Pet Sitting

If you’ve been selling for a while, chances are you’ve been asked to use sales scripts to make cold calls. And even if you feel scripts are unnatural and impersonal, you’ve probably used them anyway because they were the only way you knew to start a conversation with prospects.Maybe you’ve even made some sales using scripts. But here are some questions you need to ask yourself.

Why? Because he was totally focused on his selling script and not on my reaction to it.

As soon as they start reading their script, a couple of things happen. I hear their voices go up in volume so they sound enthusiastic. They also talk faster, and their voice takes on a canned, robotic quality. All these things trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype.

When people call me and ask how they can throw out their scripts and cold call the natural way, the first thing I do is ask them whether they’re willing to role-play with me using their script.

After a few moments, I gently stop them and tell them they’re sounding like a totally different person from the one who called me and talked with me so naturally about their sales issues.

Last week I was sitting at my desk and the phone rang.

I picked it up and said, “Hello, this is Ari.” The caller said. “Hi, Ari, my name is Steve, how are you today?” I knew right away that he was using a structured sales script, and that triggered the negative “salesperson” stereotype in my mind. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I let him continue with his pitch for a few minutes. Then I gently said, “Hi, Steve.” He was so startled that he completely stopped speaking. He had no idea how to react to my simple, normal greeting.