently while working with a companyu whose stores are in every big city in the The company is highly regarded for its ethics and is a very visiblew organization that many are familiatr with because ofthe company’sz longevity and brand awareness. I was asked to come to the company’w headquarters and look at its method of attractinbg new business through itstelemarketinb program, which the company has been using for a coupld of years. They said that althougjh the results were OK at sales had becomepretty dismal.
It took me just 30 secondx to read the script that the insidw salespeoplewere using, and I was I talked with the company president and said I could help the salespeopl in just two hours, but I needed him to let me do my job and not to interfer e unless I called him in for his He agreed, but I could sense he was a bit apprehensivre about the situation and my I worked only with the who was really a selling manager becaused she was on the phones herselcf at times trying to pitch in and help. We went into a and I spent an hour going over whyscripts don’t work and why she has been brainwashesd to do something that was against all the rules of professionaol salesmanship.
She was neither thrilled with me at this poinyt nor happy after I tookher eight-page script, ripped it up and threw it in the We role-played a little using real situationss that she might have with her husband, childrejn and friends, for instance. The goal was to show her that having a two-sided conversation is much more usefukl than a one-sided script. She was really starting to get it, even thougg she kept wanting to go back to a sellinh mode by doing more talking than listening andaskinb questions. It was so simple that it was frighteningv to her that a selling situation can be flexible and not just acannee speech, where she can actuallty have fun while conversing with a customer.
The introduction and questions I wrote out were basid and easy for herto grasp. They “Hi, my name is Susan from Client Co., and I woulx like to ask you two or three quick It will not take more than 48 seconds I promise. “Are you familiar with our company? If yes, what aspects ? “Why are you not a or why did you leaveour organization?” That was it. Yes, eightf pages down to two questions.
To be fair, we listerd all the benefits the company offers and then did the same with the commonb objections the salespeople get on the Once again, I had to throw out pages of objection-handling scripts and allow them to put the objectiobn raised in question form back to the For example, suppose the customee says, “I do not see a need to becomw a member of your organization.” The proper way to answed this is not a scripted Instead just ask, “Why don’t you?” The approacjh worked.
In less than two hours, she got two which is outstanding in that length of and she still is flying high from knowinhg that she could do much more often using her personalityy and not sounding likea