27 August 2008
by Martin Aranovitch

In this article, we are going to look at how a sales scripts tool can help you improve your business.

What Is A Sales Scripts Tool?

You are probably familiar with the concept of sales scripts. Sales scripts are tested, proven and written words that you use to contact prospects, respond to their questions, concerns and objections, ask for the order, etc ...

Here is an example of a sales script you might use to ask a prospect's permission to sell them something:

“If I could show you how to __________ would you be interested in learning more about it?”

Okay ... now let's say you have a bunch of great sales scripts. Where do you store them? How do you access them?

If you do business face-to-face, the best way to incorporate sales scripts into your selling system, is to build them into your presentations, then script those presentations word-for-word, then commit those scripts to memory.

This is exactly what was suggested in the 6-step "E-Myth" selling system I shared with you in a previous article (Steps 2 - 5). If you need to refresh your memory, you can read the article here:

The Selling System That Always Works!

Now ... if you do some or all of your business over the phone, then here are your options when it comes to using sales scripts:

A) You don't use sales scripts at all. Every new sales call is ad-libbed (i.e. you improvise as you go along).

B) You do use sales scripts, but they are not written down ... they're in your head and committed to memory (i.e. you've been doing this a long time and you have great experience in your line of business)

C) You do use sales scripts and they are written down ... on cards and pieces of paper all over your desk

D) You use a sales scripts tool.

A sales scripts tool is a way of organizing various sales scripts in logical sequence, so that they can be easily accessed and utilized in "real-time" (i.e. while you are speaking live with a prospect).

If you are using a sales scripts tool to engage in a sales conversation with a prospect (for example, to try and get a sales appointment), then why not use modern technology and build an electronic sales scripts tool that you can use directly from your computer or laptop?

This, in fact, is what we have developed with "Sales Scripts Pro" - a powerful sales scripts tool builder with 'step-by-step' training tutorials that show you how to build an outbound or inbound sales scripts tool using presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint or a similar application.

How Can A Sales Scripts Tool Help You Improve Your Sales?

Below are examples of different business situations that can benefit from using a sales scripts tool:

• Small Business Owner
• Self Employed
• Sales Manager / Sales Trainer
• Sales Professional
• Business Consultant
• Network Marketer / Direct Selling Representative
• Telemarketing Companies
• Fund Raising Organizations

You don't need to read everything below. Simply scroll down the page and choose the category that most likely applies to your situation, or click on one of the links above to jump to that section ...

Small Business Owner

For this example, let's use a small business that is owned and operated by Bob and Jane, a husband and wife team. Bob supervises the technical work of the business, while Jane is responsible for contacting new prospects and bringing in new business, as well as supervising the administrative responsibilities such as filing completed jobs, purchasing, invoicing, book keeping, payroll, etc.

Both Bob and Jane are very experienced in their line of business. So experienced, in fact, that even though they have employees working in their business,  they have difficulty "letting go" of some areas of the business, as they feel they have to always be supervising their staff in order to "stay on top" of things and make sure everything gets done correctly.

One of these areas for Jane, is making new sales calls and handling sales enquiries. Since Jane lost their most senior and experienced staff member a few months ago, she now spends most of her time making and answering phone calls. Jane knows that if she could hand off the phone work to one of her staff, she could fit in more sales presentations with potential new clients and she wouldn't have to stay up late most nights catching up on everything else that needs doing in their business.

In the above example, a sales scripts tool can help to free up Jane from making new sales prospecting calls, or handling inbound phone enquiries and allow her to focus on other areas of the business that need attention.

Jane could build a sales scripts tool using the 'step-by-step' tutorials in Sales Scripts Pro, then train one of her staff to use the tool to make new sales appointments for Jane, and to handle inbound sales enquiries while Jane is away making those sales presentations. This simple change to their business, would help Bob and Jane gain some leverage and free up Jane's time to bring in new business, attend to other areas of the business that need her attention, or even allow her to start looking at ways of adding more systems to free up their time and help them expand their business.

Because Jane has build a sales scripts tool that allows anyone she employs to communicate over the phone with prospects and potential or existing customers in the same way that she would if she was on the phone, Jane does not have to rely on someone who is as "experienced" as she is. She can hire new staff members with no sales experience to make new sales calls and get new sales appointments for her, or answer the phone and handle all customer enquiries for their business.

This helps Bob and Jane save money on the cost of hiring new staff, allows Jane to quickly train new staff and ensures that Jane's high standards are consistently maintained by every staff member who uses the phone for handling outbound or inbound sales calls in her business (they will say exactly what you would say to your prospects and customers, because you control what gets said in your scripts tool!)

top

Self Employed

Mark is a self-employed lawn maintenance contractor. His wife, Sarah, not only handles all of Mark's job bookings and the administrative work of the business, but she also looks after their two young children. Mark feels there is a great deal of opportunity to expand his lawn-mowing business in the area they live in, but can't see how, as both he and his wife are already "flat-out" working in their business and looking after their young family.

Mark believes that if he were to contact the real estates that specialize in rentals and property maintenance in the local region, he would be able to hire and train an additional crew and expand his business.

Looking at the costs of expanding his business, however, means that Mark and Sarah would have to be contacting many real estate agents over a very short period of time to get enough new work coming in to justify the costs of hiring new workers. It would also mean creating new processes for handling calls from real estate clients and assigning the incoming work.

Mark and Sarah are already stretched to the limit timewise. How can they expand their business, therefore, without risking everything becoming so overwhelming that they will not be able to handle the additional workload?

A smart solution, would be to do this:

First, Mark and Sarah would need to agree that neither of them can dedicate themselves fully to this task and so what they would need, therefore, is a separate person that would contact the real estate agents to make an appointment, then go see them and make a presentation on how Mark's business can service their rental properties lawn maintenance needs. This person would then report back to Sarah, who would then initially assign the work and handle the administration, until their newly hired sales person had contacted most of the real estate agents in the region. Once this point has been reached, their newly hired staff member can then be trained to take over Sarah's job and run the new division.

To do the above, Mark and Sarah would need to create a simple sales system involving making calls to set up appointments, and then making presentations to get the new work.

This is where a sales scripts tool can become very useful.

Sarah could build a sales scripts tool using the 'step-by-step' tutorials in Sales Scripts Pro, then hire someone with no sales experience (for a lot less cost than hiring a professional sales person) to use the tool to contact real estate companies in the region and make new sales appointments. This would give Sarah just enough leverage to be one step ahead and document the rest of the system required to run their new division, which she will later hand over to their newly hired person.

Using a sales scripts tool allows anyone that Mark and Sarah employ to communicate over the phone with potential or existing customers in the same way that they would if they were handling the phone calls themselves (they will say exactly what Mark and Sarah would say to their prospects and customers, because Mark and Sarah control what gets said in their scripts tool!).

This helps Mark and Sarah save money on the cost of hiring a sales person to help them expand their business, and allows them to quickly train someone to do this task competently, efficiently and professionally, making Mark and Sarah's husband and wife operation seem so much bigger in the eyes of their potential new customers, which helps them win more contracts.

top

Sales Manager / Sales Trainer

Peter, a former sales rep with a successful track record, has recently been promoted to sales manager and was asked by the VP of Sales and Marketing to create a standard way to train new sales reps throughout the company's various branches on ways to generate new sales appointments.

Peter has a great deal of knowledge and experience in getting sales appointments, but he is not really a "systems" guy, or even a professional trainer. He just knows what to do from years of experience.

Peter's wife Tina, suggests they sit down for a couple of evenings after dinner this week, and "flowchart" Peter's knowledge in order to get the raw material they can use for building a sales training system.

Once this is done, Peter is surprised to discover that many of the processes he has flowcharted on paper with Tina's help, are actually "scripts" that he uses to contact prospects, to make presentations, handle questions, concerns, issues, problems, objections, etc ...

Using Sales Scripts Pro's 'step-by-step' tutorials, Peter can now quickly build an effective sales scripts tool for his organization using his knowledge of what to say to get sales appointments and use this tool to train new sales team members in all of the company's various branches.

A sales scripts tool helps Peter not only leverage his efforts as a sales trainer, but also ensures that every new person being trained throughout the entire organization will perform and communicate with their prospects at the highest standards of excellence and maintain a consistent approach, just as Peter would do, if he could "clone" and multiply himself to perform the task he is now training others to do.

top

Sales Professional

Fatima has just been hired by a cellphone distributor to grow the company's number of new subscribers. Her role is commission-based only, so Fatima knows she has to perform at the most effective level possible in order to maximise her earning potential.

The problem is that, like many businesses, apart from a few days of product knowledge training and a brief explanation of how her commissions are paid, she has been given no training, tools or systems for making sales effectively.

Using her own initiative and determination to succeed, Fatima spends a couple of evenings going through the 'step-by-step' tutorials in Sales Scripts Pro and builds herself a sales scripts tool that will allow her to get more sales appointments, improve her sales calling technique and increase the effectiveness of each prospecting call she makes.

A few weeks later, Fatima is converting more sales calls into sales appointments than anyone else in her team and begins to win every "Top Performer" sales incentive and sales competition offered by the company.

top  

Business Consultant

Gary is a small business consultant, specializing in helping small business owners improve their sales and marketing. Gary is also an affiliate partner of Sales Scripts Pro, and recommends the sales scripts tool building program to his clients, as well as on his web site and in his email newsletters.

Using Sales Scripts Pro, Gary's clients are trained on how to build a sales scripts tool that will allow them to train their sales staff quicker, help them get more sales appointments, improve their sales calling technique, increase the effectiveness of each prospecting call they make and help their business expand.
 
Best of all, since we already provide comprehensive 'step-by-step' tutorials and downloadable customizable template, most of Gary's work is already done for him. He simply recommends the Sales Scripts Pro solution to his clients using his affiliate link and provides additional guidance and assistance when and if required.

top

Network Marketer / Direct Sales Representative

Rosemary is new to multilevel marketing. She has recently joined her friend Peggy's downline as a distributor, after seeing how successful Peggy has become in network marketing since joining the company several months ago.

Although Peggy is very keen to help Rosemary recruit new distributors and start building her own downline, she is concerned that Rosemary is not as proficient as she is when it comes to picking up the phone and making invitiation calls to prospects for her business opportunity.

Peggy decides to help Rosemary and others like her who want to succeed in their own mlm business but don't know how to contact prospects and make appointments over the phone, by converting her own knowledge and experience into a duplicatable and easy-to-use tool that she can then distribute (or sell) to her downline distributors ... and even to people in her upline!

Using Sales Scripts Pro's 'step-by-step' training tutorials, Peggy quickly creates a powerful and duplicatable scripts tool that will support and train her new mlm distributors to grow their (and her own) downline organizations.

Rosemary and all of her new team members now have access to the same scripts used by the most successful upline distributor in their team, and begin to build successful businesses of their own, using the sales scripts tool to confidently contact prospects and make invitation calls, set appointments for presentations, handle objections, etc ...

Before too long, Rosemary's business has many up and coming leaders in her own downline, all using the same duplicatable scripts and presentation tools, and surpasses even Peggy's business in terms of income and sales commissions.

top

Telemarketing Companies

Nick and Sam are two young entrepreneurial friends who want to start their own outsourced telemarketing business. They both agree that Nick will be responsible for contacting prospective new clients, while Sam will be in charge of building and training a team of sales phone operators to service their clients' needs by making either outbound sales calls or handling inbound sales enquiries as required.

The problem is that, while they are both keen and committed, they lack the capital to invest in software development.

After searching on the net, Nick discovers the Sales Scripts Pro website and makes an inexpensive investment that will help them start their business.

Using Sales Scripts Pro's 'step-by-step' tutorials, they discover they can build an unlimited number of highly flexible and customized sales scripts tools for their clients, as well as a professional telemarketing scripts tool for their own organization. They are truly a "product of the product" and their business begins to take off.

Nick and Sam realize they have made a very smart decision. Why spend money upfront on software development unnecessarily? With Sales Scripts Pro, they build and perfect prototype telemarketing scripts tools for their existing clients, which can then be used as "blueprints" when developing new sales scripts tools for new clients.

top

Fund Raising Organizations

Gabrielle is actively involved in telephone-based fundraising for schools, churches, community associations and not-for-profit charity organizations.

Using Sales Scripts Pro's 'step-by-step' training tutorials and included template, she quickly builds various professional fundraising scripts tool that allow her to not only make the fundraising calls herself, but also train new phone operators quicker, improve their calling technique and approach, increase the effectiveness of each call they make, and help create consistency in the quality of fundraising calls made across her entire call team.

top

***

I hope you found this information interesting and informative.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about any of our products, please do not hesitate to contact me.

At Sales-Are-Up.com we are committed to helping small business owners sell more products and services through the development of effective and affordable sales systems, sales tools and sales training education materials.